Dystopia and disutopia: Hope and hopelessness in German pupils' future narratives

J Educ Change (2014) 15:443465

DOI 10.1007/s10833-014-9237-x

Johan Nordensvard

Published online: 9 August 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Within the academic eld of futures in education there has been concern that pupils negative and pessimistic future scenarios could be deleterious to their minds. Eckersley (Futures 31:7390, 1999) argues that pessimism among young people can produce cynicism, mistrust, anger, apathy and an approach to life based on instant gratication. This article suggests that we need to discuss negative and pessimistic future visions in a more profound and complex way since these contain both hope and hopelessness. A pessimistic view of the future does not have to be negative in itself: it can also illustrate a critical awareness of contemporary social order. This article therefore aims to explore hope and hopelessness in young peoples dystopias about the future. Adopting dystopias may open up possibilities, whereas adopting disutopias will only lead one to believe that there are no alternatives to the current dominant model of global capitalism. Even a dystopia that predicts the end of the world as we know it might be the beginning of a world that we have not seen yet.

Keywords Futures Narratives Dystopia Disutopia Hope Social change

Introduction

Within the academic eld of futures in education there has been concern that pupils negative and pessimistic future scenarios could have a destructive effect on the minds of young people. This article should therefore be understood in the light of these publications in the eld of futures in education. One focus in this research has

J. Nordensvard (&)

Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UKe-mail: [email protected]

Dystopia and disutopia: Hope and hopelessness in German pupils future narratives

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been to analyse how images of the future reect pupils overall outlook of the future (Eckersley 1988, 1992, 1995; Hannan et al. 1995; Hicks 1995, 1996; Johnson 1987; Wilson 1989). Much of the research has been on discerning preferable and non-preferable futures and on analysing the relationship between the story (what kind of future) and storyteller (age, gender, nationality, religion, culture) (Gidley and Hampson 2005). Analysing peoples future visions is actually very much about analysing our contemporary society, as Hicks writes: Hopes and...