Counterfactual Construction of the Future

Abstract

This article proposes the theory that counterfactual analysis may be used not only for building alternative scenarios of the past but also as a methodology for exploring the future. After defining three aspects of counterfactuality and counterfact (dormant facts, reinterpreted facts, and rumor) and illustrating each in historical contexts, the author outlines their prognostic potential with specific reference to recent events whose differing interpretations have profound implications for future policy and international relations planning. Based on these examples, the author concludes that using counterfactual analysis as a method for developing scenarios and forecasting represents a useful approach toward coping with uncertainty and identifying wild cards, black swans, and so on.

1,000 Futures

“…Mariana Todorova uses this framework as a jumping-off framework for forecasting: what issues of today are our legacy, to be solved sometime in the future. 21 Todorova and the author have made lists of such issues and may address them in future studies; they are divided into her three categories: dormant acts, subject to reinterpretation, and rumors and unproven beliefs. To illustrate, among the entries in our much longer composite list are the following: …”

Communicating Vegan Utopias: The Counterfactual Construction of Human-animal Futures

“…More recently, Pargman et al's fascinating "Coalworld" project, still apparently underway, envisions an alternative present in which only half of the world's oil ever existed, and consequently, "the global peak in oil production ("peak oil") is a historical fact that happened decades ago" (2017, p. 170). 3 The intention here is not so survey this literature but to explore Todorova and Gordon's specific take on it (Gordon & Todorova, 2019;Todorova, 2015;Todorova & Gordon, 2017), as the basis for considering the potential of "counterfactual futures" as a form of effective animal advocacy. Whilst imagining "probable, plausible, possible and preferable futures" might be a component of counterfactual historical narratives, Todorova offers "counterfactual construction" specifically as "a methodology for exploring the future" (Todorova, 2015, p. 30).…”

“…Again there is a clear comedic element in the psychotherapeutic framing of individuals emotionally struggling to "confess" partaking in practices we consider normaleating a chicken's egg or a beef burger, drinking cow's milk. Yet in elaborating on experiences of guilt and remorse, this aspect of storytelling also reflects Todorova's counterfactual element of "reinterpreting facts" (Todorova, 2015), whereby facts that once struggled to gain cultural purchase or legitimacy become "subject to reinterpretation … and assume new meaning or content when political, social, religious, or economic contexts shift" (Todorova & Gordon, 2017, p. 31). Arguably such "facts" could be experiential, and in this case the guilt and denial associated with eating meat obscured by "meat culture" is "activated" for audiences through an ingenious and entertaining narrative vehicle.…”

“…There is, finally, something to be said about counterfactual futures that focus on positive, even utopian visionsa key aspect of Carnage. Todorova argues that identifying dormant facts, reinterpreted facts, and rumor can improve counterfactual future modeling in assisting the work of governments, think tanks, and universities to avoid future "turmoil" (Todorova, 2015). Environmental communication scholarship is understandably more familiar with ideological and discursive critique.…”

“…The article then focuses on a specific, novel attempt to challenge the ideologies and practices associated with meat culturethe film Carnage (BBC, 2017). It approaches the film as an "unexplored site" in research addressing challenges to meat culture and promoting alternatives (Singer, 2017), understood as an artistic intervention, but also analyzed as a unique version of the construction of counterfactual futuresthe practice of imagining the potential impact of hypothetical events on future scenarios (Todorova, 2015). It is argued that the film and the broader approach it represents offers a distinctive contribution to research, scholarship and activism concerned with effective animal advocacy, with wider potential for related research methodologies.…”