Mapping the futures (1993)

There are now new experiences of space and time; new tensions between globalism and regionalism, socialism and consumerism, reality and spectacle; new instabilities of value, meaning and identity – a dialectic between past and future. How are we to understand these? ‘Mapping the Futures’ is the first of a series which brings together cultural theorists from different disciplines to assess the implications of economic, political and social change for intellectual inquiry and cultural practice. The series arises from and continues the concerns of BLOCK (1979-89), the journal of visual culture. The collection offers radical reformulations of cultural theory in response to political, economic and technological change. In particular it focuses upon the intellectual project of speculating about the future, presenting a variety of approches to thinking about change and its effects on hierarchies, boundaries and identities.