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CRITICAL STUDIES IN RISK
AND UNCERTAINTY
Series Editors: Patrick Brown, Anna Olofsson and
Jens O. Zinn
IMAGINED
FUTURES
Hope, Risk and
Uncertainty
Julia Cook
Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty
Series editor
Patrick Brown
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Anna Olofsson
Mid Sweden University
Östersund, Sweden
Jens O. Zinn
University of Melbourne
Parkville, VIC, Australia
Palgrave’s Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty series publishes
monographs, edited volumes and Palgrave Pivots that capture and ana-
lyse how societies, organisations, groups and individuals experience and
confront uncertain futures. An array of approaches for mitigating vulner-
ability to undesired futures has emerged within social contexts around
the world and across history, with risk being seen as an especially salient
technique to have emerged within, while also characterising, processes of
modernisation. These approaches have attracted the critical attention of
scholars across a wide range of social science and humanities disciplines
including sociology, anthropology, geography, history, psychology, eco-
nomics, linguistics, philosophy and political science. This series will pro-
vide a multidisciplinary home to consolidate this dynamic and growing
academic field, bringing together and representing the state of the art on
various topics within the broader domain of critical approaches to risk
and uncertainty. It aims to provide cutting edge theoretical and empiri-
cal contributions, as well as established and emerging methodologi-
cal approaches. The series welcomes projects on an array of approaches
to unknown and contingent futures such as risk, trust, hope, intuition,
emotions and faith. Moreover, the series stresses the desirability of a sen-
sitivity to the broader political, structural and socio-cultural conditions in
which some particular approaches to complexity and uncertainty—such
as risk—become legitimated ahead of others. Explorations of the insti-
tutionalisation of approaches to uncertainty within regulatory and other
governmental regimes is also of interest.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/series/15840
Julia Cook
Imagined Futures
Hope, Risk and Uncertainty
Julia Cook
University of Melbourne
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty

ISBN 978-3-319-65324-2 ISBN 978-3-319-65325-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65325-9
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For Mitch
Acknowledgements
This book is based on my Ph.D. research, which I completed in the

School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne
from 2013 to 2016. This research drew on interview data, which I col-
lected during 2014. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the
individuals who agreed to participate in this study, and whose views and
experiences are reflected in the pages of this book. I was overwhelmed by
their generosity, and their willingness to welcome me into their homes
and share their experiences and opinions. Without their insight and
candour, this project would not have been possible.
I would also like to thank my supervisors Jens Zinn and Lauren
Rosewarne who guided this project from its inception to its completion
(and through many variations and digressions along the way). I am espe-
cially grateful to Jens for his continued interest in my work even after
the thesis was complete. Without his encouragement and advice, this
book would never have been written. I would also like to thank Dan
Woodman for his very helpful feedback on part of this work and his
advice on the proposal for this book.
Thank you also to my editors Sharla Plant and Jack Redden for their
professional support.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge my partner Mitch who first
introduced me to many of the ideas and approaches that are used in this
book.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Diagnoses of the Future Horizon 11
3 Strategies for Relating to the Personal and Societal Future 31
4 Discourses of the Long-Term Future 55
5 Future Imaginaries in Theory and Practice 81
6 The Utility of Hope 105
7 Conclusion 129
Appendix 1 137
Index 139
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract Although at present humans have an unprecedented ability

to act in ways that have long-term implications, due to the complexity
of contemporary life they are perhaps now more than ever hindered in
their abilities to extrapolate from the present in order to anticipate what
the future will hold. Starting with this dilemma, this chapter introduces
the key issue addressed in this book: specifically, how individuals perceive
and cope with the uncertainty inherent in the long-term, societal future.
After establishing the topic motivating this book, the chapter moves on
to introduce the empirical, interview-based study which informs it,
discussing how the data which it produced is used to address how
individuals (in this case young adults living in Australia) imagine the
future of their society.
Keywords Future thinking · Long-term thinking · Young adults

Qualitative research · Risk and uncertainty
In an oft-quoted statement, Friedrich Nietzsche put forward the view that

‘the future influences the present just as much as the past’. Although this
rings true as much now as it did in the nineteenth century we appear to
be trapped in something of a paradox in our relationship with the future
at present. The global population has an unprecedented ability to impact
upon the future, a paradigm example of which is the 1986 Chernobyl
nuclear accident whose effects will be felt by the human population and
© The Author(s) 2018 1

J. Cook, Imagined Futures, Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65325-9_1
2 J. Cook
natural environment of the area for thousands of years to come. Yet due to
the complexity of contemporary life, we are perhaps now more than ever
before hindered in our efforts to extrapolate from the present in order to
anticipate what the future might hold. This dilemma has been met with
various responses such as the development of what has been termed the
precautionary principle which dictates that if a proposed action is suspected
of carrying with it a risk of causing harm to human well-being or the
natural environment, then the burden of proof lies not on its opponents to
substantiate this claim, but on its proponents to prove that it is not harmful.
While approaches of this type, despite having their critics, have application
for governments and intragovernmental organisations faced with the task
of legislating for an increasingly opaque future, they have less instructional
value for individuals. However, while the vast majority of individuals
inhabiting the earth at present are not responsible for the types of decisions
that necessitate the precautionary principle, it cannot be denied that
collectively their actions will have a profound impact upon the future in
ways that are currently known to us (for instance, the production of CO2
emissions from personal transport) as well as in ways that we are not yet
aware of. Although individuals are evidently at once connected to the long-
term future through their actions, and yet disconnected from it due to the
inherent uncertainty of what it will hold, it remains unclear how—or indeed
if—they experience and negotiate this tension within the context of their
everyday lives. It is this question of how individuals manage the pervasive
uncertainty of the long-term, societal future that motivates this book.
Although the future is necessarily at the forefront of the popular
consciousness, the ways in which individuals relate to it remain
ambiguous in scholarly work. Studies on this subject have generally
focused on governance of the future, using the language of risk,
contingency and sustainability (Ayre and Callway 2005; Beck 2009). As a
result, in-depth consideration of how the future of society is perceived by
individuals is largely absent from the literature. When this topic has been
addressed in empirical studies, they have been almost exclusively large
scale and based on self-administered surveys (see Ornauer et al. 1976;
Livingstone 1983), meaning that although they offer a broad overview of
collective trends in future-oriented thinking, they are generally less able
to account for why individuals hold specific views. Additionally, the age
of these studies means that they have limited application for predicting
contemporary perceptions of the future. More recent studies considering
how individuals perceive the societal future have focused almost
1 INTRODUCTION 3
exclusively on the topic of climate change (e.g. Norgaard 2011). While

climate change is undoubtedly a prominent issue in both academic and
public discourse, it is not the only prospective issue that members of the
public report concern about (see Gow and Leahy 2005). As such, this
text avoids using climate change as a pre-established focal point, instead
considering how individuals relate to the future in a broad sense.
The wealth of recent studies addressing individuals’ reported levels of
concern about climate change has emerged alongside research which has
reported an increasing focus on individual plans and choices (Furlong and
Biggart 1999; Anderson et al. 2005; Brooks and Everett 2008; Steinberg
et al. 2009). Such claims suggest a movement away from long-term and
collective concerns in favour of the pressures and challenges of everyday
life which does not bode well for the profile of long-term thinking.
This apparent focus on short-term goals and plans has found support
in recent theoretical accounts. Hartmut Rosa (2013), for instance, has
theorised that the contemporary experience of time is accelerated in a
way that draws focus to the near future, while Helga Nowotny (1994)
has proposed an extended experience of the present which eclipses future
concerns. In order to explore the reach of such tendencies and consider
why something as prominent as the future of society is claimed to have
become a peripheral concern for contemporary individuals, this study
seeks to gain insight into the relevance that individuals’ perceptions of the
long-term future may have for their identities and present-day lives.
This book therefore focuses on the dual concepts of the short- and
long-term future. Defining these terms is, however, not a simple task. As
discussed in the work of several scholars (Adam and Groves 2007; Norgaard
2011: 97–136), understandings of what specifically constitutes the near
and distant future are socially constructed in relation to prevailing norms
of attention, needs and priorities. As such, the use of an a priori definition
of the short- and long-term future in a study of this nature poses the risk
of categorising individuals’ perceptions in a way that does not represent
their own practical understandings. For this reason, precise definitions or
timelines of the future dimensions that are at issue are not introduced here.
However, for the sake of clarity, several working definitions are employed.
The near or short-term future is hereafter intended to refer to the personal
or biographical future that one expects to see and experience—in other
words their lifespan—while the distant or long-term future is intended to
refer to a future that extends beyond one’s life and immediate, personal
concerns to address an experience of time that may be socially shared.
4 J. Cook
The Study
In order to address how individuals cope with the uncertainty inherent
in the long-term future horizon in their everyday lives, this book draws
on the findings of an empirical study that was conducted in 2014
in Melbourne, Australia. The study was motivated by the following
questions:
1. How do individuals imagine the future of the society in which they

live?
This question, although extremely broad, is posed in response to
the fact that contemporary studies considering the future have
generally focused on single issues (principle of which is climate
change) as a proxy for the future. As a result, few empirical studies
have considered how individuals perceive the societal future, instead
leaving this question to theoretical discussions. It is the contention
of this book that understanding how individuals conceptualise and
relate to the societal future, as well as understanding why they do
so in the specific ways in which they are found to, is a necessary step
towards fully understanding how they perceive some of the most
pressing future-oriented issues of our time. As such, this study aims
to provide an empirical treatment of this somewhat abstract topic.
2. Do individuals’ imaginings of the long-term future interact with
or impact upon the ways in which they relate to the short-term,
biographical future?
Studies claiming that individuals are increasingly focused on the
present can be considered alongside a range of literature that
has addressed the relationship between individuals’ outlooks on
the personal and societal, or near and far future horizons. Alvin
Toffler (1974) first identified this phenomenon in his study of
what high school students in the US forecast would come to pass
in the societal future. He found that although the students had a
range of general suggestions about what may occur, they imagined
all of these potentialities to be separate from their own lives, even
though their timelines overlapped in many cases. Toffler’s findings
were later mirrored in the work of Johnson (1987), Connell et al.
(1999), Anttila et al. (2000) and Ojala (2005). Leahy, Bowden and
Threadgold (2010) have termed this tendency ‘two track thinking’,
referring to the way in which individuals tend to conceptualise the
1 INTRODUCTION 5
short- and long-term (or personal and societal) future as developing

on two parallel and yet separate tracks. Although these studies have
found compelling evidence for the fact that individuals conceptualise
the personal and societal future in distinct ways, they have focused
exclusively on the content of their respondents’ imaginings, leaving
the question of whether the types of logic or perhaps the beliefs
underpinning individuals’ approaches to each dimension of the
future have any commonality. The present study addresses such
questions with the aim of building upon this body of literature.
3. Are the ways in which individuals relate to the long-term future
compatible with popular theoretical accounts of the contemporary
future horizon?
The character of the contemporary future horizon has been laid
claim to nowhere more than in large-scale theoretical diagnoses of
the contemporary era. While many studies have used aspects of this
scholarship to understand empirical data and have, in the course
of this process, tested the claims of this literature against their
empirical findings, the question of whether the character with which
these accounts diagnose the future horizon has any homologies
with the views held by individuals has not often been addressed. It
is important to be mindful of the fact that theorists who propose
diagnoses of the contemporary era (as, for instance, second, late,
reflexive, post- or liquid modernity) do not seek to disclose how
individuals view the future, and therefore cannot be critiqued for
failing to meet aims that are not their own. However, the broad
influence of such accounts has meant that their claims about general
epochal tendencies have often been taken as fact, and conflated with
individual experiences and perceptions. By questioning whether
these diagnoses overlap with individuals’ outlooks upon the future,
this book therefore does not aim to critique these accounts. Rather,
it seeks to understand whether influential claims that have informed
implicit understandings of the future are reflected in individuals’
outlooks.
The data informing this research are drawn from an interview-based study
conducted with 28 young adults (aged 18–34) in Melbourne, Australia,
in 2014. The choice of this sample was informed by three considerations:
firstly, young adults have been under-represented in studies of future-
oriented (for instance, generative or stewardship) behaviours when
6 J. Cook
compared with older demographics; secondly, this cohort is the main

target of claims about an increasing degree of focus on personal plans and
choices; and thirdly, this cohort has grown up amid mounting awareness
of and concerns about time-delayed ecological crises (rather than, for
instance, the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War era) and may live to
see some of the pivotal dates (e.g. 2050) that are often referenced in
high-profile reports from bodies such as the UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change.
The study was informed by a grounded theory methodology drawn
from the work of Corbin and Strauss (2008), chosen to complement the
broad and exploratory aims of the research. In line with this approach,
a theoretical sampling method informed the data collection process. An
initial round of interviews was conducted with a general sample of the
target cohort (18- to 34-year-olds), and data analysis was conducted
alongside the collection process in order to identify relevant themes and
hypotheses, which then directed the subsequent sampling strategy. This
approach led to sampling focused on specific groups of people: parents,
young adults working in ‘generative’ professions (such as teaching and
social work), young adults working in information technology professions
and those who had religious faith. Consequently, while the data were
collected from a relatively broad sample of respondents within the target
demographic, it does represent the experiences of specific groups to
the exclusion of others and therefore must be considered as positioned
in this way (see Appendix 1 for an overview of the respondents’ age,
gender, occupation, religion and ethnicity). Additionally, the respondents
in this study all lived in Melbourne and were Australian citizens at the
time of the interviews. Despite its location in the southern hemisphere,
Australia is firmly part of the Global North, sharing greater economic and
cultural commonalities with Europe and North American than with its
neighbours in the Asia Pacific region. For this reason, this study addresses
a distinctly Western experience of the future. Some of the implications of
this are touched upon in the following chapter.
The Structure of the Book

Before presenting the findings of the empirical study, this text
begins by establishing the theoretical context in which it takes place.
Chapter 2 provides an outline of how the future horizon of the
premodern, modern and late modern era has been conceptualised. While
1 INTRODUCTION 7
analytic distinctions between premodern and modern forms of temporality

are commonly utilised and understood within sociological literature, the
categorisation of the contemporary future horizon with reference to this
dichotomy remains a deeply contested issue. This is in part because of
the sheer number of competing analytical frameworks which have been
deployed as diagnostic tools (the conceptual rivalry between postmodern
approaches and theories of late or reflexive modernity being a particularly
well-known example of this issue). In establishing the context within
which the empirical component of the book is situated, this chapter
first examines how sociological studies concerned with future-oriented
thinking have construed the premodern/modern distinction before
focusing on how the contemporary future has been conceptualised, with
the ultimate aim of comparing these popular theoretical approaches with
the findings of this study in later chapters of the book.
Chapter 3 begins by considering how individuals and subjectivities are
best conceptualised within this study before operationalising the resulting
approach by beginning to present and discuss the empirical findings. In
so doing, it responds to the second research question motivating this
study: do individuals’ imaginings of the long-term future interact with or
impact upon the ways in which they relate to the short-term, biographical
future? This chapter establishes that there is indeed a relationship between
the ways in which the respondents perceived the near and distant future,
finding that although the content of their perceptions of each dimension
differed markedly, the strategies and forms of logic that they employed
were often mirroring. Moreover, the respondents’ perceptions of the
future are found to correspond with specific aspects of their identities and
dispositions. On the basis of this finding, the discussion uses Margaret
Archer’s modes of reflexivity to contend that specific types of selves
corresponded with certain outlooks upon the future.
Chapter 4 considers what the respondents expected or imagined
in the long-term, societal future. The respondents’ perceptions of
the future are connected to a number of discourses that have been
found in both previous research and popular culture. The types of
futures that are constructed through the use of these discourses are
considered, and it is found that the discourses which the respondents
cited supported two seemingly opposed imaginaries of the future. The
first depicts the long-term future as a horizon of decline in which the
social, moral and environmental state of the world is under threat, while
the second is infused with a sense of hope for the future. By identifying
8 J. Cook
the imaginaries with which the respondents depict the long-term future,
this chapter addresses the first question underpinning this study: how do
individuals imagine the future of the society in which they live?
Chapter 5 considers how the respondents’ approaches to the long-
term future compare with the theoretical diagnoses of the contemporary
era presented in Chap. 2. The respondents’ representations are, however,
not individually compared to the macro-level accounts: rather the
concept of imaginaries is used as a bridge by which the latter theories
can be juxtaposed with a unit of similar generality. While addressing
this topic, the chapter continues to present the findings of the empirical
component of the research. Specifically, the imaginaries that were
identified in the previous chapter are compared to the existing theoretical
accounts, and in the course of this discussion, the main tenets of the
imaginaries are clarified further through the use of data to support the
arguments presented in this chapter. Ultimately, it is found that while the
theoretical accounts considered in Chapter 1 held significant explanatory
value for the decline-based imaginary that was cited by some of the
respondents, they were less able to account for the alternative imaginary
that emerged alongside it. In the light of this finding, some ways in
which the future can be conceptualised that account for the diversity of
views represented in this study are proposed.
Finally, Chap. 6 departs from the research questions motivating this
book to more closely consider a central finding that emerged from
the study. Specifically, it considers the role that was played by hope in
the alternative imaginary identified in Chap. 3. The chapter begins by
considering the growing body of interdisciplinary literature considering
hope and the role that it plays in managing uncertainty, using this
discussion to better define the way in which this somewhat amorphous
concept can be applied to long-term thinking. The discussion then moves
on to consider how the hope that the respondents expressed for the future
was formed and how it might be related to some of the arguments that
have been put forward in previous chapters. Finally, the purposes that the
alternative, hope-based imaginary served for the respondents is considered,
and some of the potential implications of this type of future thinking are
discussed. Ultimately, this chapter contends that this type of hope offers a
potentially productive way of relating to the future for both individuals and
wider society not because it has a specifically moral orientation or value,
but because it appears comparatively productive when measured against
the seeming stasis that was prompted by the decline-based imaginary.
1 INTRODUCTION 9
References
Adam, B., & Groves, C. (2007). Future matters: Action, knowledge, ethics.
Leiden: Brill.
Anderson, M., Bechhofer, F., McGrone, D., Jamieson, L., Li, Y., & Stewart, R.
(2005). Timespans and plans among young adults. Sociology, 39(1), 139–155.
Anttila, T., Poikolainen, K., Uutela, A., & Lonnqvist, J. (2000). Structure and
determinants of worrying among adolescent girls. Journal of Youth Studies,
3(1), 49–60.
Ayre, G., & Callway, R. (2005). Governance for sustainable development: A foundation
for the future. London: Earthscan.
Beck, U. (2009). World at risk. Cambridge: Polity.
Brooks, R., & Everett, G. (2008). The prevalence of “life planning”: Evidence
from UK graduates. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(3), 325–337.
Connell, S., Fien, J., Lee, J., Sykes, H., & Yencken, D. (1999). If it doesn’t
directly affect you, you don’t think about it: A qualitative study of young
people’s environmental attitudes in two Australian cities. Environmental
Education Research, 5(1), 95–113.
Corbin, J. M., & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and
procedures for developing grounded theory. London: Sage.
Furlong, A., & Biggart, A. (1999). Framing ‘choices’: A longitudinal study of
social aspirations among 13 to 16-year-olds. Journal of Education and Work,
12(1), 21–36.
Gow, J., & Leahy, T. (2005). Apocalypse probably: Agency and environmental
risk in the Hunter region. Journal of Sociology, 41(2), 117–141.
Johnson, L. (1987). Children’s visions of the future. The Futurist, 2(1), 36–40.
Leahy, T., Bowden, V., & Threadgold, S. (2010). Stumbling towards collapse:
Coming to terms with the climate crisis. Environmental Politics, 19(9),
851–868.
Livingstone, D. (1983). Intellectual and popular images of the educational and
social future. In D. Livingstone (Ed.), Class ideologies and educational futures
(pp. 179–224). London: Falmer Press.
Norgaard, K. M. (2011). Living in denial: Climate change, emotions, and every-
day life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nowotny, H. (1994). Time: The modern and postmodern experience (N. Plaice,
Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ojala, M. (2005). Adolescents’ worries about environmental risks: Subjective
well-being, values, and existential dimensions. Journal of Youth Studies, 8(3),
331–347.
Ornauer, H., Wiberg, H., Sicinski, A., & Galtung, J. (1976). Images of the world
in the year 2000. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
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Rosa, H. (2013). Social acceleration: A new theory of modernity (J. Trejo-Mathys,

Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Steinberg, L., Graham, S., O’Brien, L., Woolard, J., Cauffman, E., & Banich,
M. (2009). Age differences in future orientation and delay discounting. Child
Development, 80(1), 28–44.
Toffler, A. (1974). The psychology of the future. In A. Toffler (Ed.), Learning
for tomorrow: The role of the future in education (pp. 3–18). New York:
Vintage Books.
CHAPTER 2
Diagnoses of the Future Horizon
Abstract This chapter considers how the future has been conceptual-
ised in sociological work, focusing predominantly on theoretical accounts
which have sought to diagnose the character of the future horizon due to
their strong influence on the discipline. While the future horizons of pre-
modern and modern eras have been conceptualised in largely uniform ways
(with some notable exceptions), the future of the contemporary, late mod-
ern era is comparatively contested. Competing diagnoses of this era as, for
instance, late or post-modern, and as characterised by temporal accelera-
tion, risk, or a new relationship with tradition are placed into dialogue in
this chapter in order to highlight their key points of difference and simi-
larity. Finally, alternative accounts of temporality and futurity produced by
figures such as Johannes Fabian and Barbara Adam are considered.
Keywords Future thinking · Social acceleration · Risk society

Post-traditional society
While analytic distinctions between premodern and modern forms of

temporality are commonly utilised and understood within sociologi-
cal literature,1 the categorisation of the contemporary future horizon
with reference to this dichotomy remains a deeply contested issue, in
part because of the sheer number of competing analytical frameworks
which have been deployed as diagnostic tools. In establishing the con-
text within which the empirical component of the book is situated,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65325-9_2
12 J. Cook
this chapter first examines how sociological studies concerned with

future-oriented thinking have construed the premodern/modern distinc-
tion before focusing on how the contemporary future has been concep-
tualised, with the ultimate aim of comparing these popular theoretical
approaches with the findings of the study in later chapters. Although this
chapter focuses on the type of grand, epochal theorising that seeks to
define the character of the future horizon at specific historical junctures,
the discussion also indicates some key points at which theories of this
kind have been challenged. Such challenges are largely posed by more
recent studies of historical contexts that contest the validity of totalising
claims, as well as by accounts that have questioned the assumptions upon
which grand theories of this type are based.
The Premodern Future

Although theoretical accounts of the premodern future horizon are not
uncontested, the premodern future is generally characterised as a prede-
termined or ‘closed’ horizon. This is overwhelmingly attributed to what
Armin Nassehi (1994: 48) has termed the ‘world-immanent presence
of God’, which refers to the perceived presence and intervention of God
in the material world. This reading of the premodern future has gener-
ally reinforced claims of a shared social imaginary during this era, which
was buttressed by the largely static nature of social change and mobility.
For instance, a number of accounts have argued that the sense of eternity
fostered by the premodern perception of the future was reinforced by the
highly stratified organisation of society, which bolstered stable expectations
by affording individuals little chance of social mobility, and by reproducing
unity, hierarchy and centralism in the societal form (Nassehi 1994).
This reading of the premodern future horizon (as determined or pre-
dictable) is often used to support claims about the qualitative experience
of time during this period. In his analysis of the progress of secularisa-
tion since the Axial Age, Charles Taylor (2007) has proposed that what
he terms the ‘higher times’ of the divine acted as an organising field
for the ‘profane’, ordinary time of everyday life, which was thought to
have been guided by natural processes such as changes in seasons. For
instance, religious holidays and festivals that recurred annually punctu-
ated the profane time of everyday life and fostered a sense of both con-
stancy and eternity as time stretched on endlessly while returning to the
same events.2 Using this dual model of temporality, Taylor argues that
2 DIAGNOSES OF THE FUTURE HORIZON 13
the experience of the future horizon of premodern times as ‘closed’ or

determined established a sense of continuity between the past and pre-
sent. It is important to note that this account does not suggest that
change did not occur over time. Rather, it is intended to highlight that
expectations of the world were guided entirely by the past (as commu-
nicated by predecessors), and as such when change did occur it took
place gradually. This meant that processes of change did not affect a rup-
ture between the past and the present and therefore did not disrupt the
cyclical form of time and the corresponding structure of expectations
(Koselleck 1985). It is therefore proposed that during this period strate-
gies were developed for dealing with expectations that did not relate to
previous experiences. They were related to the hereafter, rather than to
the immediate world, and were therefore channelled out of the horizon
of the future.
Some of the key tenets of this account of the future have been chal-
lenged by more recent scholarship which has taken issue particularly
with the claim that the premodern era was marked by a single, predeter-
mined view of the future. In her study of future perceptions in ancient
Greece, Beerden (2014) has claimed that divination—a practice through
which signs perceived to be sent by supernatural forces are interpreted—
was used as a means of managing the uncertainty of the future. Although
such a future was still necessarily mediated by the divine and could,
therefore, be perceived as predetermined or perhaps not entirely open in
this sense, Berdeen also found that by virtue of knowing the future (at
least from their perspective) individuals felt that they could act to avoid
or change certain outcomes. In this way, the premodern future, as expe-
rienced by the ancient Greeks, was plural rather than singular. The gen-
eral thrust of this claim is supported in the work of Adam and Groves
(2007) who similarly found that premodern cultures used means such
as divination to experience the future as somewhat knowable This runs
against the grain of the conventional sociological account of the premod-
ern future as the providence of the Gods.
Taken together, these accounts of the premodern future, although
presenting several differing contentions, nevertheless converge on two
central claims. Firstly, they depict an enchanted world view which is
characterised by the absence of a strong distinction between human and
supernatural forces. Secondly, the future that is associated with this world
view, while not necessarily singular and entirely outside of human con-
trol, is equally not depicted as lying entirely in human hands.
14 J. Cook
The Modern Future

The premodern perception of the future, which has commonly been
depicted as a period of stable and constant expectations, is generally
thought to have been disrupted by the process of modernisation. In
studies of modernisation, Max Weber’s account has often been used as a
starting point, as he is the background figure who is common to almost
all major accounts and discussions of modernity (Tiryakian 2001). For
Weber, the key to understanding the distinctiveness of Western moder-
nity is the disenchantment of the world, a process by which the ambi-
guities of the natural world and human experience were stripped away
(at least in principle) as these realms became knowable, predictable,
and manipulable by human actors (Jenkins 2000). A number of events
that coincided with this process—such as the beginning of the French
Revolution—have been read as moments of rupture that made a break
with the expectations underpinning the premodern social order, and in
so doing produced a new understanding of the future horizon as open
and manipulable by human actors (Zerubavel 1981).
For Weber, the process of disenchantment was underpinned by two
main developments which each shaped how the newly open horizon of
the future could be perceived. The first was the intellectualisation of the
world which was augmented through the scientific revolutions of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries and contributed to a view of human
achievements as ends in themselves (rather than illustrations of the glory
of God) (Seidman 1983). The second development was the process of
secularisation through which the reform, rationalisation and privatisa-
tion of religion dismantled the ‘higher times’ of the divine (Taylor 2007)
and formed a more rigid separation between the transcendent and imma-
nent world.3 The processes of secularisation and intellectualisation were
instrumental in forming the perception that humans could have a guid-
ing hand in their destiny, which provided a new conceptual framework
for human activity (Nassehi 1994).
Although disenchantment and the processes of intellectualisation
and secularisation are conceptually linked to an open and contingent
future horizon, Weber’s account of modernity has also been read as pes-
simistic or fatalistic. This reading—which has influenced studies of the
contemporary future horizon—focuses on the concept of rationalisation
which, along with bureaucratisation, accompanied the intellectualisation
of culture (Weiss 1987). These processes transformed the premodern

social order based on divine rules and precepts into a new, modern
social order governed by laws legitimated by a formal, procedural type
of rationality. Weber (1930/2001) uses the metaphor of an ‘iron cage’4
to describe the increasingly predictable and instrumental character of
human action in the context of a rationalised society in which struc-
tures—such as those of rational administration—entrap behaviour into
patterns and routines. He argues that in this formalised social universe
individuals are increasingly dominated by mechanical processes that are
underpinned by the development of an instrumental form of rationality
rooted in the three dominant forces of modern life: capitalism, science
and bureaucratic organisation. The energy underpinning these spheres
is manifest in organisations for which order, predictability and regularity
become ends in themselves, a process which opens individuals up to a
mechanical form of standardisation and homogenisation that narrows
the bounds of acceptable conduct. As such, while Weber (1958) pro-
poses that modern society is differentiated into value spheres that are
organised through competing forms of rationality—which suggests that
values become pluralised—his understanding of modernisation has nev-
ertheless been read as a linear narrative marching towards a rationalised
and disenchanted world. Consequently, while the equation of moderni-
sation with disenchantment suggests a reading of time as linear—which
has facilitated the modern perception of the future horizon as both open
and contingent—the process of rationalisation which accompanies it has
informed readings of contemporary society as increasingly homogene-
ous in conduct and culture, which suggests that a similar narrowing or
closure may be reflected in subjective perceptions of the future.
The reading of modernisation as a steady march towards the ration-
alisation and disenchantment of the world has also been accompanied
by the cognate association between modernity and continuous progress.
Such ideas are reflected in Parsons’ (1964) evolutionary understanding
of modernisation and Kohli’s (1986) claims of the growing normalisa-
tion and predictability of the modern life-course. Each of these accounts
point towards a future which is at once a space of continual betterment,
and a space which is increasingly open to human intervention and con-
trol. These ideas ultimately contribute to what is termed a ‘narrative of
progress’ in the context of this book.
16 J. Cook
The Late Modern Future

While the premodern and modern future have broadly been conceptu-
alised as closed and open horizons respectively, the future horizon of
what has been termed late, second, reflexive or postmodernity has been
subject to a greater degree of debate. As demonstrated by the variety of
terms with which it has been conceptualised, the character of the late
modern future is contested. This is the context in which the present
study takes place. The following discussion therefore establishes how the
possibilities for perceiving the future have been set in existing theoret-
ical work. The inclusion of each of these approaches in this chapter is
based on both their influence and their applicability to discussions of the
long-term future horizon.5
Postmodern Decline and Fragmentation

The postmodern account of the contemporary future horizon rests upon
a claim that the conditions under which society and the future could be
imagined underwent a second substantial shift in the mid-late twentieth
century. Although attributed to events such as the end of WWII (Heller
1999) and epistemological changes resulting in the growing realisation
of the contradictions inherent in the project of modernity (Beck 1992),
this shift is commonly thought to have come about due to the collapse
of the modern narrative of progress which provided societies with a
cohesive vision of themselves as progressing into a unified future hori-
zon shaped by expectations of improvement and perfection. Widespread
declarations of the decline of progress in social, cultural and critical
theory culminated in the publication of Jean-François Lyotard’s (1984)
pamphlet The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge which, by
declaring that the possibility of meta-narratives such as those of history
and progress had come to a close, posed the quintessentially postmodern
question of how to go on after the collapse of such narratives. A number
of issues that are central to the concerns motivating this project—such
as whether imaginings of the future are possible in this context as well as
what form they might take—are implicit in this question.
For Lyotard, modernisation was a process through which meta-
narratives, such as those of history and progress, were placed into an
epistemologically privileged position and became metaphysical diag-
noses of the state of modern society. He argues that these narratives
maintained this position by dismissing alternative representations

as ideology that should be omitted from scientific and political life.
Lyotard, therefore, contends that the decline of these narratives
(which marked the beginning of the postmodern era) signified a
reversal of this process. As a result, he associates the decline of these
narratives with the development of incompatible, relativistic perspec-
tives which undermined the possibility of the socially shared truths
and norms necessary for the development of viable social imaginaries
Lyotard therefore proposes a negative reading of modernity, seeing it
not as an opening up of society to a plurality of perspectives and view-
points, but instead as a process of closure under which the possibil-
ity of these viewpoints is eroded. In a similar vein, Jean Baudrillard
(1990) addresses more directly the implications that such develop-
ments may have on socially shared views of the future by reading the
decline of progress as a loss of the teleological orientation of society
and equating it with a loss of the conditions under which meaning can
be interpreted. This claim ultimately led Baudrillard to propose that, in
the postmodern context, time is emptied of its meaning and simply left
to serve the function of synchronisation which facilitates social action.
By proposing that the postmodern era has corresponded with an
extreme narrowing of the conditions under which shared understand-
ing of the future are possible, the postmodern account appears to sug-
gest that while the future may be imagined as a factual extrapolation of
present conditions, the loss of socially shared visions and meanings has
stripped away its normative potential to form a creative space for imagin-
ings, dreams and interpretations. Lyotard (1984: 60) appears to con-
firm this reading, stating that ‘we no longer have recourse to the grand
narratives—we can resort neither to the dialectic of Spirit nor even to
the emancipation of humanity as a validation for postmodern scientific
discourse’. This statement highlights that the erosion of grand narra-
tives leads to a pluralised, relativised understanding of truth and cultural
identity, and as a result suggests that the conditions under which shared,
socially legitimated accounts of the future can be formed have been
extinguished.
Such claims are echoed in accounts which have addressed the con-
cept of social imaginaries. Although he does not align himself with the
postmodern perspective, Cornelius Castoriadis (1997) has similarly
diagnosed a contemporary crisis in what he terms ‘social imaginary sig-
nifications’ or privileged symbolic apparatuses that produce a coherent
18 J. Cook
image of a given society, a thesis which directly mirrors the decline of

meta-narratives of history and progress. He relates this crisis to an ero-
sion of collective social identities (as the Chosen People or the sub-
jects of a specific king, for instance) and argues that such developments
have two important implications. Firstly, the loss of these significations
has caused individuals to draw significations from the past into a con-
temporary context with which they do not correspond, leading them
to form a decontextualised collage that cannot intelligibly disclose the
nature of their society. Secondly, this loss of a collective social identity
as a seat of meaning—providing material from which individuals can
shape meaning in their lives and for their deaths—has resulted in the
perception of social norms and mores as constraints imposed on de-
socialised, autonomous individuals. For Castoriadis, the loss of meta-
narratives and the erosion of the collective identities that they support
has led to the decline of the conditions under which meanings can
be socially recognised, which severely undermines the possibility that
coherent social imaginaries can be formed. However, while the claims
of Castoriadis and the postmodern theorists resonate with the notion
that the long-term future has been eclipsed by more immediate con-
cerns (as outlined in the introduction), it remains to be questioned
whether unified perceptions of the long-term future have ceased to be
viable in empirical experience.
Social Acceleration and the Dominance of the Present

While postmodern scholars have viewed the future horizon as a space of
irreconcilable fragmentation (Lyotard 1984), several sociologists of time
have contended that the future horizon has been eclipsed by a growing
focus on the present. Such claims have been communicated predomi-
nantly through the interrelated concepts of acceleration and immediacy.
These accounts have proposed that an accelerated perception of time
developed as a result of the modernisation of society, commonly find-
ing its genesis in the technological advances of the industrial revolution
(Thompson 1967) and the development of an increasingly globalised
capitalist economy (Taylor 1911/2008; Harvey 1989). This new percep-
tion of time is therefore associated with science, capitalism and bureau-
cratic forms of organisation—the spheres that Weber associated with the
process of rationalisation.
Hartmut Rosa (2013) has drawn together contemporary techno-

logical, social and experiential developments, arguing that the accelera-
tion of society in the context of modernity is driven by a combination of
the increasing velocity of technology, the rate of change and the pace of
life. His thesis consequently has implications on various levels of experi-
ence and has been used as the conceptual underpinning of his reading of
modernisation as a process of ever-increasing acceleration (Rosa 2013).
At first glance, the attribution of social acceleration to the dynamics of
technological development and capitalist production appears to echo the
Marxist claim that the acceleration of time can be attributed purely to
changes in the dominant modes of production (Harvey 1989). Rosa’s
account, however, avoids reducing the social and cultural aspects of
acceleration to epiphenomenal effects of economic processes by argu-
ing that the economic logic of this account is not continuous with sub-
jective experiences of acceleration, which sometimes run counter to the
economic interests of actors. Rosa (2013) has explicitly discussed the
implications that his work has for the future, contending that the com-
bined forces of technological innovation, social change and the increased
tempo of life have not moved society forward upon a historical trajec-
tory. Instead, he argues that these forces have destroyed the idea of his-
tory by placing it into a context in which ‘nothing remains the way it
is while at the same time nothing essentially changes’ (Rosa 2013: 283).
This static image suggests that a meaningful relationship with the future
is impossible, as individuals appear unable to imagine a society which dif-
fers from the one that they inhabit at present. As such, when the long-
term future is read in the terms of Rosa’s (2013: 283) account it appears
to be stripped of any normative content, while the flatter lines of expec-
tation are similarly superseded by what Rosa terms the ‘frenetic standstill’
of a society in which the temporal rhythms have caused a homogenisa-
tion of experience and perception.
Similar claims are evident in the work of a number of scholars who
have also discussed temporal acceleration. Carmen Leccardi (2012), for
example, has argued that the acceleration of time impacts not only upon
individuals’ qualitative experiences of time, but also upon their percep-
tions of the future. Indeed, as Leccardi (2012: 61–62) outlines, the col-
lateral effects of the acceleration of time include:
the contraction in temporal horizons and the dominion of the “short

term”; the out-and-out hegemony of the deadline, elaborated as a
20 J. Cook
principle of action; the discrediting of perspectives founded on the idea of

“once and for all” (i.e. irreversibility); the spread of a culture of the provi-
sory; and the growing difficulty in relating to the future and constructing
projects.
By projects, Leccardi is here referring to the ‘projects of the self’

through which individuals construct their biographies, which makes
reference to both the increasing difficulty of establishing a coherent iden-
tity and envisioning a point beyond the present. The acceleration of time
is therefore linked to what has been termed ‘the coming of immediacy’
(Tomlinson 2007). The resulting state—in which the future comes to be
subservient to the present—has been termed the ‘extended’ (Nowotny
1994) or ‘absolute’ (Heller 1999) present. This can be read as a result
of the three aspects of acceleration which Rosa outlines (which are the
acceleration of technological development, the rate of social change
and the pace of life). Indeed, it appears that the steady increase in the
general rate of change and pace of life has meant that the temporal dis-
tance which individuals can project into the past and future respectively
without seeing a world which is alien to their present-day lifeworld, or
finding themselves unable to infer the likely conditions, has increas-
ingly shrunk. Such developments appear to lead to what Hermann
Lübbe (2008) has termed a contraction of the present.6 These develop-
ments have been explained in part by the ever-increasing complexity and
contingency of the structures of expectations with which social actors
operate. Such developments can be related to numerous claims that
conceptual links between the past, present and future are no longer per-
ceived as having a linear or chronological logic, which again highlights
how the existing structures of expectations with which individuals navigated
the future are claimed to have been dismantled (Nowotny 1994; Harvey
1989; Bauman 1998).
Ultimately, this body of work can be read as suggesting that the pre-
sent has come to dominate social concerns at the expense of the future,
whether it is eclipsed by an extended or absolute present, rendered
incoherent by the ever-increasing complexity of society, or forced out
of focus by the acceleration of the temporal underpinnings of both per-
sonal and social life. The largely uncontested claims that temporal accel-
eration found its genesis in techno-scientific thought and developments
highlight that this body of work is relatively sympathetic with a reading
of modernisation as the progressive rationalisation of the world, which
has filtered into individual perceptions and dispositions. The reading of

the contemporary condition as a frenetic standstill is also reminiscent of
Francis Fukuyama’s (1992) influential claim that the dominance of lib-
eral democracies at the close of the Cold War brought the sociocultural
evolution of mankind to a standstill. Such claims suggest that shared
perceptions of the future have become untenable not because the condi-
tions under which collective understandings can form have been eroded,
but because the future itself either directly reflects the present or else is
crowded out by present-day concerns. Similarly, this account shares sev-
eral commonalities with the postmodern approach that was discussed
earlier in this chapter. Specifically, although the postmodernists claim
that the grand narratives through which one can perceive the long-term
future have become untenable and the acceleration theorists contend
that they are simply eclipsed by more pressing concerns, these accounts
each propose that contemporary individuals are unable to form viable
imaginings of the long-term future horizon.
Risk and Uncertainty

The accounts of the contemporary future horizon outlined above sug-
gest that it is fragmented and disjointed from previous eras. For instance,
the postmodern account of the end of modernity poses a significant
challenge to contemporary sociology, which is largely underpinned by
dominant narratives of modernisation. In answer to such claims, Ulrich
Beck (1992) conceptualised modernity as unfolding in two stages: first
and second or reflexive. In so doing, he emphasised the continuing rel-
evance of modernity by claiming that its fundamental principles (such as
the free market or the nation-state order) persist in the reflexive mod-
ern era (Beck 2014: 86). Beck’s work also appears to pose a challenge to
the impossibility of collective future imaginings suggested by the post-
modern account by proposing that contemporary society is inherently
oriented towards the future, and that this future is perceived in largely
uniform ways. Specifically, Beck claims that the future has increasingly
come to be populated with new risks. These risks are the unintended
consequences of the optimistic, progress-oriented ethos of first moder-
nity and are epitomised by nuclear catastrophes and environmental
degradation resulting from industrialisation, as well as other man-made
catastrophes related, for instance, to terrorism and genetically modified
food. For Beck, these new types of risks—which have come to the fore
22 J. Cook
in the reflexive modern era due to an epistemological shift resulting from

the attainment of a minimum standard of living—have drawn the focus
of both individuals and social institutions towards a future which has
come to be crowded with risk and uncertainty.
Beck’s risk society thesis also has implications on the level of indi-
vidual experience. For instance, Beck’s individualisation thesis contends
that the transition between first and reflexive modernity is marked (in
part) by the contestation and subsequent rescission of rigid identity
categories. However, the increased freedoms that are afforded to indi-
viduals who are no longer constrained by the norms and expectations
characteristic of traditional identity categories are matched by the new
risks and uncertainties that they must contend with. Although such risks
include the catastrophes on which Beck based his original thesis, his indi-
vidualisation thesis also extends to the risks and uncertainties inherent
in establishing one’s own life-course trajectory rather than following a
pre-established path. Consequently, while the future is open to individu-
als in the context of radical individualisation, they are also exposed to,
and responsible for managing, an unparalleled level of risk. Although in
positive readings such developments prompt individuals to construct an
entrepreneurial self who is responsible and reflexive, and actively plans
for the future, these developments also suggest a new relationship with
the future horizon. Specifically, the new risks characteristic of reflexive
modernity present an unprecedented challenge to the modern rhetoric
of human achievement and progress; although they are man-made, they
cannot be contained by scientific strategies, nor through the actuarial cal-
culations of insurance. As such, these risks have eroded the legitimacy
of expert forms of knowledge by highlighting their limitations and fal-
libility through the production of multiple competing viewpoints, and in
so doing erode the perception of the future as knowable and manipula-
ble by human action. Beck argues that as a consequence of this, previ-
ously uncontested truths and orders have been challenged. For instance,
the naturalness of the traditional life-course, the nuclear family and
gender specific divisions of labour has been contested (Beck and Beck-
Gernsheim 2002), the sanctity of the nation state has been challenged
by globalisation (Beck 2000: 11), and science has become increasingly
cognisant of its own biases and limitations (Beck 1992: 158). An exam-
ple of this is provided by Norgaard’s (2011) claim that the relation-
ship between laypeople and knowledge about climate change is more
complicated than was originally expected. In her ethnographic study
of members of a rural Norwegian community, Norgaard found that,

in contrast to the claims of the prevailing ‘information deficit model’
(Buckeley 2000), individuals received sufficient information about cli-
mate change. However, they avoided thinking about it because doing so
raised fears which threatened their existential security, provoking feelings
of guilt and helplessness, while also threatening both their individual and
collective senses of identity.
As Beck (1994) contends, while the perception of risks can provide
an indication of what should not be done, it is ultimately unable to sug-
gest what course of action should be taken. However, Beck’s later work
began to develop a normative account of how the risks facing contempo-
rary society could—or indeed should—be met. Drawing on the concept
of cosmopolitanism, Beck (2006: 338) argues that the new, largely man-
made risks which face world society in the late modern era may, due to
the shared nature of the threat that they pose to all of the residents of
the globe, serve an ‘involuntary enlightenment’ function. By this, Beck
means that awareness of these large-scale risks, and the shared fate that
would be sealed if they eventuated, leads to the type of discourse that
may create a global public and work to destabilise the existing order,
perhaps encouraging the development of new institutions. Beck (2006:
340) views these potentialities as inherently hopeful, as they prompt
what he has termed ‘enforced cosmopolitanism’, referring to the neces-
sity to communicate and cooperate across national borders. Although
Beck is careful to stress that the enforced nature of this type of cosmo-
politanism robs it of its ethical weight, his account nevertheless contains
a normative element, as he emphasises the potential for this type of cos-
mopolitanism as a source of hope. As such, although the future horizon
that Beck depicts does not resemble the open and progressive horizon
of modernity, it also differs from that which is suggested by the other
accounts outlined above because it does not preclude the possibility of a
socially shared outlook upon the future.
The Post-traditional Society

While Beck has focused on the increased risks that are apparent on both
an individual and social levels, Anthony Giddens (1994) has built upon
the understanding of reflexive modernity as a discrete historical stage to
claim that premodern, early modern and late (reflexive) modern socie-
ties can be distinguished on the basis of their relationship with tradition.
24 J. Cook
He has termed the contemporary era a post-traditional society, claim-

ing that the relevance of the traditions which held premodern societies
together through rituals and repetition persisted into the modern era—
for instance, in the practises and beliefs of nationalism—before declining
in late modern times. Giddens’ account is premised on the claim that
traditions signify a society’s relationship with the past by acting as the
organising medium of collective memory, which means that his account
has implications for how contemporary individuals can relate to the past
and imagine the future. Specifically, he reads traditions in premodern and
modern societies as a constraining force from which individuals are freed
or disembedded in late modern times. Although he claims that traditions
can persist in the era of reflexive modernity, the conditions under which
this can occur are narrow. They can either be acknowledged as a single
perspective in ‘a universe of plural competing values’, or else they can
take the form of fundamentalism, calling upon a logic that is no longer
socially recognised (Giddens 1994: 100). Traditions that persist in the
late modern era can therefore either have their claims and validity tem-
pered with relativism, or else signify flights from modernity which dredge
up premodern patterns. As such, Giddens’ approach is sympathetic to
claims that there is no longer a meaningful connection between the past,
present and future (see also Sennett 1998).
Although it is unclear whether Giddens is claiming that the future
need not take its cues from the past, or that it cannot, it is evident that
he is proposing that a radical break has been made between the past
and the future. He defines this break using comparisons between tradi-
tion, which is based on local attachments, single authorities and formu-
laic notions of truth on the one hand, and expertise, which is universal,
based on impersonal principles, and subject to multiple authorities and
truths based on specialisation on the other hand. This distinction under-
pins his positive reading of modernisation, in which he characterises
the increased accumulation of knowledge and technology as a freeing
rather than constraining force. Using this reading, Giddens (1994:
107) appears to address the question of how society can continue after
the decline of (first) modernity, stating that ‘as collective humanity, we
are not doomed to irreparable fragmentation, yet neither on the other
hand are we confined to the iron cage of Max Weber’s imagination’.
However, in undertaking this ambitious task Giddens tends towards a
unilinear view of modernisation as a constant and straightforward devel-
opment, terming processes which do not fit into his account premodern.
Indeed, by equating traditions with irrationality and pitting them against

expert knowledge, he ultimately presents them as regressive. His vision
of a post-traditional society therefore appears to make claims to a future
horizon unburdened by the past, but in doing so he severely erodes the
conditions under which collective imaginings can be formed and inter-
preted. His account bears some resemblance to Castoriadis’ (1997) de-
socialised subject who draws upon social imaginary significations from
previous eras which, when removed from their indigenous context, are
devoid of affective potential. By claiming that the traditions of the past
no longer hold any claim over subjects, Giddens proposes an actor who
is freed from traditional perceptions, and as such stripped of a fertile
space for interpretation and meaning formation.
Alternative Readings Accounts of the Future

The division between the premodern, modern and contemporary future
horizon is ubiquitous in mainstream sociological work. The type of
epochal theorising that these distinctions rely upon has, however, been
met with critique from a number of quarters. The following discussion
considers some of these criticisms with the aim of discerning how the
present study may be positioned in relation to both popular, large-scale
accounts of the future and the criticisms that have been lodged against
them. The discussion focuses on critiques of the assumptions or logic
underpinning periodised accounts of the future horizon, rather than crit-
icisms of the theories that have been discussed in this chapter, which are
considered in Chap. 5.
The premodern/modern distinction has been critiqued perhaps most
famously by Johannes Fabian (1983), who argues that by perceiving the
societies that they study as ‘other’ in relation to the social structures and
practices of the contemporary west, anthropologists also present them as
‘other’ in time. Specifically, Fabian claims that they view them as primi-
tive, unchanging or ‘cold’ in the words of Levi-Strauss, while viewing
their own, largely Western societies as modern and dynamic, despite the
fact that these societies exist concurrently. Osborne (1995) has simi-
larly claimed that the very act of periodising human history into distinct
eras is inherently political and needs to be acknowledged as such. More
recently, Pels (2015) has claimed that the implications of periodising in
this way remain under-acknowledged in anthropological scholarship
and has addressed the relevance that this has for research considering
26 J. Cook
the future, concluding that empirical research must remain open to

multiple qualitatively different futures. In the light of such claims, it is
especially important to be mindful of the fact that this study addresses
a specifically Western experience of the future, and as such its findings
should not be generalised without accounting for this consideration.
Barbara Adam and Chris Groves (2007) have similarly presented a
number of correctives to the tendency to represent the future in a perio-
dised and homogenous manner. They have, for instance, offered a new
set of distinctions through which the future can be understood, focus-
ing specifically on a contrast between the contextual, embodied view
of the future which marked many early human societies, and the com-
modified future which emerged from the growth of international trade
and the relaxation of religious prohibitions against usury (see Adam and
Groves 2007: 1–13). This distinction between an embodied, contextu-
alised future on the one hand, and an emptied, commodified future on
the other maps loosely onto the well-established characterisation of the
premodern future as predetermined and largely closed, and the modern
future as devoid of divine determination, and therefore comparatively
open to human intervention. Indeed, Adam and Groves view the empty-
ing of the future, and its resulting equation with capital, as preconditions
to the progress achieved in the course of industrialisation.
The relevance of the distinction between contextualised and empty
futures lies in the fact that although the latter is open to human coloni-
sation, it is—in contrast to its context-bound counterpart—fundamen-
tally unknowable. Adam and Groves contend that this conceptualisation
of the future leaves it primed for exploitation and obscures the fact that
the current future will be the present of other human actors. Essentially,
while the contextualised future of premodern times was thought to
belong to the Gods, meaning that human intervention in it is best con-
ceptualised as a process of discovery and interpretation, the empty future
often associated with the contemporary era is perceived as open to inter-
vention, and therefore as something that can be controlled and moulded
through human action. Drawing on this account of how perceptions
of the future, and humanity’s influence on it, have changed over time,
Adam and Groves suggest some ways in which contemporary futures can
be conceptualised differently. They distinguish, for instance, between the
cycles that are evident in nature (e.g. the changing of the seasons) and
the circular form that is taken by repeated practices which characterise
human action and which, by allowing for measured and testable changes,
work as a means of domesticating the uncertainty of the future. Notably,

this approach suggests an approach to the future which is alternative to
both the modern notion of linear progress and the more recent accounts
of dislocation and stasis. The aim of understanding how individuals per-
ceive the long-term future that motivates this book is inspired in part by
Adam and Groves’ effort to understand the diverse ways in which the
future can be conceptualised. As such, this study takes seriously the need
to consider how individuals’ views of the future may differ from popular
accounts, even when they draw on elements of such accounts.
Conclusion
This chapter has outlined how the future of the premodern, modern
and late modern eras has been conceptualised in theoretical work. These
accounts of how the future was perceived in each epoch, as well as read-
ings which have sought alternatives to these sweeping claims, provide
both a foundation and a sounding board for the findings of this study.
Specifically, these theoretical accounts are compared with the respond-
ents’ large-scale and long-term imaginings of the future in Chap. 5
with the aim of considering whether they align. This chapter is there-
fore best taken as an overview of key material, and readings thereof,
which are addressed in the course of this text and used as a basis for its
central argument. Although this chapter has discussed large-scale, the-
oretical accounts of the future horizon and, where possible, considered
how these futures may be—or have been—experienced by individuals,
extended consideration of the relationship between perceptions of the
future and individuals or subjectivities generally lies outside the scope of
the literature discussed here. As such, the role of subjectivity is consid-
ered in the following chapter.
Notes
1. There are some exceptions to this, as well as critiques of the very notion of
periodising time in this manner. Such accounts are addressed in the course
of this chapter.
2. The account of time outlined above refers to a generalised experience of
the peasant world which comprised up to 80% of Europe 250 years ago.
This population are proposed to have lived within the cyclical rhythms of
nature and to have transmitted skills and knowledge intergenerationally
(Koselleck 1985).
28 J. Cook
3. Through the process of secularisation, religion is thought by many to have

lost its central place in public life, remaining solely as part of private life
(Woodhead and Heelas 2000).
4. It is important to note that Weber’s famous metaphor of the ‘iron cage’
came about when his work was translated into English by Talcott Parsons.
The original German (stahlhartes Gehäuse) translates more accurately to a
‘shell as hard as steel’. Although the distinction between these metaphors
is important as they impart slightly differing meanings, the former is never-
theless used in this book because it represents the interpretation of Weber’s
work which has informed the work of the theorists who are discussed in
the following section of this chapter.
5. Although various alternative readings of modernisation have been pro-
posed in recent years—suggesting that modernity has continued into the
contemporary era (Heller 1999), or that modernisation has not taken
place in some crucial aspects of society (Latour 1993)—this discussion
focuses on the accounts that have the strongest implications for how the
long-term future is characterised in sociological thought.
6. Although Lübbe’s account appears to contradict the work of Heller and
Nowotny, who claim that the present has extended or eclipsed the future,
each of these theorists argue that contemporary individuals’ ability to
relate to both the past and the future is steadily decreasing, which subse-
quently directs their focus to the present. As such, while these accounts are
developed differently they have similar implications.
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CHAPTER 3
Strategies for Relating to the Personal

and Societal Future
Abstract While the previous chapter presented an overview of popular

theoretical accounts which have laid claim to the character of the con-
temporary future horizon, due to their macro-focus, these accounts do
not allow for consideration of the relationship between perceptions of
the future and individuals or subjectivities. As such, this chapter consid-
ers how subjectivities can be theorised in the context of the study that
informs this book. After considering a number of competing theoretical
accounts, the work of Margaret Archer is chosen for the purposes of this
work. Drawing on Archer’s modes of reflexivity, this chapter considers
how—and indeed if—outlooks upon the future may be related to specific
types of selves.
Keywords Future thinking · Reflexivity · Archer, M · Planning

Modes of reflexivity
This chapter begins by considering how individuals and subjectivities are

best conceptualised within this study, before operationalising the result-
ing approach by starting to present and discuss the empirical findings of
the project. In so doing, it addresses the second question motivating this
study (do individuals’ imaginings of the long-term future interact with or
impact upon the ways in which they relate to the short-term, biographi-
cal future?). As established in the previous chapter, although sociologi-
cal accounts of the future horizon have provided several interpretations

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65325-9_3
32 J. Cook
of the conditions under which large-scale or socially shared perceptions

of the future are formed, they have been comparatively less interested
in subjective views and experiences of the future. While it is, of course,
important to note that such accounts seek to produce large-scale diag-
noses of society, and as such cannot be critiqued for failing to meet aims
that are not their own, they nevertheless need to be supplemented with
scholarship that is better able to account for individual-level experi-
ences and perceptions for the purposes of the present study. In service
of this aim, this chapter begins by discussing the work of a number of
theorists who have considered the relationship between subjectivi-
ties and social structures in order to determine how the approaches
on offer may be utilised. Specifically, this section considers the work of
Pierre Bourdieu, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Margaret Archer.
Ultimately, Archer’s work was chosen for the purposes of this study
because it provides an account of reflexivity which treats the capacity
to reflect on one’s actions as a fundamental anthropological fact, rather
than a historically contingent development. Because of its generality,
Archer’s understanding of reflexivity allows the concept to be of utility
when conceptualising the interplay of conditions and motivations across
a spectrum of social types. In the second half of this chapter, Archer’s
modes of reflexivity are used to frame a discussion of the empirical find-
ings of the study, with an aim of examining whether specific subjectivities
correspond with outlooks upon the future, and in so doing to also begin
considering whether short- and long-term perceptions of the future may
be related on the basis of the types of selves that produce them.
Theorising Subjectivities
Although sociological readings of the future horizon have provided sev-
eral interpretations of the conditions under which large-scale or socially
shared perceptions of the future have been formed, they have dwelled
comparatively less on subjective views and experiences of the future. That
is to say, while they have used the prevailing social norms and conditions
of the times to suggest the dominant views of the future that individ-
uals may have held at various historical junctures, they have less often
discussed how these views of the future may be related to subjectivities
and how this relationship may change over time and in response to shift-
ing social conditions. This is due to both a lack of focus on this area
and a lack of empirical support. The large-scale accounts of the future
3 STRATEGIES FOR RELATING TO THE PERSONAL AND SOCIETAL FUTURE 33
horizon that were outlined in the previous chapter conformed to these

conventions. In so doing, some of these accounts—specifically the work
of Giddens, the acceleration theorists and the postmodernists—presented
a somewhat monological reading of modernisation. Indeed, by seek-
ing to diagnose the character of the contemporary future horizon—as a
post-traditional society, acceleration society or a society condemned to
fragmentation and endless repetition—these accounts each suggest a uni-
fying reading of modernisation that draws society under the umbrella of
a single characterisation (Luhmann 2013: 310–313). In so doing, these
accounts suggest a homogeneous future horizon which is similarly diag-
nosed with a single character. While it is important to note that these
depictions are not intended to account for subjective views of the future,
and as such cannot be critiqued for omissions that lie outside the scope
of their work, this study seeks to examine individual-level experiences
and perceptions of the future in a way that is not determined by exist-
ing macro-level accounts. For instance, while it is entirely possible that
individuals relate to a somewhat homogeneous future horizon in hetero-
geneous ways, it is nevertheless important to avoid tacit acceptance of a
specific image of the future before the question of whether it is relevant
to the respondents’ own perceptions is answered. As such, this discus-
sion draws upon the work of a number of theorists who have discussed
the relationship between subjectivities and social structures in order to
determine how the approaches on offer may be utilised in a way that is in
congruity with this aim.
Perhaps the most influential account of the relationship between
large-scale phenomena such as the future horizon and subjectivities
is provided by Bourdieu (1977, 1998), whose conceptual architec-
ture depicts an individual whose inner world has developed to corre-
spond with the social context in which they are likely to find themselves.
However, while Bourdieu’s work provides a masterful explanation of
routinised or habitual action, its explanatory value is somewhat dimin-
ished when the subject positions upon which such action depends are
radically altered in the course of social change, as has arguably come to
pass in the contemporary era.1 Although Bourdieu’s brief consideration
of the ‘crisis’ conditions in which routine action would not be appropri-
ate (Wacquant 1989) has been used by a number of theorists (Crossley
2001; Adams 2006) to suggest that the habitus can continue to pro-
vide the basis of rational action even when it fails to correspond with
the objective structures of society, this reading has been critiqued on
34 J. Cook
the grounds that it is difficult to see how the habitus—which is com-

monly thought to be based on structural determinants (Jenkins 1992)—
can still provide guidance for action in this context (King 2000).
More recently, sociological scholarship has moved on to depict indi-
viduals in a way that emphasises their ability to adapt to the contempo-
rary context in response to the fact that they are more likely than ever
before to be faced with novel situations. While this scholarship was not
written explicitly in opposition to his work, it nevertheless moves to rem-
edy the seemingly static nature of Bourdieu’s account of subjectivity.
Theorists such as Beck and Giddens (1994) have, for instance, focused
on the concept of reflexivity in order to understand how individuals have
related to recent processes of social change. Although the concept of
reflexivity is somewhat contested due to the differing interpretations of
it that have been proposed by various theorists, it is broadly concerned
with the personal and often self-referential way in which subjectivities are
shaped in contemporary times. Beck and Giddens have each developed
slightly different accounts of reflexivity. For instance, Giddens perceives
reflexivity as akin to a heightened type of self-awareness, while Beck
views it more as a reaction to the growing need to balance and integrate
various, often conflictual, social roles. However, their conceptualisa-
tions of reflexivity broadly converge on the claim that the late modern
era (which is generally thought to have begun post-World War II) has
demanded both a different type and a greater degree of reflexivity than
previous time periods.
A further conceptualisation of reflexivity is offered by Archer (2003,
2007, 2012), who has positioned herself in opposition to theorists such
as Beck and Giddens. Archer critiques Beck and Giddens for conform-
ing to what she has termed the ‘extended reflexivity thesis’, and there-
fore failing to acknowledge that reflexivity has a history. Specifically, she
reads the work of Beck and Giddens as claiming that individuals relied
on their existing, largely inherited knowledge of the world prior to the
beginning of the late modern era, which signified a distinct change in
these conditions and brought about a reflexive imperative that is directed
by the institutional expectations that have developed in contemporary
Western societies. For this reason, although Archer acknowledges that
Beck and Giddens each suggest the decline of routinised or habitual
action and uptake of reflexivity in the face of an increasingly novel social
context, she nevertheless claims that they each view this development as
restricted entirely to the late modern era. It is, however, important to
note that Archer’s highly critical account fails to acknowledge instances

in which these theorists have discussed the existence of reflexivity prior
to the late modern era. For instance, by claiming that all societies have
been marked by a practical form of monitoring that denotes a type of
awareness akin to reflexivity, Giddens (1991) suggests that some kind
of reflexivity has been present throughout human history. It is, as such,
perhaps more accurate to claim that Giddens and Beck have under-the-
orised, rather than ignored or denied, the history of reflexivity. Archer’s
account of reflexivity also differs from that of Beck and Giddens due
to the role that is occupied by emotions. This aspect of Archer’s work
seemingly answers Lash and Urry’s (1994) critique of both Giddens and
Beck’s accounts as purely cognitive, and therefore blind to the aesthetic-
expressive dimension of the modern self. The role of emotions is central
to Archer’s (2000) account of reflexivity. She views them as constituting
‘the fuel of our inner conversations’, and providing both an impetus for
the formation of ideas about the world and a commentary on their out-
comes (Archer 2000: 194).
Although Archer’s account of reflexivity converges with the claims of
Beck and Giddens by putting forward the view that there is a ‘reflexive
imperative’ in late modern times which was not experienced in previous
eras, it notably provides a far more developed and systematised read-
ing of the historical development of reflexivity. Archer (2007: 4) defines
reflexivity as ‘the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all nor-
mal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts
and vice versa’, claiming that the reflexive process—through which inter-
nal conversations take place—is a source of both self and social change.
On the basis of this definition, she has claimed that reflexivity is a pre-
requisite for social life and that distinct modes of reflexivity have corre-
sponded with different social contexts and societal forms.2 She defends
this view by arguing that even premodern, traditional societies were not
entirely consistent and coherent to the extent that they did not neces-
sitate some level of reflexive consideration or action from individu-
als. However, she argues that the type of reflexivity that was commonly
exercised in this period was limited by the relatively stable continuity of
society, as well as the investment that many had in the continuity of this
social form. The relevance of Archer’s work for the questions motivat-
ing this study lies predominantly in the way in which her reading of the
development of reflexivity can be mapped onto the development of the
future horizon that was outlined in the previous chapter. In other words,
36 J. Cook
it appears to have the potential to be applied to understanding how vari-

ous views of the future have developed and risen to prominence at differ-
ent periods in recent human history.
In developing her historical account of the emergence of reflexivity,
Archer proposes that the type of reflexivity that was exercised in premod-
ern times was generally communicative in nature and that it was based
on dialogue and traditional knowledge. This mode of reflexivity was
then disrupted by the social changes that arose alongside the advent of
modernity. Such developments brought about an autonomous type of
reflexivity which saw individuals come to define themselves increasingly
on the basis of their employment or place within an organisation, rather
than their social ties. Notably, these modes of reflexivity each appear to
overlap with some of the accounts of subjectivities that have been dis-
cussed so far in this chapter. The communicative mode of reflexivity
appears to conjure a vision of the subject similar to that proposed by
Bourdieu, as it emphasises continuity between generations. Similarly, the
autonomous mode of reflexivity appears to be reminiscent of Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim’s (2002) subject who seeks to adapt to and navigate the
late modern landscape. However, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s subject
is indigenous to the late modern era while, for Archer, the autonomous
mode of reflexivity emerged in concert with modernisation.
As outlined previously in this chapter, Archer—much like Beck and
Giddens—contends that the late modern era has borne witness to an
increased rate of social change which, while signifying the continuity of
many of the main tenets of modernisation, has also brought about an
unprecedented number of novel situations. She similarly contends that
this era has corresponded with the development of a ‘reflexive impera-
tive’ which refers to the growing need to exercise reflexivity in contexts
in which existing social guidelines no longer prove effective in orienting
one’s choices and practices. In response to such changes, she claims that
the advent of the late modern era has corresponded with the develop-
ment of a meta-mode of reflexivity through which individuals come to
question their own understandings of themselves and their social con-
text. In contrast to the autonomous reflexives—who are generally situ-
ationally forced to adopt a degree of independence from the norms of
their familial context—the meta-reflexives are characterised by the con-
scious and critical realisation that they do not want to reproduce the
way of life or social context into which they were born. This degree of
independence from one’s natal context naturally encourages a critical
Mode of reflexivity Historical erai Key characteristics

Communicative Pre-modern Based on traditions and intergenerational
continuity, their internal conversations and
world-view are confirmed by those around
them
Autonomous Modern Independent, purposeful, and adept at
rational decision-making
Meta Late modern Exhibit a critical relationship with self and
society, and are often value-driven
Fractured Modern/late modern (but Internal conversations are unable to produce
more evident in late modern action motivations. Experience difficulty in
times due to the growing making decisions. Three variants: displaced,
need to structure the impeded and expressive.
biography).
Fig. 3.1 Archer’s modes of reflexivity. Source Archer (2012) and author’s
analysis. iAs outlined above, this is intended to refer to the historical era in which
this mode of reflexivity emerged, rather than the era that it is isolated to
disposition which then fosters the relationship that meta-reflexives have

with both themselves and their social worlds.
While Archer’s modes of reflexivity depict individuals who have the
resources to understand and navigate their social world competently,
she also allows space in her work for those who are unable to do so.
Specifically, she terms such individuals fractured reflexives and contends
that they are characterised by the inability of their internal conversations
to satisfactorily answer the question ‘what is to be done?’ (Archer 2012:
250). In this way, Archer’s typology of reflexive modes again appears
to span the subject positions that theorists such as Beck have associated
with the late modern era. For instance, autonomous reflexivity appears to
relate to the late modern imperative to plan one’s own biography, while
the fractured form of reflexivity appears to depict one explanation of the
failure to do so (Fig. 3.1).
Although Archer’s account of reflexivity is of use to this text for sev-
eral reasons, its utility is primarily rooted in its plurality. By conceptualis-
ing reflexivity in multiple ways, rather than as a single variable amid a
sea of other social changes, Archer’s account produces a way of analys-
ing individuals that departs from the monological accounts presented in
the previous chapter. This attention to complexity is further reflected by
the fact that Archer (2012) does not treat her analytic categories as ideal
types. Instead, she maintains that it is possible to exhibit these modes
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
another,[1820] a Democratic pamphlet appeared declaring that ‘Jefferson is
as good a Christian as Adams,’ and charging that ‘Pope’ Dwight, ten years
before, had published a poem, ‘The Triumph of Infidelity,’ in which he
named Pinckney as a Deist. In this pamphlet[1821] Dr. Lynn was handled as
roughly as the Philadelphia pulpit politician. Had he not called on a
Democrat while electioneering for Pinckney and been forced to admit that
Jefferson was a good man? Had he not, when pressed, been forced to
concede that Pinckney was a Deist? Had not the wife of the Democrat
indignantly taken the clergyman to task for his ‘partiality to a self-confessed
adulterer?’
If the Jeffersonians were attacking the political preachers with meat-axe
and artillery, they were not without provocation enough. In Connecticut,
these ministers were the backbone of the Federalist Party machine, with
Dwight as their leader, than whom none more offensively intolerant ever
breathed curses on a foe. In Massachusetts, when the Reverend Ebenezer
Bradford espoused the cause of democracy, he was ferociously abused by
his fellow ministers and the Federalist papers, ostracized in the name of
Christ by his fellow clergymen, and refused a pulpit in Essex County. It was
not a time when ministers in some sections were making much of the action
of Christ in seeking his disciples among workers and fishermen.[1822] The
feeling of many of these was expressed by the Reverend David Osgood
when, speaking of the masses, he said that ‘they may know enough for the
places and stations to which Providence has assigned them; may be good
and worthy members of the community, provided they would be content to
move in their own sphere and not meddle with things too high for
them.’[1823]
In one pamphlet the case against Jefferson’s religion was set forth in
detail—he questioned the story of the Deluge; did not believe the Bible in
its entirety was inspired; and was opposed to teaching the Bible in the
public schools. ‘No one, I believe,’ wrote this distressed Christian, ‘has
openly and publicly asserted that Jefferson is a Christian.’[1824] Soon a
pamphlet in defense was in circulation. ‘Read, ye fanatics, bigots,
hypocrites ... and you base calumniators whose efforts to traduce are the
involuntary tribute of envy to a character more pure than your own—read
and learn and practice the religion of Jefferson as displayed in the sublime
truth and inspired language of his ever memorable “act establishing
religious liberty.” Read his views on slavery in his “Notes on Virginia”—“I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice
cannot sleep forever.” ’[1825] The ‘Chronicle’ was amused to observe ‘the
characters who are professed champions of religious zeal.’ Who were they?
‘What shall we say of a faction that has at its head a confessed and
professed adulterer?... In connection with this Saint we have a group of
zealots, consisting of gamblers, bankrupts, Saturday evening carousers, or,
to comprise the whole in one general appellation, a British Essex Junto
intermixed with a few clerical hypocrites who have formed an alliance,
offensive and defensive, to calumniate Mr. Jefferson.’[1826] The ‘American
Mercury’ dwelt on contributions made by Jefferson to the Church and to
needy clergymen. ‘Thus while Mr. Jefferson is ... practicing the blessed
religion of Jesus Christ by acts of charity and benevolence ... these political
parsons are abusing that holy religion and profaning the temple of God by
fulminating lies and slander against Mr. Jefferson.’[1827]
Thus through the summer and autumn and into the winter the political
preachers continued their assaults, and the Jeffersonians replied without
undue reverence for the cloth. Everywhere the Federalist leaders were
assuming a pious pose, even Sedgwick and Ames and Otis were becoming
religious, and the Democrats greeted their pose with ribald mirth. Into an
amusing imaginary diary of Jonathan Dayton of the soiled reputation,
Duane was writing the notation: ‘Went to church—must go to church—
Federalists must be pious—‘twill do a great deal of good.’[1828] When an
appeal was made to Catholics to vote against Jefferson, Duane dryly
commented: ‘We presume the ... reason to be that it was owing to Mr.
Jefferson that the Catholic priest was saved from being hanged for going
into ... Virginia ... and that to his toleration law it was owing that the
Catholic can now build churches and adore God without incurring penalties
of fine and imprisonment.’[1829]
Thus religion in virulent form fought with politics in the campaign of
1800.
But this sort of fighting and sniping was not working to the disadvantage
of Adams—and that was of some concern to Hamilton, who had concluded
that he would be happier under the presidency of Jefferson than under a
continuation of Adams. Scurrility there was in abundance, but Adams
suffered little. Occasional references were made to his vanity, his love of
pomp, his partiality to titles, and to his writings as evidence of monarchical
tendencies, but these were mild enough. With the political preachers and
editors abusing Jefferson, and with the Democrats attacking Hamilton, it
was time for some one to assault Adams—and Hamilton delegated himself
to the task. During the summer, Adams, smarting under the discovery of the
treachery of his party associates, had been freely talking in unguarded
conversation of an ‘English party,’ and naming Hamilton and his friends.
This furnished the pretext.
On the first of August, Hamilton wrote a note to Adams asking a
verification or denial of the report that he had said there was a British
faction with Hamilton at the head. This was sent to Cabot for transmission
to Braintree. The cunning leader of the Essex Junto, in acknowledging the
receipt of the letter, suggested that perhaps the election of Jefferson would
be necessary for the reunification of the Federalist Party. Were Pinckney
chosen, he would encounter the venomous hostility of the Adamsites. How
would it do for the Federalists to throw their support to Burr? Many
Federalists favored such action.[1830] Adams ignored the letter from
Hamilton, as the latter unquestionably supposed he would. Two days after
its transmission and before it could have possibly reached the President,
Hamilton wrote Wolcott of his ‘impatience’ at the latter’s delay in sending
the ‘statement of facts which you promised me.’ The trusted member of
Adams’s official family had promised his chief’s most bitter foe the
ammunition for attack. It was plain, said Hamilton, working on Wolcott’s
fears, that unless something were done the Adams faction ‘will completely
run us down in public opinion.’ Had not Wolcott’s name been bandied
about with Hamilton’s as a member of the British party?[1831]
Later in the month he wrote McHenry, then nursing his wrath in
retirement, of his plan to publish a pamphlet defending himself and friends
and attacking Adams. He was prepared to put his name to it, but this he
could not do without ‘its being conclusively inferred that as to every
material fact I must have derived my information from members of the
Administration.’ To both McHenry and Wolcott he sent a copy of the letter.
[1832] At the moment he wrote, he was having difficulty with some of his
advisers. Cabot and Ames had discussed the wisdom of Hamilton’s putting
his name to the pamphlet, and both agreed it would be indiscreet. It should
be remembered that Adams might be reëlected. Hamilton’s sponsorship of
the pamphlet would give it force with men who needed no conversion,
while with his enemies ‘it would be converted into new proof that you are a
dangerous man.’[1833] A month later, Hamilton was still in doubt about
affixing his name, but evidently anxious for encouragement to do so. Thus
he wrote Wolcott that ‘anonymous publications cannot affect anything,’ but
that ‘some of the most delicate of the facts stated I hold from the three
ministers, yourself particularly, and I do not count myself at liberty to take
the step without your permission.’[1834] On October 1st, Hamilton sent a
second letter to Adams, through Cabot, who, ten days later, wrote that it had
been transmitted,[1835] but no reply was made. Nothing could have suited
Hamilton better. Thus the pamphlet was written and sent to the editor of the
New York ‘Gazette’ to print. It bore the name of Hamilton. It was to be
guarded from general publicity and sent only to leading Federalists over the
country.
And right here the uncanny cleverness of Burr again intervened. The
suave little black-eyed master of espionage had known Hamilton’s slate for
the Assembly within an hour after the caucus had adjourned; when
Hamilton’s caucus decided to ask Jay to call an extra session of the
Legislature to defeat the effect of the election, the fact was heralded in the
papers the next day; and now Burr was to see a copy of the printed
pamphlet before the eye of its author had seen it. Just how he got possession
of the copy will never be known. His intimate political associate and
authorized biographer merely says that he learned it was in the press and
‘arrangements were accordingly made for a copy as soon as the printing of
it was complete.’[1836] Parton has a more colorful story. Burr was an early
riser, and, walking in the street near Hamilton’s house one morning, he met
a boy carrying a covered basket. He always spoke to children.
‘What have you there, my lad?’
‘Pamphlets for General Hamilton.’
Whereupon he requested and received a copy, immediately summoned
Davis and two others to his house, where extracts were copied and hastened
with the utmost speed to ‘The Aurora’ and the New London ‘Bee.’[1837]
There is still another version of the general circulation that neither
biographer mentions—that of the editor of the New York ‘Gazette,’ who
was forced to an explanation in self-defense. The general circulation was
‘contrary to the expectation ... that it would be restricted to particular
quarters. The editor of the Gazette thinks it his duty to exonerate Mr.
Hamilton by making it known that the thing has happened in direct
opposition to his views. He had given the most precise instructions that the
circulation might be deferred; but the Editor, having been informed that by
a breach of confidence or indiscretion somewhere it was likely that extracts
might appear in some newspapers, communicated the intelligence to Mr.
Hamilton, who ... being about to depart for Albany left a letter with a friend
directing him that if such a thing should happen, then to permit the letter to
be thrown into circulation.’[1838] This explanation did not appear, however,
until Hamilton found that the tremendous sensation the pamphlet created
was not reacting entirely in his favor. And for a sensation there was cause
enough.
VI
An amazing production this, for the middle of the campaign. Adams did
‘not possess the talents adapted to the administration of government.’ There
were ‘great and intrinsic defects in his character which unfit him.’ Even
during the Revolution, Hamilton had entertained doubts as to ‘the solidity
of his understanding.’ When Adams had conducted Madame de Vergennes,
wife of the Foreign Minister in Paris, to dinner, and been rewarded with her
comment that he was ‘the Washington of negotiation,’ he had interpreted it
as an illustration of ‘a pretty knack of paying compliments,’ when he might
have said that it disclosed ‘a dexterous knack of disguising sarcasms.’ His
vanity was so great that it was ‘more than a harmless foible.’ True,
Hamilton had sought to elect Thomas Pinckney in 1796, but this was due to
the ‘disgusting egotism, the distempered jealousy, and the ungovernable
indiscretion of Mr. Adams’s temper, joined to some doubts of the
correctness of his maxims of administration.’ Adams’s letter to Tench Coxe,
charging the Pinckneys with being English toadies, was silly; his conduct in
preventing the French war was infamous. This latter had come out of the
vice of not consulting his constitutional advisers—meaning Wolcott,
Pickering, and McHenry. He had thus fallen into the hands of ‘miserable
intriguers’ with whom ‘his self-love was more at ease.’ With gay disregard
of the truth, Hamilton denied that there was any conspiracy to interfere with
Adams’s plans at Trenton.
More amazing still, Adams was denounced for the dismissal of two
traitors in his Cabinet, and this, despite the fact that another, who remained,
had furnished the writer with much of the material for the pamphlet. There
was no cause for the dismissals—none at all. It was only Adams’s
‘paroxysms of rage, which deprived him of self-command and produced
very outrageous behavior.’ Pickering had been driven out because he was
‘justly tenacious of his own dignity and independence.’ The Adams
interview with McHenry called for both ‘pain and laughter’—an incredible
performance. Then followed more abuse because Adams had not given
Fries and others to the scaffold. Then—a pitiful touch—for not appointing
Hamilton commander-in-chief to succeed Washington. Here the author
entered into more personal grievances. Having pictured Adams as an
ingrate, a liar, and a fool unfit for high administrative office, the author
concluded with the statement that because ‘the body of Federalists, for want
of sufficient knowledge of facts, are not convinced of the expediency of
relinquishing him,’ Hamilton would ‘not advise the withholding from him
of a single vote.’[1839]
It was the most astounding political performance in American history—
and the Nation rocked with mingled imprecations and laughter. Even Cabot
was a little shocked. ‘All agree,’ he wrote Hamilton, ‘that the execution is
masterly, but I am bound to tell you that you are accused by respectable
men of egotism; and some very worthy and sensible men say you have
exhibited the same vanity in your book which you charge as a dangerous
quality and great weakness in Mr. Adams.’[1840]
Major Russell, of the ‘Centinel’ in Boston, was painfully embarrassed,
and flopped about like a fish on the burning sands. In one issue he
supported Adams, and denounced the author of an attack on Hamilton’s
action as ‘as well qualified for the task as a Billingsgate oyster is to
contemplate the principles of the Newtonian philosophy.’[1841] In another
issue he regretted Hamilton’s ‘ill-timed epistle,’ and denounced ‘an
imported renegado of the name of Cooper’ who had written Hamilton a
‘saucy production’ to the effect that if he would admit the authorship of the
pamphlet he would ask for his indictment under the Sedition Law.[1842]
This is evidence enough that Russell had parted with his sense of humor,
else he would have appreciated the shot. The Hartford ‘Courant’ contented
itself by merely reprinting, without comment, the Jeffersonian New London
‘Bee’s’ excoriation of Hamilton.[1843] The New York ‘Commercial
Advertiser’ was silent, but gave space to the advertisement of a pamphlet
entitled ‘A Letter to General Hamilton, occasioned by His Letter to
President Adams—by a Federalist.’[1844]
The Jeffersonian papers made the most of the opportunity. The
‘American Mercury’ of Hartford, announcing the arrival of the pamphlet,
explained that, ‘since General Hamilton has secured a copyright to his
masterly production,’ only extracts could be given. It was evidently written
in the interest of Pinckney, who, having been ‘educated at the University of
Oxford’ in England, ‘was naturally’ supported by the British faction.[1845]
‘I am sorry, sir,’ wrote the author of an open letter to Hamilton in the
‘Independent Chronicle’ of Boston, ‘that you have been persecuted in the
manner you mention, ... but does it show a man of fortitude and
independence to be continually groaning, like some feeble old woman
under her troubles?... Egotism is the mark of a weak and vain mind. Here,
General, you descend from your usual greatness to the level with female
vanity.’[1846]
Duane, of ‘The Aurora,’ fell upon it with the zest of a kitten lapping
cream: ‘John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the Pinckneys are now
fairly before the public,’ he wrote, ‘not in the partial drawings of their
political rivals, the Republicans. Their claims and pretensions to public
confidence are exhibited by themselves.’[1847] The Portsmouth ‘Ledger’
struck the same note: ‘If President Adams is what General Hamilton and the
Essex Junto represent him, and if Charles Cotesworth Pinckney is what
President Adams in his letter to Tench Coxe has represented him, viz., a
British partisan—can any one hesitate to say that Mr. Jefferson is the most
suitable of the three for President?’[1848]
But the most telling reply appeared in a pamphlet ascribed to James
Cheetham, the New York editor.[1849] Of course Hamilton was a
monarchist, it said. It had been ‘a thousand times reiterated from New
Hampshire to Georgia.’ The Madame de Vergennes incident? ‘Your
references to a certain private journal of Mr. Adams was surpassingly brutal
and low. They demonstrate the imbecility of your cause and point out the
base malignity of your heart.’ The Adams letter to Tench Coxe? ‘Evidently
written in some jocular moment.’ The cause of Hamilton’s hostility? ‘Envy,
ambition, and the loaves and fishes.’ The French peace? ‘If your intrusive
advice had been received, what would have been the condition of your
country? Embroiled in an unprofitable war, commerce would have been at a
stand, and the cause of liberty on the decline. A standing army would have
gluttonized on the substance of society.’ Adams? True, the ‘Duke of
Braintree’ had ‘very slender pretensions to consistency of character,’ and
the Nation’s hope was in Jefferson, ‘who has walked with dignity in every
public and private calling,’ whose mind ‘is illumined with science and
whose heart is replete with good’; who ‘has stood firm and unshaken amidst
the venality of courts and the temptations of power.’
Under such lashings Hamilton writhed and was eager to make reply.
‘The press teems with replies,’ he wrote Pickering, ‘and I may finally think
it expedient to publish a second time. In this case I shall reënforce my
charges with new anecdotes. My friends will, no doubt, be disposed to aid
me. You probably possess some that are unknown to me. Pray let me have
them without delay.’[1850] But his friends had no such disposition. They had
had enough. Ames wrote him scornfully of his critics, who were unworthy
of notice. ‘It is therefore the opinion of your friends that the facts stated
must be left to operate on the public mind; and that the rage of those whom
they wound will give them currency.’[1851]
The Federalist Party had been split in two with a battle-axe.
VII
Its leaders realized the hopelessness of their prospects. Many did not
care. McHenry, smarting in Maryland, wrote Wolcott that the lack of
courage and initiative on the part of the leaders, and their failure to fight
Adams in the open, meant defeat. What did they do? ‘They write private
letters,’ said the scornful poet-politician. ‘To whom? To each other, but they
do nothing to give direction to the public mind. They observe even in their
conversation a discreet circumspection generally, ill calculated to diffuse
information.... They meditate in private.... If the party recovers its pristine
character ... shall I ascribe it to such cunning, paltry, indecisive, back-door
conduct?’[1852] And for once in his life McHenry was wise and right.
Unable to meet the issues, the Federalist Big-Wigs still hoped to win
through sharp practice. They got their cue from the Jeffersonians, who,
finding from the election of the year before that the selection of electors by
districts would result in the loss of one or two in Virginia, changed the law
and provided for their election by the Legislature. This was enough for the
Federalists in Massachusetts, where district elections would have given
Jefferson at least two votes. Otis and others wrote the Speaker of the House
and the President of the Senate to change the law and have the Legislature
choose. The change was made. Estopped from complaining by their own
action in Virginia, the Jeffersonians denounced the change in Massachusetts
as a trick of the Essex Junto to rob Adams and elect Pinckney,[1853] and
much bitterness was aroused. In Maryland the district system was favorable
to the Jeffersonians and the Federalists there were importuned from without
to have the Governor call an extraordinary session of the Legislature to give
that body the power.[1854] Owing to the almost equal strength of the parties
in that State, however, the leaders were afraid to act, and a series of letters
appeared, first in the Baltimore ‘Gazette,’ and later in pamphlet form, citing
the action of the Democrats in Virginia and the retaliation in Massachusetts.
‘Should the State of Maryland suffer itself to be bullied out of its rights ...
by the clamors of the partisans in Virginia?’ demanded the author.[1855]
‘The Aurora’ charged that James Carroll had said at Annapolis that the
Governor should call the General Assembly together to deprive the people
of the right to vote for electors.[1856] But when it came to the test the
courage of the Marylanders failed and no change was made.
Only in Pennsylvania did the Jeffersonians have a real grievance. The
most sanguine of the Federalists could find no silver lining to the cloud
here. Fitzsimmons complained that in Philadelphia, ‘a city of 60,000
inhabitants, not a man is to be found who is fit for the station who will
accept the nomination for Congress.’[1857] The envenomed Uriah Tracy,
after traveling through the State, thought the outlook hopeless. M’Kean had
‘brought forward every scoundrel who can read and write into office.’ The
Democrats, ‘with the joy and ferocity of the damned,’ were enjoying ‘the
mortification of the few remaining honest men.’ Tracy had seen ‘very many
Irishmen’ throughout the State—‘the most God-provoking Democrats this
side of hell.’ Then ‘the Germans are both stupid, ignorant and ugly, and are
to the Irish what the negroes of the South are to their drivers.’ The
Democrats were ‘establishing presses and newspapers in almost every town
and county in the country and the Federal presses are failing for want of
support.’[1858] Under these conditions the Federalists conceived the idea of
depriving Pennsylvania of any voice at all in the election—an idea not
unreasonable, since no provision had been made as to the method of
choosing electors. In July, Senator Bingham had written Wolcott that there
was little probability that the State would have ‘any agency in the election,’
but in any event its vote would be ‘equalized from the preponderance which
the parties reciprocally possess in the two branches of the
Legislature.’[1859]
In November, Governor M’Kean called an extraordinary session. In the
Senate the Federalists had a small majority; in the House the Democrats had
the advantage; on joint ballot the Democrats outnumbered their opponents.
The Democrats urged a joint ballot; the Federalists laughed the proposal to
scorn. Excitement rose to fever heat. Charges were made that Liston, the
British Minister, was using money to affect the result.[1860] The State, at the
moment, was Jeffersonian, and the legislators were deluged with petitions
for a joint ballot, but petitions from the people had never impressed the
Hamiltonians. These stood firm—holding the power of veto. At length they
made a concession to the end that the State might not be deprived of any
voice. The Senate could select seven electors, the House eight. The
Democrats writhed and raved without avail. The Federalists were relentless.
CHAPTER XXI
DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT
T HE final contest was staged in the new capital at Washington. It was as

though destiny had arranged a new setting for the new drama on which
the curtain was now rising. In the glamorous days of Federalist
supremacy, Philadelphia, with its wealth, its fashion, and princely houses,
harmonized with the spirit of government. The aristocratic party thrived in
an atmosphere of luxury. Consistency called for a stage setting of more
simplicity, in a wilderness suggesting the frontier, when the curtain rose on
the triumph of democracy.
When that charming philosopher of cynicism, Gouverneur Morris, just
elected to the Senate, reached the new capital in the clearing, after days of
bumping and hardships on the woodsy road through Maryland, he looked
about him with a smile and chuckled. Writing the Princesse de la Tour et
Taxis, he poked gentle fun at the new seat of government. ‘We only need
here houses, cellars, kitchens, scholarly men, amiable women, and a few
other such trifles to possess a perfect city,’ he said, ‘for we can walk over it
as we would in the fields and woods, and, on account of a strong frost, the
air is quite pure. I enjoy it all the more because my room fills with smoke as
soon as the door is closed.... I hasten to assure you that building stone is
plentiful, that excellent bricks are baked here, that we are not wanting in
sites for magnificent mansions ...; in a word, that this is the best city in the
world to live in—in the future.’[1861]
Ten days before Morris wrote, Mrs. Adams had reached the capital in the
wilds looking older and graver, and without a ceremonious reception, due to
jealousies among the socially ambitious over the choice of a master of
ceremonies.[1862] After the well-traveled roads to Philadelphia, the journey
to Washington had been quite enough to add to both her age and gravity. On
the way from Baltimore her party had been lost in the woods, wandering
aimlessly about for two hours until rescued by a wandering negro. ‘Woods
are all you see from Baltimore until you reach this city, which is only so in
name,’ she wrote her daughter. ‘Here and there, a small cot, without a glass
window, interspersed amongst the forest through which you travel miles
without seeing a human being.’ Nor was the grandeur of the President’s
house entirely to her liking. From her windows she could see on the
Potomac the ‘vessels as they pass and repass.’ But a rapid survey of the
large mansion with its numerous draughty rooms, convinced her that it
would require thirty servants ‘to attend and keep the apartment in order, and
perform the ordinary business of the house and stables.’ Not a single
apartment finished. ‘The great unfinished audience [East] room I have made
a drying room of to hang up the clothes in,’ she wrote glumly. But—added
the tactful Abigail—‘when asked how I like it, say that I write you the
situation is beautiful, which is true.’[1863] A few days later she wrote of the
impatience of the ladies for a drawing-room, but ‘I have no looking glasses
but dwarfs for this house, nor a twentieth part lamps enough to light
it.’[1864] Had the disgusted Abigail fared forth for a peep into the living
arrangements of others, she might have thought herself more fortunate. But
surveying the city from her point of vantage she would have found little to
tempt to a tour of inspection.
Even then, it was a ‘city of magnificent distances,’ the houses separated
by miles of mud roads, not entirely free from stumps. Travel by night was
precarious. Blackness impenetrable, except when the moon was at its full,
settled down over the homes and the frog ponds. Morris, having made an
evening call, was forced to remain all night, for the road was ‘not merely
deep but dangerous to drive in the dark.’[1865] James A. Bayard and a party
of Federalist leaders, venturing forth on a return to their lodgings from the
home of a friend two miles from town, were caught in a storm, and the
coachman losing his way, they drove about the waste lands throughout the
night, threatened every moment by the ruts and ravines.[1866]
Pennsylvania Avenue, stretching from the President’s house to the
Capitol, bordered by miasmic swamps, did not at this time boast a single
building; nor would it have been possible to have lived along this causeway
‘without devoting its wretched tenant to perpetual fevers.’[1867] From the
steps of the Capitol one could count seven or eight boarding-houses, one
tailor’s shop, one shoemaker’s, one printing establishment, the home of a
washwoman, a grocery shop, a stationery store, a dry-goods house, and an
oyster market. And this was all. Three quarters of a mile away on the
Eastern Branch stood five or six houses and an empty warehouse. At the
wharf, not a single ship. From the President’s house to Georgetown living
conditions were better because of immunity from swamps, but the wretched
roads made it all but prohibitive as a place of residence for members of
Congress. Six or seven of the more fastidious braved the distance and found
comfortable quarters; two or three found lodgings near the President’s
house; but the remainder crowded into the boarding-houses on Capitol Hill.
In the best of these, by sharing a room one could have attendance, wood,
candles, food, and an abundance of liquor for fifteen dollars a week.
However, the fare was unsatisfactory, the beef not good, and vegetables
hard to get.[1868] Such was the hair-trigger delicacy of the political situation
that this packing of the politicians might easily have led to altercations and
bloodshed had they not seen fit to herd together according to their political
views. There was some gambling, some drinking, but Gallatin observed that
for the most part the members ‘drank politics’ instead of liquor.[1869]
How the dandies of the Federalist circle must have missed the royal
hospitality at Mrs. Bingham’s! Pathetic efforts were put forth to create
something that might pass for society, but so limited were the resources that
the lone church at the bottom of Capitol Hill, which had previously served
as a tobacco house, was found alluring, and women donned their finery for
worship.[1870] The Thomas Laws, who had one of the few pretentious
houses, organized a ‘dancing assembly’ to which many subscribed.[1871]
Mrs. Law, related to both Lord Baltimore and Mrs. Washington, who
aspired to the scepter of Mrs. Bingham, was a worldly woman, over-fond of
admiration and company, and finally there was a divorce. But at this time
she drew the gayer element to her by her merry hospitality. ‘Lay down your
hat, we have a fine roast turkey and you must stay and eat it,’ she would say
to a caller, and soon others would casually appear, and an informal party
would result.[1872] Callers in the old houses in Georgetown where Southern
hospitality held sway, found ‘bread, butter, ham, and cakes set before them,’
and on leaving they would likely as not carry away cake and apples in their
pockets, a bottle of milk in their hands.[1873] Great was the amusement of
the fashionable men and women, who had been so elegantly served at the
Binghams’ by the French chef, on finding themselves jolting over the dirt
roads to their lodgings with their pockets crammed with cake.
This was the Washington into which Jefferson was carried in a stage-
coach for the decisive struggle of his career. Wishing to pay his respects to
Adams, for whom he felt more respect than did the Hamiltonian wing of the
President’s own party, he wondered if the inordinate vanity of his defeated
rival would interpret the call as an attempt to humiliate him. He determined
to take the chance. Entering the President’s house, he found Adams alone—
the old man in those difficult days was all but isolated. One glance was
enough to justify the caller’s fears. In great agitation, and neglecting first to
offer his visitor a chair, Adams burst forth: ‘You have turned me out; you
have turned me out.’
With the gentleness of an elder soothing a hurt child, Jefferson replied,
drawing on his familiarity with the workings of the minds and hearts of
men, ‘I have not turned you out, Mr. Adams; and I am glad to avail myself
of this occasion to show that I have not and to explain my views. In
consequence of a division of opinion existing among our fellow-citizens, as
to the proper constitution of our political institutions, and of the wisdom
and propriety of certain measures ... that portion of our citizens that
approved and advocated one class of these opinions and measures selected
you as their candidate ... and their opponents selected me. If you and myself
had been inexistent, or for any cause had not been selected, other persons
would have been selected in our places; and thus the contest would have
been carried on, and with the same result, except that the party which
supported you would have been defeated by a greater majority, as it was
known that, but for you, your party would have carried their unpopular
measures much further than they did.’ Suffering as he was under the
treachery of the Hamiltonians, this softened the unhappy President’s mood.
Jefferson was offered a chair. The two men, who had been intimate in
Revolutionary days and in Paris, engaged in a friendly discussion of the
topics of the day, and parted with mutual expressions of respect.
Jefferson returned to Conrad’s boarding-house, where he had taken a
suite of rooms. It was a commodious house, standing on a hill, the
precipitate sides of which were covered with grass and shrubs in a natural
state. The windows of Jefferson’s rooms commanded a beautiful view of the
surrounding country—the level plain between the hill and the Potomac
through which the tree-lined Taber wound its course; and the man of
Monticello could look down from his windows on the tulip-poplar trees, the
magnolia, the azalea, the wild rose, the hawthorn. Characteristically
enough, he had gone to Conrad’s because of the charms of the scenery.
There the man of the hour lived like the other lodgers, with the exception of
having a drawing-room for the reception of visitors; eating at the common
table with the others, at the foot of the table nearest the door and most
remote from the fire. When Mrs. John Brown, wife of the Kentucky
Senator, insisted that he sit at the head of the table, as the oldest man if not
as the Vice-President, he waved the suggestion aside with a smile of
deprecation, and there, in the coldest part of the room, he continued until he
moved into the President’s house. But for Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Theodorus
Bailey, wife of a Jeffersonian Congressman from New York, the mess table
would have resembled ‘a refectory of monks.’[1874] Living under the same
roof during the hectic weeks that followed were Gallatin who shared his
room with Varnum, a Democrat from Massachusetts, Senator John
Langdon, General Sam Smith of Maryland, Senator Abraham Baldwin of
Georgia, Senator Wilson Carey Nicholas of Virginia, his brother, the
Virginia Representative, and the Browns and Baileys. In the impending
crisis Jefferson could scarcely have surrounded himself with a better board
of strategy. There we will leave him for a while to take up the threads of the
Federalist conspiracy to prevent his election and thwart the public will.
II
While Jefferson was calmly observing the development of the

conspiracy, and Gouverneur Morris was reflecting on the absurdity of the
human comedy, Alexander Hamilton sat in his office in New York writing
feverishly to the leaders of his party. If he wrote in bitterness it was because
he was fighting for the last vestige of his prestige as a leader. It had been
ominous enough when he lost control of the party caucus and the leaders of
the second class deserted him for Adams, but now, to his horror, he found
the leaders of the first class scheming for the election of Burr, his pet
aversion, to the Presidency. This was too much. Through the latter part of
December, the indignant sparks flew from his fast-flying pen as he sought
desperately to dissuade the conspirators who had been his faithful servitors.
On the 16th he wrote Wolcott of his hope that ‘New England at least will
not so far lose its head as to fall into this snare.’ Jefferson was infinitely
preferable, because ‘not so dangerous a man’ and because he had
‘pretensions to character.’ But Burr was a ‘bankrupt beyond redemption
except by the plunder of his country.’ He was ‘the Catiline of America.’
Would Wolcott communicate these views to Marshall and Sedgwick and
reply speedily?[1875] The next day Hamilton and his erstwhile idolater, Otis,
were both busy with their pens. The former, in an evident fever of anxiety,
was writing again to Wolcott. It was incredible that Federalists should be
considering Burr. Within the last three weeks at his own table he had
toasted the French Republic, the commissioners on both sides who had
negotiated the peace, Bonaparte and Lafayette. Could anything have been
more monstrous? ‘Alas, when will men consult their reasons rather than
their passions?’ he asked. Elect Burr merely to mortify the Democrats by
the defeat of Jefferson? ‘This disposition reminds me of the conduct of the
Dutch moneyed man, who, from hatred of the old aristocracy, favored the
admission of the French into Holland to overturn everything. Adieu to the
Federal Troy if they once introduce this Grecian horse into their
citadel.’[1876]
While Hamilton was writing thus to Wolcott, Otis, in Boston, was
writing to Hamilton. ‘It is palpable,’ he wrote, ‘that to elect Burr is to cover
the opposition with chagrin and to sow among them the seeds of morbid
division.’ But how open communication with Burr? ‘We in Massachusetts
do not know the man. You do. Please advise us.’[1877] Hearing a few days
later that Sedgwick was deep in the plot, Hamilton wrote him with almost
hysterical earnestness. ‘For heaven’s sake, let not the Federalist party be
responsible for the elevation of this man [Burr].’[1878] Two days more, and
Hamilton was writing in New York; Harper, who had been his idolater, was
similarly engaged in Baltimore. The former was writing Morris, seeking an
understanding with Jefferson; Harper was writing Aaron Burr, proffering an
alliance. ‘Jefferson or Burr? The former without all doubt,’ wrote Hamilton.
‘Let our situation be improved to obtain from Jefferson assurances on
certain points—the maintenance of the present system, especially on the
cardinal articles of public credit—a navy, neutrality. Make any discreet use
you think fit with this letter.’[1879] Alas, the flimsiness of political
friendship! At that very hour Harper was writing Burr that the contest
would be settled in the House. ‘The language of the Democrats is that you
will yield your pretensions to their favorite.... I advise you to take no step
whatever by which the choice of the House ... can be impeded or
embarrassed. Keep the game perfectly in your own hands, but do not
answer this letter, or any other that may be written to you by a Federal man,
nor write to any of that party.’[1880]
No importunities from Hamilton were necessary in the case of Morris,
who had taken the high ground ‘that since it was evidently the intention of
our fellow citizens to make Mr. Jefferson their President, it seems proper to
fulfill that intention.’[1881] Such was his response to Hamilton, who
responded gratefully to the loyalty of one follower. ‘If there is a man in the
world I ought to hate,’ he wrote, ‘it is Jefferson. With Burr I have always
been personally well. But the public good must be paramount to every
private consideration.’[1882] The next day Hamilton was bearing down hard
on James A. Bayard, a Federalist Representative from Delaware, with an
excoriation of Burr as liable to overturn the government to extend his
power. Was it possible that Federalists were thinking of arrangements with a
man of Burr’s character? ‘No engagement that may be made with him can
be depended upon. While making it, he will laugh in his sleeve at the
credulity of those with whom he makes it; and the first moment it suits his
views to break it he will do so.’[1883] At the same time he was appealing to
John Rutledge of South Carolina to assist in crushing the Federalists’
conspiracy as ‘a service to your country.’[1884] That month, too, Senator
Ross of Pennsylvania heard from New York. ‘Mr. Burr is the last man in the
United States to be supported by the Federalists,’ he read. Why not seek an
understanding with Jefferson?[1885]
But as December faded from the calendar, the colossal genius of
Federalism found himself in a position of pitiful impotency and isolation.
Morris and Jay shared his views, but even the New York friends of his
youth, like Troup, were unresponsive, and most of the leaders, who had
once responded gladly to his nod, were ignoring his frantic efforts and
proceeding with their plans. On the day he was writing Bayard, two men
knocked at the lodgings of Morris, and Robert Goodhue Harper and Senator
Henry Latimer of Delaware appeared to electioneer the delightful cynic
whose cynicism held so much of wisdom. The voluble Harper was the
spokesman. Burr, he said, was his ‘intimate friend.’ It was advisable, he
thought, to elect Burr ‘without asking or expecting any assurances
respecting his future administration.’ There was enough in Burr’s temper
and disposition to give ample security ‘for a conduct hostile to the
democratic spirit.’ Morris listened patiently, and dryly suggested the
wisdom of the House suspending its determination ‘until they can have
more light as to the merit and probable conduct of the candidates.’[1886]
Unable to see with the majority of his party, Morris, who had touched life at
so many points and in so many places, did not share in Hamilton’s rage.
‘Indeed, my dear friend,’ he wrote Robert Livingston about this time, ‘this
farce of life contains nothing which should put us out of humor.’[1887] With
Harper making a personal canvass for Burr, Judge Samuel Sewall, of the
Essex Junto, was urging Otis to stand for ‘a steady and decided vote of the
Federal party for Mr. Burr,’ because it might at any rate prevent an election
—a consummation ‘most desirable.’[1888]
Meanwhile Burr, pretending preoccupation with the approaching
nuptials of his brilliant Theodosia, was suavely simulating, if he did not
feel, a distaste for the plan of his ‘intimate friend’ Harper. When the
movement in his behalf was first launched, he wrote General Sam Smith
that he would ‘disclaim all competition’ with Jefferson, that the Federalists
‘could entertain no wish for such an exchange,’ and that his friends would
dishonor his views and insult his feelings ‘by a suspicion that I would
submit to be instrumental in counteracting the wishes and expectations of
the United States.’ But eight days later, Harper had written him an
encouraging letter on the prospects and he appears to have followed the
admonition not to reply. After that—silence.
At Conrad’s boarding-house the calmest man at the long table in the
dining-room was Jefferson. He knew the plans of the opposition to prevent
an election or to elect Burr, and noted the gloom among his friends and the
exultation of his enemies. He was quite calm.
III
January found Hamilton still feverishly busy at his writing-desk. His

worst fears had, by this time, been confirmed. His bosom friends had smiled
incredulously upon his protests against Burr. The conspiracy was spreading
ominously. His voice had lost its potency, his sword its shimmer. Grimly he
fought against fate. McHenry had been impressed with the propaganda for
Burr. A number of the Federalist leaders had escaped from the frog ponds
of the capital to enjoy Christmas festivities in Baltimore, and from these he
heard but one opinion—Burr should be supported. Burr’s letter to Smith?
These worldly Federalists laughed derisively. He would not resent being
elected by Federalist votes. Even McHenry thought that with Burr elected
‘we may flatter ourselves that he will not suffer the executive power to be
frittered away.’ Still, he had misgivings. ‘Can we promise ourselves that he
will not continue to seek and depend upon his own party for support?’[1889]
It was with these doubts in his mind that McHenry opened a letter from
Hamilton, whom he worshiped. Here he found Burr denounced as ‘a
profligate,’ as a ‘voluptuary,’ as ‘an extortionist’ in his profession, as
insolvent and dangerous.[1890] A word from Hamilton was enough, and
McHenry joined his leader in combating the Federalist plans in Maryland—
and not without effect. But with Senator William Hindman, who had been a
supporter of Hamilton in the House, nothing could be done. He was
aggressively for Burr.[1891] In early January, Pickering, still pitying himself,
was not shocked at the idea of Burr’s election. The suggestion that ‘the
federalist interest will not be so systematically opposed under Mr. Burr as
under Jefferson’ impressed him. Then ‘in case of war with any European
power there can be no doubt which of the two would conduct it with most
ability and energy.’[1892]
Meanwhile Bayard had sent a non-committal reply to Hamilton. He had
found ‘a strong inclination of the majority’ of the Federalists to support
Burr with the disposition growing. He ought, therefore, to have strong
grounds for separating himself from the others. While their action could not
bind him, it would be a painful wrench to leave them. Still, ‘the magnitude
of the subject forbids the sacrifice of strong conviction.’ As the pen of
Bayard traveled over the page, the conspirators were moving about him, for
he wrote in the House of Representatives.[1893] In truth, all Hamilton’s
advices were disturbing. Former Senator Gunn of Georgia, in sympathy
with him, was afraid ‘some of our friends have committed themselves by
writing improperly to Burr.’[1894] Even John Rutledge, while disgusted at
the idea of either Jefferson or Burr in the Presidency, found his party
associates convinced that ‘Burr will be the least mischief,’ and that his
election would be prodigiously afflicting to the Virginia faction and must
disjoint the party.[1895]’
It is easy to imagine Hamilton laying down the letter of Rutledge with a
frown, to open one which had arrived from Sedgwick in the same mail, to
get a greater shock. It was a vigorous plea for Burr. The author found it
‘very evident that the Jacobins dislike Mr. Burr as President’ and that ‘he
hates them for the preference given to his rival.’ He had ‘expressed
displeasure over the publication of his letter to General Smith.’ Would not
‘this jealousy and distrust and dislike ... every day more and more increase
and more and more widen the breach between them?’ Would not the
election of Burr by the Federalists cause ‘incurable’ wounds? Then again,
‘to what evils should we expose ourselves by the choice of Burr, which we
should escape by the election of Jefferson?’ True, given an opportunity,
Burr would be more likely to become a ‘usurper’—but what of that?[1896]
About this time, in the middle of the month, the Federalists met to
determine on their course. The caucus was not entirely harmonious, but the
Burr sentiment was overwhelming. Shocked and inwardly enraged at the
disaffection of his friends, Hamilton now redoubled his efforts, and in a
‘very, very confidential’ letter to Bayard dissected the character of Burr,
demolished the arguments of his Federalist supporters, and pronounced
Jefferson far superior in real ability. To this he gave a personal touch—
something he had hitherto held back. ‘It is past all doubt,’ he said, ‘that he
has blamed me for not having improved the situation I once was in to
change the government; that when answered that this could not have been
done without guilt, he replied, “Les grandes âmes se soucient peu des petits
moraux”; and when told that the thing was never practical from the genius
and situation of the country, he answered, “That depends on the estimate we
form of the human passions, and of the means of influencing them.” Does
this prove that Mr. Burr would consider a scheme of usurpation as
visionary?’[1897] Four days after sending this letter to Bayard, Hamilton
was writing Morris of the inability of the conspirators to get assurances
from Burr, who complained that it would injure him with his friends.
‘Depend upon it,’ he warned, ‘men never played a more foolish game than
will do the Federalists if they support Burr.’[1898] But Hamilton was
striving against the basest, lowest instincts of his party. One of his Boston
followers was writing King at this very time that he favored Burr because
‘his opposition heretofore’ had ‘arisen from ambitious motives,’ and
because he was ‘not as honest in his politics as Jefferson.’[1899] No one was
a stouter contender against Hamilton’s decent patriotic impulses than
Sedgwick, who was moved by the motives just indicated.[1900] No one
knew it better than Hamilton, but he persisted. ‘I never was so much
mistaken,’ he wrote Sedgwick, ‘as I shall be if our friends in the event of

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Imagined Futures: Hope, Risk and

Uncertainty 1st Edition Julia Cook

More information about this series at

Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949470

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

This book is based on my Ph.D. research, which I completed in the

2 Diagnoses of the Future Horizon 11

3 Strategies for Relating to the Personal and Societal Future 31

4 Discourses of the Long-Term Future 55

5 Future Imaginaries in Theory and Practice 81

6 The Utility of Hope 105

Abstract Although at present humans have an unprecedented ability

Keywords Future thinking · Long-term thinking · Young adults

In an oft-quoted statement, Friedrich Nietzsche put forward the view that

© The Author(s) 2018 1

exclusively on the topic of climate change (e.g. Norgaard 2011). While

1. How do individuals imagine the future of the society in which they

short- and long-term (or personal and societal) future as developing

compared with older demographics; secondly, this cohort is the main

The Structure of the Book

analytic distinctions between premodern and modern forms of temporality

Rosa, H. (2013). Social acceleration: A new theory of modernity (J. Trejo-Mathys,

Diagnoses of the Future Horizon

Keywords Future thinking · Social acceleration · Risk society

While analytic distinctions between premodern and modern forms of

© The Author(s) 2018 11

this chapter first examines how sociological studies concerned with

The Premodern Future

the experience of the future horizon of premodern times as ‘closed’ or

The Modern Future

of culture (Weiss 1987). These processes transformed the premodern

The Late Modern Future

Postmodern Decline and Fragmentation

maintained this position by dismissing alternative representations

image of a given society, a thesis which directly mirrors the decline of

Social Acceleration and the Dominance of the Present

Hartmut Rosa (2013) has drawn together contemporary techno-

the contraction in temporal horizons and the dominion of the “short

principle of action; the discrediting of perspectives founded on the idea of

By projects, Leccardi is here referring to the ‘projects of the self’

has filtered into individual perceptions and dispositions. The reading of

Risk and Uncertainty

in the reflexive modern era due to an epistemological shift resulting from

of members of a rural Norwegian community, Norgaard found that,

The Post-traditional Society

He has termed the contemporary era a post-traditional society, claim-

Indeed, by equating traditions with irrationality and pitting them against

Alternative Readings Accounts of the Future

the future, concluding that empirical research must remain open to

work as a means of domesticating the uncertainty of the future. Notably,

3. Through the process of secularisation, religion is thought by many to have

Strategies for Relating to the Personal

Abstract While the previous chapter presented an overview of popular

Keywords Future thinking · Reflexivity · Archer, M · Planning

This chapter begins by considering how individuals and subjectivities are

© The Author(s) 2018 31

of the conditions under which large-scale or socially shared perceptions

horizon that were outlined in the previous chapter conformed to these

the grounds that it is difficult to see how the habitus—which is com-

note that Archer’s highly critical account fails to acknowledge instances

1. How do individuals imagine the future of the society in which they

3. Through the process of secularisation, religion is thought by many to have