Description
It is a matter of scholarly consensus that regional and global socio-technical transitions are constituted by relations of countervailing actors, interests and hubs of expertise. However, relatively few scholars have sought to unpick the opaque practices of knowledge generation and dissemination that define transitions in complex networks of technology, public policy, international organizations and private industry. This paper, seeking to rectify this, zooms in on practices of long-term forecasting in shaping the politics and processes of transition, drawing on approaches from Science and Technology Studies. Foregrounding the case study of 2050-centred forecasting in the shipping industry’s transition to green modes of operation, it explores the relational politics of the associated epistemic practices, and the worldmaking power bound up in the imagination of sustainable futures of maritime transport.
