Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Steinmüller, Karlheinz

Titel

The Rise and Decline of Prognostics. Futures Studies, Ideology and the Sociology of Knowledge in the German Democratic Republic

Ist Teil von

• The American sociologist, 2024-06, Vol.55 (2), p.142-154

Ort / Verlag

New York: Springer US

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

SpringerLink

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• From the beginning, a science-based approach to questions of the future and – more precisely – thinking in alternative futures was in latent conflict with the official ideology of the German Democratic Republic, according to which East German society (and indeed, the whole humankind) was heading towards a communist future. During the 1960s, however, prognostics – the socialist type of futures studies – fitted well into the ambition of political leaders to foster economic development by promoting scientific-technological progress and adopting new management systems of the national economy. Prognostics was to a certain extent institutionalized and obtained in parts a cybernetic underpinning, but ideological constraints on knowledge never vanished. Moreover, prognostics had to distinguish itself clearly from “late-capitalist” futurology. With the reorientation of politics after Walter Ulbricht lost power, prognostics was cut back as was its cybernetic underpinning. As the official belief in the communist future eroded during the 1980s, there was no longer any room for governmental foresight. Futures thinking was taken up by the dissident movement.