Examining the relationship between social action and the future, this book interrogates the metaphors and practices through which the future is mobilized as an object of present day action and agency. It shifts the analytical gaze from 'looking into' the future to 'looking at' the future as a sociological phenomenon.

Contents: Foreword, Barbara Adam. Time, Temporality and the Social Construction of the Future: Introducing contested futures: from looking into the future to looking at the future, Nik Brown, Brian Rappert and Andrew Webster; Futures of the present: from performativity to prehension, Mike Michael. Language and the Social Rhetoric of Technical Futures: Forceful futures: from promise to requirement, Harro van Lente; The narrative shaping of a product creation process, J. Jasper Deuten and Arie Rip; Organizing/disorganizing the breakthrough motif: Dolly the cloned ewe meets Astrid the hybrid pig, Nik Brown; Talking about the future: metaphors of the internet, Sally Wyatt. Passed Futures: Lessons from failed technology futures: potholes in the road to the future, Frank W. Geels and Wim A. Smit; Science fiction's memory of the future, Hilary Rose. Future Science, Future Policy and the Management of Uncertainty; Scripts for the future: using innovation studies to design foresight tools, Bastiaan de Laat; Genetics and uncertainty, Annemiek Nelis; Expectations and learning as principles for shaping the future, Luis Sanz-Menéndez and Cecilia Cabello; Contested health futures, Tom Ling; Index.