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Abstract The world of scholarship and science is currently in disarray and under severe threat. The Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) have always been internationally recognized symbols for academic freedom and pioneering studies of the highest standards. In the last decades, there has been a remarkable proliferation of these centres, to where they are now a global phenomenon. At their root, these institutes all aim for curiosity-based research and the formation of transnational communities engaged in unobstructed scholarship and science. Alongside the worldwide development of the IAS, there has also arisen a parallel movement, commonly known as Open Science. Seen by many academics, institutions, funding bodies and governments as a much-needed transition in university systems, Open Science implies a significant change in academia. Commencing as an initiative to stimulate discussion on open access publishing, shared data-use, academic recognition and rewards, and the legitimacy of impact factors and university rankings, Open Science increasingly also centres on connecting research and education, and science and society. Both in the IAS, as well as in Open Science, there are important developments with regard to transdisciplinary research and education. As of yet, however, a connection between the ideals and aims of the IAS and Open Science has not explicitly been made in the literature. This article aims to open up a dialogue between these driving academic forces, so that they can face the complex challenges in the world together, and work in unison and synergy towards new academic identities.

Abstract This article aims to expand both the analytical gaze of diplomacy studies and anthropological interests in the field of transnational think tanks, advocacy and policy advice. Drawing on ethnographic data from three such organisations, it investigates secrecy practices, focussing on how such practices amount to discreet diplomatic efforts. In a variety of ways, secrecy is utilised as a resource in foreign relations and diplomacy; it is a means to leverage status and influence. Although outwardly striving for transparency, think tanks use secrecy practices in their effort to establish themselves as actors of consequence in foreign relations and diplomatic circles. The practices of secrecy are part and parcel of the power games such organisations play, in which all participants learn and master what to discuss and what to keep silent about. These practices, however, pose a clear challenge to matters of accountability and transparency.

Preface: Two Years of Corona, Three Cohorts of Fellows

As we write this preface, we have been living with Covid-19 for two years. We have experienced it together with three cohorts of Fellows-in-Residence. And all throughout this period, life has continued. Babies have been born, friendships have formed, parents have died, and people all around have been hit by the virus. Realizing that we were experiencing a particular historical moment in a particular place, in the summer of 2021 we invited our Fellows to contribute personal essays to this volume. Departing somewhat from academic conventions, we invited them to share their own experiences and thoughts of the pandemic as it took place. We encouraged them to write in free prose, collecting and putting together a plurality of voices from across the world, and allowing them the space to express themselves. Thus, this collection of essays reflects the thoughts and emotions of our Fellows at this unique contemporary moment.

As the virus became known to us in the winter of 2020, most of our Fellows had been in residence since September the previous year. They had fallen into the rhythm on physical proximity and mobility were gradually imposed, they were able to fall back on months of shared activities, proximity, and sociality. The disruption to modes of interaction was sudden and brutal, however. We all had to re-orient ourselves in a world we had hardly been able to anticipate, and for which we all stood unprepared. Despite our awareness that pandemics are likely to hit populations with a relative degree of regularity, it took us by surprise. Our Fellows suddenly participated in online seminars more frequently, not least on the topic of pandemics; comparing across time and space, attempting to understand and situate the Covide-19 virus. One of our Fellows, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, wrote a book on the coronavirus pandemic from a historical perspective, and an online book launch and discussion was later arranged. To communicate the wide range of research projects taking place within the SCAS community in a novel way, we initiated and launched a podcast series, SCAS Talks. Initially, three podcasts on the pandemic theme were recorded with Fredrik, Ulf Landegren and Sverker Sörlin respectively. This was a time of coming to grips with a new situation, of re-orientation, reflexivity, and perplexity.

After a summer of relative release, the next cohort of Fellows for 2020-2021 arrived. They were a courageous group of scholars, having managed to get their fellowships organized in spite of the lurking pandemic. They had overcome travel in the midst of a raging pandemic. They arrived hopeful that the situation would calm down and that they would be able to experience a Fellowship-in-Residence to the full. Alas, after only two months of relative ‘normality’, the virus tightened its grip on our lives again, and strong restrictions were imposed. We went digital for about four months. Going digital in this sense meant running seminars digitally, organizing workshops digitally, and having to cease communal lunches and all other indoor social activities. This was harsh on both our Fellows and the rest of us. Whilst physically present in Uppsala and digitally present on the screen, they were distanced from social interaction ‘in real life’, as it were. Frustration, a sense of loss, loneliness, and perhaps even alienation loomed large. Simultaneously, but not paradoxically, there was a surge of creativity, of hope, and of friendship. Our Fellows tested different ways of being together that creatively overcame some of the hindrances, at least temporarily. They organized themselves into smaller group, ‘house-holds’, that tended to each other and shared meals together; they went for long hikes in the forest, shared information about the nicest hiking routes and mushroom places; hey gathered for small, post-seminar group discussions; and friendship ties were formed. Life went on, only more intensely.

When the third cohort arrived, the 2021-2022 group of Fellows, we were able to welcome them with relatively open doors. The semester could start off with on-site activities, albeit with a degree of caution. By this time, we had all gotten used to keeping our distances from each other; maintaining spaces between chairs at seminars and lunches, not inviting external guests onto the premises, and being on the alert for signs of symptoms. Despite all of these measures, we could maintain a degree of proximity. As the virus became milder, the sense of danger and anxiety gradually lessened, and sighs of relief were uttered. A mixture of fatigue from the constant alertness and positivity about the gradual relaxation of restrictions began to be discerned. Bursting with energy and motivation, our Fellows are now coming together to watch soccer, have a drink, read novels, and watch movies together, alongside work on the academic curriculum. There is energy.

Yes, the Omicron variant is still at large. As we write this, restrictions have been abandoned here in Sweden, and we are – albeit with some caution – looking forward to opening our doors to the larger academic community as well as to interested members of the public. We look forward to lively seminars and workshops in real life, having lunch guests, enjoying exchanges of views over coffee, indeed to the throng around the coffee machine, to not being on the alert. We are keeping our hopes high. Together with our Fellows, we are not only experimenting with, but also creating the ‘new normal’. It may be that the mast, the test kit, the hybrid seminar format, and the online conference are here to stay. Whatever the future holds, we have learnt to value and foster conversation, the sharing of perspectives, and the notion of simply being Fellows.

Christina Garsten and Sandra Maria Rekanovic

Uppsala, 14 February 2022

Anticipation is part of organizational attempts to manage their future affairs and shape their surroundings. Still, the ways in which organizations engage in anticipation have not been sufficiently conceptualized in the field of organization and management studies. This article conceptualizes organizational ways of shaping and orchestrating futures by engaging insights from Foucauldian scholarship that highlight the intersection between what we can see, know and govern. We highlight the importance of processes of knowledge production in governance efforts, and articulate how anticipatory governance is crafted through intricate combinations of resources such as narratives, numbers and digital traces. The main contribution is a conceptual typology outlining four different templates for anticipatory governance in organizational settings that we term ‘indicative snapshots’, ‘prognostic correlations’, ‘projected transformations’ and ‘phantasmagoric fictions’. We posit anticipatory governance as a knowledge-based, performative phenomenon that addresses potential and desirable futures in and between organizations. Such anticipatory activities gauge and guide organizational processes and modes of thinking and acting along different temporal orientations, and have governance effects that makes anticipation performative by its very nature. This understanding of anticipatory governance, we suggest, offers both conceptual contributions and empirical avenues for research in organization and management studies.

Built on the exclusive funding of 1,000 large transnational corporations, the World Economic Forum is a not-for-profit Swiss foundation, aiming to shape the direction of globalization. Its events are characterized by low degrees of formality and trans- parency. Research on what this organization does is scarce. This article suggests the term d􏰲􏰰c􏰭e􏰪􏰲􏰫􏰳a􏰭􏰮 g􏰫􏰹e􏰭􏰳a􏰳ce to capture the precarious, yet existing, social order that the organization shapes. By discretionary governance, we mean a set of discreet prac- tices based on the organization’s judgement in ways that escape established demo- cratic controls. Drawing on ethnographic data the paper demonstrates how selection, secrecy, and status form key components of this tenuous ordering. Selection processes and secrecy contribute to status elevation of the individuals and organizations chosen to participate. Upon them and the organization itself is bestowed a symbolic capital that is practical and possibly profitable in the world of global governance.

This chapter critiques the anticipatory practices of contemporary organizations, such as think tanks and management consultancies, which offer methods and forecasts about possible and desirable futures. These organizations, the chapter argues, contribute to creating a sense of urgency with respect to the future, capitalizing on the perceived need among decision makers to grasp contemporary events, and provide tools and content by which the future can be designed. It argues that future forecast scenarios assist in the creation of a particular type of authority: one geared to the contemporary global situation and to an increasingly complex system of global governance. The chapter interrogates this particular type of authority to argue it is not singular and dominant, but instead comprises the varying interests of many different actors and is underscored by rational process, which offers the possibility of a wider shared understanding.

This paper is based on ethnographic work in organizations that form part of what we term the Future Industry – e.g. think tanks, consultancies and governmental bodies – involved in the charting, description and analysis of future scenarios. That is to say, an industry explicitly aiming for organizing the future. In the paper we analyze this industry, which we see as serving and feeding into, the emotional streams of contemporary politics and economics. In the interest of selling beliefs of the future, we suggest that it attempts to make its customers sense the pros and cons of the particular future it puts forth. The paper argues that the mapping and selling of futures to a large extent involves the voicing of “problems” and the presentation of “desirable futures”, the cultivation, articulation and management of fear, anxiety, and hope, as well as a reliance on metrics, reason, and evidence, are central components.