Social action is performed in the temporal domain of open and fluid pasts and futures. It is both mindful of the recoverable and lived past and projectively oriented towards an intangible future. It sets processes in motion that ripple through the entire system, across space and time, to eventually emerge as facts. This futurity of action tends to get lost in analyses that concentrate primarily on empirically accessible, factual outcomes of plans, decisions, hopes and fears. To encompass this ‘not yet’ as the central component in the production of social facts requires historical knowledge of the future. The paper presents a broad-brush analysis of changing approaches to the future and ends with reflections on necessary changes to the logic of social inquiry in order that social futurity may be accorded its appropriate place in the study of social life.
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