Ivana Milojević
CLA 3.0 presents thirty years of theoretical and methodological development of Causal Layered Analysis. Invented in 1992, the first edited compilation was by its originator, Sohail Inayatullah, in 2004. Eleven years later, in 2015, CLA 2.0, edited by Inayatullah and me, was published. We are once again fortunate to be able to present the additional twenty-six articles written by forty-seven authors which take CLA further and deeper. Moreover, in this volume, we are fortunate to receive an invaluable editorial contribution by John Sweeney and Ralph Mercer.
As in CLA 2.0 compilation, the articles are ordered based on key topics. The ordering is fluid with considerable overlap as numerous articles fit within multiple categories, for example, several articles could fit well within both Theory and Education subsections. The ordering of subsections and articles within them has also been somewhat subjective – sometimes conceptually informed (i.e., theory before applications), sometimes based on the number of articles within the section, sometimes based on how geographically “large” or “limited” the topic of inquiry or the size of its overall scope is, and sometimes based on the timing of the submission. In other words, every single article is a stand-alone piece, attested by the fact that, except for two contributions by editors, all have been previously published as journal articles.
While most articles fit within multiple categories, as expected given the integrative nature of CLA, we have divided them into seven subsections: Theory, Conflict, Education and Learning, Environment and Sustainability, Economy and Society, City, and Science and Technology. Prior to the articles, there is foreword by Inayatullah and three short essays in the preface by Milojević, Sweeney and Mercer. The compilation closes with this conclusion which provides a brief overview of the book and the articles.
Theory
The five articles in the theory sections discuss CLA as a conceptual framework and method, make comparisons between CLA and other methods such as scenarios, systemic metaphor analysis or design pattern methods, or further theorise the connections and differences within a single CLA level – that of myth and metaphor.
In the first article, CLA: Theory, Conceptual Framework and Method, Sohail Inayatullah summarises thirty years of CLA uses. Examples of the uses include mapping the present or a possible future, deconstructing a particular issue, creating a preferred future, enabling researchers to deconstruct and reconstruct their current reality, mapping multiple worldviews and creating an integrated future; and gaming the future in a workshop setting. As has been the case with all previous writings on CLA by Inayatullah, the article includes numerous case studies, responds to “frequently asked questions”, and provides tips and “recipes” on how to optimally use the method.
Matti Minkkinen, Sirkka Heinonen, and Marjukka Parkkinen “experiment” with CLA in order to disrupt scenario work. They discuss how a complex method combination between CLA and scenarios can be made accessible to first-year master’s degree in futures studies students. Their research finding is that the CLA exercise improves dialogue and discussion, creates more spaces for reflective thinking and helps to teach “many of the important elements of scenario thinking, including creative thinking, critical questioning, and coping with discomfort”.
Nele Fischer and Konstantin Marquardt introduce systematic metaphor analysis for CLA and propose “playing with metaphors as a connection between critical and experiential approaches in futures studies”. They research finding is that “the more systemic engagement with metaphors can support CLA based analysis as well as provide some exciting interplays between experiential and critical reflections”.
Adam Cowart focuses on level four of CLA and draws on several years of teaching and applying CLA. He concentrates on the story as both an organising (metaphor) as well as archetypal (myth) device. He concludes that in a “post-truth world”, in which “reality is increasingly subjective and fragmented, situating the metaphorical location of a discourse along a conceptual and generic meta-narrative structure provides a helpful tool, not only in locating the discourse, but in anticipating where it may evolve or de-evolve to in the future”.
Joseph Corneli, Alex Murphy, Raymond S. Puzio, Leo Vivier, Noorah Alhasan, Vitor Bruno, Charlotte Pierce, and Charles J. Danoff also combine multiple approaches with CLA and explore ways in which design pattern discourse has been evolving. They similarly conclude that the combination of methods (CLA + other methods) is “robust to uncertainty, insofar as they support adaptations as circumstance change, and incorporate diverse perspective”.
Conflict
Four articles in the Conflict section apply CLA to regional, national, inter-species’ or local inter-ethnic conflict. The exceptional utility of CLA to map stakeholders’ and worldview positions as well as deeply held, often subconsciously held myths and metaphors, is highlighted in all of these contributions.
Petro Sukhorolsky utilises CLA to better theorise past, present and futures of Russian Aggression against Ukraine. This enables him to reach critical, albeit depressing conclusion that there is “no reliable basis for a peaceful and definitive resolution of the war”. At the same time, he – like the CLA method in general – reminds us that “the future of the world depends on whose myths and values will dominate in it and who is willing to make sacrifices for establishing and protecting them”.
Edward Niedbalski utilises CLA to investigate historical and contemporary issues of Chinese cultural identity, specifically focusing on the Hong Kong protests and the concept of Tianxia – the guiding metaphor beneath the “One China” policy. He applies CLA to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan Futures showing ways in which diverse myths and metaphors inform the worldviews and policy decision of the mainland government as well as its opponents.
Russell Clements investigates the increasing conflict between humans and wild elephants in Asia. His use of CLA highlights the “relevance of applying … mixed approach to complex social-ecological issues in the twenty-first century”. This is critical because, combining other approaches with CLA raises “requisite variety and inherent stakeholder capacity to address systemic complexity and perceptions of fragmented chaos” as well as create “an ecology of technical, practical, and emancipatory factors being reinforced across nested scales of individual, society, and ecology”.
My (Ivana Milojević) article provides an example of how CLA can be used to deepen and widen understanding of a particular conflict, as well as conflict in general. In this article, I investigate multiple worldviews and stakeholder perspectives and give pointers at subsequent strategies more likely to succeed in resolving a particular conflict – the 2005 Cronulla Riots in Australia.
Education and Learning
Four articles in the Education and Learning section discuss higher education stakeholders’ relationships, education leaders and systems, design students and learning identity frameworks. They both focus on CLA as a learning tool for a particular issue as well as investigate the learning of the CLA itself.
Working in the context of higher education, Rieta Ganas, Kasturi Behari-Leak, Nalini Chitanand and Siya Sabata use CLA to explore the “interplay between academic staff, institutional development and contextual influences in shaping professional learning processes”. As is suggested by CLA itself, their research question whether pedagogies are mobile and agile, irrespective of context is responded by the research finding that pedagogies in context are “relative to the participants, purpose and the project embedded in a specific context to achieve the epistemological, ontological, methodological and axiological breadth and depth required”.
Zabrina Epps examines education system leaders as agents of equity and future education systems by exploring their perceptions of themselves in the role. To achieve sustainable change, she argues, “education system leaders must change the organisation culture of every public school and district office”. In doing so, “employing futures thinking and engaging in rigorous critiques of underlying hegemonies as they emerge from the pandemic” is critical to “continued calls for emancipated futures”.
Peter Scupelli asks whether when and how design students learn CLA matters? His research shows four key differences in this regard, leading to a proposal of three changes to how CLA can be taught to certain groups of students. The article provides discussion on ways to scaffold student learning to use CLA together with design methods and processes.
Ralph Mercer presents Causal Layered Analysis of the Self as a “prospective method to allow a learner to gain insights into the impact of daily activities on the image they have of themselves as a learner”. He offers CLA as a “suitable method to enhance the reach into Learning Identify frameworks and enrich an individual’s understanding of their learning identity”. This helps with the understanding of how the present constraints and personal attitudes limit agency, which means, he argues, that CLA not just helps question and deconstruct a learner’s identity but also transform it into the future.
Environment and Sustainability
Four articles in Environment and Sustainability section explored ecosystem value creation, preferred futures images of the environment, urban waste problem and personal/inner transformation in line with the new planetcentric worldview.
Sanna Ketonen-Oksi applies CLA to explore ecosystem level value creation. This is done by “both studying the explicit and symbolic (inter)relationships between the different actors involved in value cocreation, including their perceptions about the value networks”. Utilising CLA to bridge the divide between academic and industry she argues that “CLA took the analysis to a completely new level compared to a discourse analysis” enabling an “exceptionally in-depth view on the current state and prospects of the ecosystem level cocreation”.
Jeanne Hoffman investigates the preferred images of the environment in 2060 held by a cross-cultural cohort of undergraduate students at Tamkang University. CLA is utilised as one of the methods to deconstruct the current dominant options around climate change/environment as well as to reconstruct future anticipations. This analysis outlined the perspectives of students, highlighting where they are hopeful and where and how they need to be encouraged toward positive-agency oriented roles.
Marila Lázaro, Patricia Iribarne, Paula Adalyiza, Dominique Rumeau and Camila López-Echagüe use CLA to participatively explore the urban solid waste problem in Uruguay. They summarise CLA as a tool for a “Collective approach to a complex problem, allowed the expansion of spaces for analysis and the redefinition of ideas about the future and present legacies … thus allowing for a “deeper and more comprehensive approach to the different dimensions that support and are interwoven in this complex problem”.
Chris Riedy applies a personal CLA to tease out “the dimensions of interior transformation for viable futures in more detail”. By drawing out competing narratives and exploring their potential to facilitate transformation of values and consciousness he arrives at a new story – of the “thriving Earth” – which becomes a key resource for the interior transformation.
Economy and Society
Three articles in Economy and Society section show ways in which these two areas are closely interlinked. Their findings are critical to imagining transformed relationship between those two fields of inquiry, as well as for empowering individuals, investors, communities and even corporations.
Oluseyi Julius Adebowale and Justus Ngala Agumba apply CLA to the construction labour productivity in developing countries. The study concludes with recommendations that “emerging technologies, construction managers, workers, and every project participant are each essential for productivity growth”. Fully integrated systems would not only promote CLP growth, they argue, but would create more desired environments for both workers and clients, indeed all stakeholders.
Marcelle Holdaway applies CLA to the dilemma of firms privileging shareholders over community stakeholders. Key findings of her research have numerous implications for both corporate and community sector, confirming that, CLA and “imagining, critiquing, experimenting, and examining different ways of seeing opens our worlds up to … new possibilities that may move use closer to preferable social and environmental outcomes.”
Sterling Jackson employs CLA to develop decision making metaphors for risk forward investments. He identifies three CLA based metaphors for investment decision making and argues that “employing either one of these metaphors to investing, an allocator can take a multi-decade approach … [which] will generally produce better outcomes by lowering behavioural bias and providing greater clarity towards investment decisions”.
City
Three articles in City section are focused on a nation state (i.e., Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), a region (i.e., Southeast Queensland) and a city (i.e., Isfahan). All three show transformative ways of addressing the current urban challenges.
Phillip Daffara investigates unsustainable rapid urbanisation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, previously modelled on western urban planning paradigms and capitalist means of production. He argues that this model of urbanization is contributing to the climate crisis as well as biodiversity loss and proposes the transition of KSA cities into Arcologies – an alternative, transformative form of habitation. CLA is used as a framework to summarise his research, but also as a tool to investigate main obstacles and needed changes for a transformative future to take place.
Colin Russo uses CLA to map process of planning and engagement within four South East Queensland cities. He argues for the development of the Engaging Futures Model of Governance which “sees CLA as a custodian to varying preferred futures”. Russo concludes with series of recommendation for key stakeholders such as city planners, and the executives and administrators of engagement processes.
Ali Zackery, Mohsen Taheri Damneh, Alireza Karimi, and Maryam Ebadi Nejad utilise CLA to analyse data collected during a backcasting-based participatory foresight workshop about Isfahan 2040. Data showed participants’ predominant focus on litany and system levels while they were not fully aware of worldview and myth level values implicit in urban visions. CLA unmasked these narratives and thus opened up possibilities to “stimulate originality, and substantively represent futures knowledge”.
Science and Technology
Three articles in Science and Technology section start with a highly theoretical piece linking philosophy of science and CLA, followed by theory, practice and futures of AI and geoengineering. They all show the utility of CLA for “hard sciences” as well.
Veli Virmajoki discusses the similarities and connections between philosophy of science and CLA. He shows ways in which science has changed during its history and investigates the “important but neglected topic of the possible futures of science”. CLA is then applied and proposed as one way to study this important topic.
Elissa Farrow investigates artificial intelligence evolution through CLA. She outlines five key worldviews which influenced the AI of today, and historical continuities and discontinuities, combining CLA with a genealogical analysis. Farrow then outlines the two main worldviews which exist in our times – AI being a hope and salvation for humanity vis-à-vis AI being a cause of human threat or vulnerability. Finally, she concludes with the invitation to imagine AI as integral to “paradise” wherein a relationship of mutual trust between humans and AI exists and is linked to the joint goal of empowerment of humanity.
John Sweeney discusses new metaphor and politics for geoengineered imaginaries. He shows the ways in which “narratives shift, mutate, evolve, and sometimes transform” and also argues that “what has not changed is the need for further and deeper engagement on geoengineered imaginaries, which conceal, as well as reveal, politics that can inspire fear, hope, and everything in between”. In conclusion, and to hold open the possibility spaces for the future, he invites as to become joyful poets, and have a playful attitude as well as a deep and abiding sensibility.
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Of course, the twenty-six contributions presented in this volume are not the “final say” in the current state of the method and its implications. They build on the 2004 CLA Reader and the 2015 CLA 2.0. Articles and essays are published regularly that use CLA, and we are look forward to editing CLA. 4.0. In the meantime, , we have created a CLA 3.0 website – cla.metafuture.org – where numerous contributions that we could not include in this printed volume can be found. We are also open to adding new contributions as they arrive in the future – a digital formal enabling more dynamic and “living” resources than what the print text can ever hope to be (CLA 3.1). And so, we invite you to contact us with your own applications of CLA, which we hope to continue adding on website and perhaps even consider for future print editions. At this stage, this “call for papers” is open ended and we hope to be inundated with submissions.