Archaeologists warn: our visions of the future are trapped by capitalism
A new paper argues that archaeology's growing focus on future scenarios—whether optimistic or dystopian—merely reflects present capitalist interests rather than genuinely novel possibilities. The finding challenges how institutions and policymakers imagine alternatives, suggesting current frameworks for change may be more limited than assumed.
Originaltitel: Archaeologies of the Future or the Future of Archaeology?
In recent decades, archaeology and heritage studies have included an increasing focus on the future, revealing an underlying anxiety in relation to major societal challenges. Although this discourse regards the future as a later temporal stage, the future is often conceived in terms of present imaginaries – i.e., the future as emerging in the present. The aim of this paper is to look at these imaginaries more critically. Whether they are utopian, dystopian, or more seldom, something in between, they still depend on capitalist structures. In other words, these futures can be considered already “used”, reflecting present interests rather than representing something truly novel and radical. This shows that our imaginations have become hostage to the capitalist system, a system that seems infinitely flexible and adaptable to whatever is thrown at it. As such, our paper describes crucial elements of our capitalist structures, the specialized division of labour, the global network, and the progress of technology and society, and it imagines what archaeology would look like without these elements. Given that there seems to be a turn towards conservative values in various parts of the world, we need to consider how truly novel futures can be anticipated.