Home
Egalitarian Futures Research Group
About

About The Egalitarian Futures Research Group (FUTURES)

The Egalitarian Futures Research Group (FUTURES) is globally comparative and located in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen (UiB).

Johannesburg street art
Street art in Johannesburg
Photo:
Oda Eiken Maraire

Main content

Harnessing long-term research into inequality and egalitarianism—including the successes of the large-scale ERC Advanced Grant project “Egalitarianism: Forms, Processes, Comparisons” led by Prof. Bruce Kapferer from 2014 to 2019—the Egalitarian Futures Research Group (FUTURES) explores the futures, temporalities and possibilities of egalitarianism. It does so also drawing on ongoing and past research which map and analyze historical and contemporary dynamics related to egalitarianism.

Our point of departure is the idea that the future - the orientation towards a time yet to come - is fundamental for understanding contemporary global society. We see a particular orientation towards the future developing in relation to ecological crises, economic uncertainty, deprivation and dispossession, management of food, energy, and wealth, and accordingly, massive mobilisations around the domains of religion, freedom and new technologies.

Our group of researchers empirically map and investigate various groups of people who are particularly and intensively preoccupied with futures.