How the future impacts on our view of the past

Does a lack of optimism in the way in which some people see their future prospects lead to events like the recent London riots or the mass murders in Norway – and how does the way people view our past impact on this? These are the sorts of questions being raised by Professor Sonja Kmec, a Luxembourg cultural scientist, although her work has produced reasons why we should feel positive..

Sonja Kmec, an associate professor at the University of Luxembourg, has been researching, by means of qualitative interviews, people’s expectations of the future and how the past is re-evaluated in their minds as a result. “We are less interested in the past than in how people see it,” she says.

Since April 2009 Kmec and her colleagues have looked into future expectations of different generations and compared the relative optimism (belief in the welfare state) expressed by Luxembourgian interviewees with a different brand of optimism (belief in self-advancement and trust in God) found in the United States, and a deep pessimism expressed by the dwindling middle classes in Germany.

Her research project, entitled LUXFUT - Futures and Pasts in Transition - will result in two PhD theses, one in Luxembourg, the other in the US, and a book, “Erzählte Zukunft. Zur inter- und intragenerationellen Aushandlung von Erwartungen”, or “Narrated Futures . Inter-and intra-generational negotiations of expectations” - that is due to come out in November 2011. The project uses a method known as hermeneutic dialogue analysis (HDA), which entails examining interviews in depth.

Bringing her expertise to this work on historical consciousness is Dr. Claudia Lenz. Lenz who is working at Oslo, at a nerve centre pointedly relevant to the research: in July the killings of 77 people by a bomber and gunman as a warped protest against marxism, multiculturalism and pluralist democracy, devastated Norway. “The terrorist’s manifesto entitled ‘2083 A European declaration of independence’ is an example of how the past is being instrumentalised,” says Kmec. “In his world view, European, Christian civilization is existentially threatened by a Muslim conspiracy, dating back to the Middle Ages. The result is an extremely pessimistic future scenario, calling for ‘extreme’ actions in order to save his country – and all of Europe. His ‘manifesto’ is of course an extreme example of the type of linkage between past and future we have been looking into.” But it shows that individuals and groups who do not relate any desirable future expectations and aspirations to pluralist and democratic societies, can develop an enormous destructive potential. Here, we might see a link to the London riots in August.

What have been the project’s most general findings? “There are deep generational gaps that family narratives try to bridge,” Kmec says. “Although a general sense of optimism is conveyed, a deeper analysis shows that there are huge differences, not just among the three generations but also in terms of gender, as to how the future is perceived.

“The problem, however, as much is clear, does not reside in these differences of outlook, but in an absence of outlook. Our forthcoming book shows the nefarious consequences of the absence of future outlook, as it prevents people from constructive actions in the present.

“It may even lead to rather destructive behaviour, if the August riots in England may be analysed in terms of deficiency of future perspectives. The upsurge of violence has, of course, many reasons (hooliganism, for instance) and cannot be limited to the issue of ‘no future’. But it would be interesting to compare the urban riots in terms of future perceptions to the ‘Arab spring’ revolutions or to the protests in Spain or Israel.”

One of the findings that surprised Kmec and her colleagues was that the world financial crisis of 2008 did not have an immediate effect, and in some ways does not seem yet to have struck with its fullest force:“We found that people have not been talking about it, even though they have had their share of worries and there has been a climate of fear and uncertainty.” says Kmec.

The LUXFUT project has attracted €288.510 in total, funded by the Fonds National de Recherche (FNR) in Luxembourg, and, for Kmec’s own participation, by the University of Luxembourg. It has also attracted the support of the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut / Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities (KWI) in Essen (Dr Jens Kroh) and Emory University Atlanta (PhD student Lesley Anne Bleakney) who provided international comparison in the project.

Kmec explains the background to her LUXFUT work: “When I handed in the project proposal in 2008 the financial crisis was looming on the horizon. As Luxembourg’s economy is heavily dependent on the financial sector, there was a growing unease about the future in the media. Climatic changes have also become increasingly topical and they are of course linked to questions about the future.

“Luxembourg is no bubble, even if it is comparatively prosperous. Public opinion is heavily influenced by issues that are discussed in France and Germany and social tensions linked to the dismantlement of welfare state have been rising over the last couple of years. At the same time, I was also influenced by colleagues working on historical consciousness in a project called LUX-ID (Collective experiences, intergenerational memory and identity constructions in Luxembourg: witnesses of World War II, peasants, industrial workers, immigrants).

“Claudia Lenz, who was involved in that project, realised how much the future is involved when people are talking about their past. She asked me if I’d be interested in examining this for Luxembourg and linking it to a German-US project, led by Professor Harald Welzer of the Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Research at KWI in Essen.”

“The project’s working hypothesis was that the epochal changes Western industrial societies have been undergoing since the 1960s has a profound impact on families’ function as transmitters of values and orientation,” Kmec explains. “The transition from an industrial to a service-oriented society has led to important internal differentiations of these societies. As a consequence, multiple new social and cultural identities, marked by fragmentations, insecurities and contradictions, are emerging and are constantly being (re)negotiated.

“The question the project was addressing was whether families may offer a sense of belonging and continuity or whether other social networks have supplanted them. This was to be answered by looking at families where internal communication is still relatively high: we interviewed representatives of three generations (grand-parents, parents, children aged over 18) who are in frequent contact. We first interviewed them separately, then recorded a common conversation, triggered by the question ‘Do you agree with the saying “Our children should have a better life than us?’ This was to be complemented by conversations of people of the same age, so-called peer-groups, on the same topic.

“The results we were expecting were to evaluate the degree of pessimism and optimism people feel about their future, their kids’ future and also how they feel about how their life has turned out to be, compared to what they expected when they were young. Their ‘biographical scripts’ are at the centre of this analysis. The project’s results were to be linked to more general findings about how people cope with the flexibility and mobility required by the postfordist Welfare State.”

Claudia Lenz’s role in the project has been one of a methodological expert. “She has the experience and know-how to lead the HDA sessions and to introduce truly innovative aspects and research questions,” says Kmec. “I’m relatively new to this domain of research and have done some empirical work of my own and coordinated the project as a whole.

Key to the LUXFUT project has been another participant, Sophie Neuenkirch, whom Kmec describes as “a perfect match”. She explains: “Once the project had been accepted by the FNR, I launched a call for prospective PhD students, willing to work on the project.

“One prerequisite was the ability to do interviews in Luxembourgish, which narrowed the field instantly. The other challenge was to find someone less interested in the past as in how the past is being related. Traditional historians would resent or resist this kind of approach, whereas cultural anthropologists would want to live with the interviewees and do fieldwork. Sociologists would want to extrapolate and tend to minimise idiosyncrasies and psychologists would neglect the social context. At least, those were my prejudices and my apprehensions.

Kmec is optimistic about the impact her research will have on current thinking: “This project has moved far beyond issues of national memory, although that was indeed one of the starting points of my own work in memory studies. Family stories and the narratives of peer-groups, such as close friends or ‘comrades’, do not exist in a void. They feed on other, bigger narratives. Previous work has shown the importance of such ‘social frames’. We would like to add a stronger focus on the future perspectives that are involved when telling stories about the past. The book “Erzählte Zukunft” will hopefully be a milestone for that kind of research, which has much potential for other lines of research, as it does not have a single disciplinary background, but brings together people from political sciences, (social) psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology and history.”

Click here to contact the project coordinator.

Published: Wednesday, 23rd November 2011