5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Considering the rapid technological developments and their far-reaching social changes, the ability to anticipate possible futures in order to be able to react to them better prepared and at short notice is becoming increasingly important. At the same time, climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and requires the early development of innovative and future-oriented solutions. - This session is dedicated to the systematic creation of complex socio-economic future scenarios in order to provide decision-makers in business, politics and society with a sound basis for strategic planning and innovation processes. In addition to contributions on content (including case studies from local to global), this session also welcomes methodological contributions focusing on the further development of established methods for exploring potential futures, such as the cross-impact balance, the Delphi method or trend extrapolation. We also encourage contributions that apply participatory approaches by involving citizens in the sense of citizen science into the research process and their reflection in terms of systematic knowledge production.