FROM WHO AM I TO WHEN AM I - FRAMING THE SHAPE AND TIME OF THE FUTURE

Intended to aid in the development of an interpretive community, this article (1) articulates an alternative epistemological framework for understanding the future; (2) examines the structure of images of the future - primarily the image of the present continued, catastrophe, reversion to a stable past, and transformation; (3) explores linear, cyclical and spiral patterns of social change; and (4) argues that an ideal theory of the future must be able to problematize time and to negotiate the many meanings of time, even as it might be committed to a particular construction of time.