Plenary Lecture and Workshop at the HED Conference (2024)

Valentina Gulin Zrnić delivered a plenary lecture titled ‘Future-making: Urban Visions, Practices, and Ethics’ at the annual meeting of the Croatian Ethnological Society (HED), entitled ‘Our Common Futures: A Perspective from Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology’ (May 22-24, 2024, Pazin).

Abstract:

In a multi-year ethnological and culturalanthropological project on urban futures, we develop a research framework for creating the future that includes various horizons of imagination and modes of life, the interweaving of visions, decisions, habits, engagements, and affects that shape our shared urban living futures. The processes that create urban futures are multiscalar, multilocal, and multitemporal. These processes, significantly marked by economic-political circumstances and relationships, also involve important segments such as affective urbanism, temporal agency, and ethical imagination. The presentation will comment on these aspects using materials from research conducted in several Croatian cities, along with reflections on the methodological challenges of researching urban futures. Additionally, it will examine the potential of urban comparison and the importance and (non)presence of cultural anthropological expertise in creating public policies for urban futures.

At the same conference, Valentina Gulin Zrnić and Saša Poljak Istenič held a workshop titled ‘Imagining Urban Futures: Thinking Laterally.

Workshop Description:

The method of lateral thinking (E. de Bono) involves various techniques aimed at challenging usual perceptions, questioning existing concepts, and generating new ideas. Some of these techniques will be used in this workshop to raise awareness of what is treated as unquestionable in our cities and to expand the imagination for new urban reflections. During the workshop, the difference between vertical and lateral thinking will be briefly presented, as well as the “provocation techniques” that will be used in group work on selected topics, such as public space or urban mobility. The workshop aims to demonstrate how thinking about cities as places of our common futures can be provoked and to show one possible direction for developing future literacy.