CLA 3.0: Thirty Years of Transformative Research

In 1992, while presenting at the World Futures Studies Federation course on International Development, I shifted my lecture from the typical rehearsed presentation on factors explaining maldevelopment to a real time unpacking/deconstruction of transportation futures. As I, we, worked through the analysis, alternatives organically emerged. The four levels were: first, the problem or the litany – congestion and pollution. Second the causes: too many cars and desire for more cars, rising incomes, traditional infrastructure that was not car flow friendly, among other factors. Third, the Big City outlook, westernization, and the "Los Angelization" of the planet. And fourth, West is best with cars as freedom, as individuality. We understood that the government would take a technical approach of creating flyovers and not the deeper required to rethink centre-periphery relations – to decentralize - to reimagine Bangkok as a walkable and green city. This led to a discussion on not just infrastructure redesign but stories around rural areas and the symbol of the car as a symbol of Western power. CLA shifted the discussion from conventional strategies on transport toward alternative futures of mobility, identity, and sustainability. After a few more attempts at presenting on communication, on disability, on ways knowing the method was born. Theoretically, of course, I was standing on the works of the greats: P.R. Sarkar, Johan Galtung, William Irwin Thompson, Joseph Campbell and from insights from professors and colleagues such as James Dator, Michael Shapiro, and Richard Slaughter.
In the CLA Reader published in 2004, we compiled articles on the method to gain academic respectability. Doctoral students would email me and say, they wanted to write their thesis on CLA but their professors were suspicious. By 2015, when CLA 2.0 was released, we had documented hundreds of additional case studies. Professor were no longer suspicious, indeed, many enthusiastic. The method by that time had been used by thirty plus national governments, dozens of international organizations, hundreds of businesses and community organizations, and thousands of individuals.
With CLA 3.0, we have moved from planting seeds about a new method, to nurturing young trees, to watching a true forest of transformative and critical futures research. The forest true to the iceberg image that has been linked to CLA is not just on land but in the ocean as well.
My own work in the area has somewhat changed. Along with projects using CLA on the external world, for example, in the past few months, with FAO, Australia Prudential Residential Authority, Mitsubishi Motors, WHO, the Pacific Community, the Razak School of Government, LEGO, UNESCAP, more and more I insist that participants in workshops also focus on the CLA of the self. This has become especially important with the rise in anxiety from COVID and the invasion of Ukraine. The inner work leads not only to the reflective practitioner but ensures epistemological mindfulness. We enter the room aware that we are part of the problem or solution, that our stories can help or hurt. CLA of the self, for me, is a way to help others find ways out of current predicaments. For example, just recently with colleagues in Shanghai stuck from the long lockdown, we worked together to shift the core metaphor from "the prison" to "painting the prison" and from a "lone firefly to a ray of light" connecting with other rays. An educational leader working with the disadvantaged used CLA recently to develop the new story he wished to tell his community of students, teachers, and parents. While he understood the reality of admiring the problem, after the CLA workshop, he changed his focus from the victim to the champion. When I suggested that the narrative of the champion might be a step to far, he added an intermediate narrative shift: getting in the game. These storis assist in expanding agency, in helping us create more desirable futures. The stories as with external CLA need to link to systemic changes as well, and when possible, new measures of success. The question I ask organizations as they develop their new narrative is who are you in the story? Thus, it is not about changing others per se but how about finding a voice, a role for oneself in a changing world. With one large group, their new story was a flotilla of canoes. I then asked participants, who were they in the flotilla? One said, the navigator, another the one who painted the canoes, a third, the one who found dollars for canoe maintenance. The story thus connected all. CLA, for me, is not about strategic foresight but transformational futures. We are in the universe not as objective change agents but as characters (often pre-scripted and used) with the possibility of inner and outer transformation, of co-creating alternative futures. Depth assists us in moving from technical litany systemic fixes to longer term worldview and narrative shifts.
This book can be read from the position of theories of knowledge, as methodology, as case studies, or as part of one's individual journey. I can only recommend that you work from multiple positions, and, of course, work at all four levels. While CLA 2.0 was a partnership between me and Director of Metafuture, Dr. Ivana Milojević, we are fortunate to now have Drs. John Sweeney and Ralph Mercer as fellow collaborators on this inner and outer, land and ocean voyage.