ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Futures Studies in the European Ex-socialist Countries FUTURES STUDIES IN YUGOSLAVIA Radmila Nakarada The Questionnaire presupposes conditions of social normality, continuity and intensive professional communications. Reality in Yugoslavia is radically different, and thus what may seem a rather simple exercise for others is a difficult task for me.

After a complete breakdown of the state and society, a terrible war that has isolated present Yugoslavia, futures research seems like a distant past. The period you are referring to from 1960 to 1999 covers the golden age of the socialist regime, its crisis, eruption of nationalism, secessionism, and its breakdown. The state that was closest to EU as the end of eighties plunged into a series of tragic wars and final breakdown.

In other words, in the case of Yugoslavia the space of your research has in the meantime disintegrated. Out of one state, five states emerged. In the present Yugoslavia the strength of the past, unresolved problems and wounds, and the weight of the present completely excluded the future as a long-term concept, as a coordinated movement with the surrounding world, as political and economic restructuring toward a higher level of development.

Going through violent conflicts, sanctions, media satanization, shattering economic crisis, bombing the future was lost in widespread apathy. In other words, the sociological relations between the predicament of the society and the stance toward the future are well illustrated by the drama of Yugoslavia. In an ongoing total social crisis, the dimension of the future becomes an abstraction.

Second, as far as I know, futures researchers did not anticipate the type of crisis that would evolve in a number of places after the end of Cold war. Futures research began to develop its roots in the old Yugoslavia when the society was a dynamic entity, when a privileged place in the world community seemed secure, i.e. when there was hope, openness profound social interest in development.

Technology, education ( Miroslav Pecujlic , The University of the Future, 1980, translated in English, Spanish, Italian), environment/urbanism were spheres of prime interest, although there were attempts to problematize also human needs, values. The then current streams of thought in this field were translated, reviewed, discussed.