Jim Dator

Summary

James Allen Dator is Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, Department of Political Science, and Adjunct Professor in the College of Architecture, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa; Co-Chair and Core Lecturer, Space Humanities, International Space University, Strasbourg, France; Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Futures Strategy, Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Daejeon, Korea, and former President, World Futures Studies Federation. He is editor-in-chief of the World Futures Review. He also taught at Rikkyo University (Tokyo, for six years), the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, the University of Toronto, and the InterUniversity Consortium for Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia.

He received a BA in Ancient and Medieval History and Philosophy from Stetson University, an MA in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in Political Science from The American University. He did post-graduate work at Virginia Theological Seminary (Ethics and Church History), Yale University (Japanese Language), The University of Michigan (Linguistics and Quantitative Methods), Southern Methodist University (Mathematical Applications in Political Science).

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About

Relevant publications

Relevant publications

Mutative Media: Communication Technologies and Power Relations in the Past, Present, and Futures, with John Sweeney and Aubrey Yee. Springer Press, 2014
Nonkilling Futures: Visions, editor and contributor. Honolulu: Center for Global Nonkilling, 2012
Social Foundations of Human Space Exploration. New York: Springer Briefs in Space Development, 2012
Democracy and Futures. (with Mika Mannermaa and Paula Tiihonen). Helsinki: Parliament of Finland, 2006
“Alternative Futures for Forest-Based Nanomaterials: An Application of the Manoa School’s Alternative Futures Method,” World Future Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2016, with David N. Bengston, Michael J. Dockry, Aubrey Yee.
“Alternative Futures in Architecture,” in Mitra Kanaani, ed., Handbook for Architecture Design and Practice: Established and Emerging Trends. Routledge Press, 2015
“’New Beginnings’ Within a New Normal for the Four Futures,” Foresight, Vol. 16, No. 6, November 2014
“Campuses 2060: Four Futures of Higher Education in Four Alternative Futures of Society,” with Ray Yeh and Seongwon Park, in Munir Shuib, et al., eds., Developments in Higher Education: National Strategies and Global Perspectives, Universiti Sains Malaysia Press, 2013, pp. 116-162.
“Communication Technologies and the Futures of Courts and Law”, in Sam Muller, et al., eds., The Law of the Future and the Future of Law Volume II. The Hague: Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, 2012. Chapter 3.7, pp. 209-219.
“Korea as a Conserver Society,” with Seongwon Park, Social Business, 2(3), 2012, pp.181-204.
“Alternative futures at the Manoa School” Journal of Futures Studies, Vol. 14. No. 2, November 2009, 1-18.
“Korea as the wave of a future: The emerging Dream Society of icons and aesthetic experience”, with Yongseok Seo, Papers of the British Association for Korean Studies, Vol. 10. 2005, pp. 1-21

Source: School of International Futures

Web Links

SOIF

Dator’s Four Futures

In 1979, political scientist and futurist Jim Dator, director of the U. Hawaii at Manoa Ph.D. program in Alternative Futures, published a groundbreaking model of images of social change in an edited volume, Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Psychology. Dator’s model proposed that our main images (depictions, stories, scenarios) of societal futures can be classified into four recurring groups. His original labels for these were Continuation, Collapse, Disciplined Society, and Societal Transformation.

Dator discovered these narratives in empirical research, analyzing images of the future at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies (est. 1971). He calls them The Four Generic Images of the Futures of the Manoa School. He has applied them extensively in five decades since, sometimes changing their labels to fit various contexts. Our footnotes below* reference some of his classic work on how to define, recognize and apply these four key images in foresight work.

Hawaii Future Studies

The Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies (Hawaii Futures) was established by the Hawaii State Legislature in 1971. It is one of the world’s most renowned institutions for futures research, consulting, and education. Located within the Department of Political Science, College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, it has been instrumental in the education of four decades of futurists, in the development and spread of judicial and educational foresight, and in bringing foresight and futures thinking to organizations, agencies, and businesses around the world.

Activities of Hawaii Futures are overseen by pioneer futurist
Jim Dator, who for nearly a half-century has sculpted the very discipline of futures studies. In addition to ongoing teaching, Dator served as Secretary General and then President of the World Futures Studies Federation for a decade produced numerous publications on futures studies and emergent issues, and consulted with governmental, educational, religious, public-interest, military, and business organizations in over 40 countries.

More Information

James Allen Dator (born 1933) is an American futurologist and a former professor and Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies in the department of political science and college of social sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has written on four futures archetypes which represent four alternative scenarios (Continuation, Limits & Discipline, Decline & Collapse, Transformation).^[1]^[2] Since retiring, he advises and collaborates with the UK-based School of International Futures (SOIF).^[3]