Society of the Future: A Social Science View of What We Assume and What We Can Expect

Starting from the dominant perspective of historical sociology, this book looks into the future instead and asks vital questions about the futures we face at the societal and global levels. The authors project what we can expect relating to the future of human knowledge, ideas and expectations, prognostic and futurological conceptions, transformations reflected by social geography and demography, and disputes on environmental issues. It also looks at civilizational issues, religion, economic and political development, and changes in human settlements and lifestyles. Finally, it looks at important issues relating to planetary defence and space settlement in the not-so-distant future. The book offers readers an intellectual basis for understanding historical and contemporary processes at work in the world around us that are shaping the contours of what the world of the future will be built upon.

Massimiliano Ruzzeddu graduated in political science and has a PhD in Sociology (2004) from La Sapienza University, Italy. He has lectured in sociology, and the sociology of organizations at La Sapienza and Salerno University. Since 2009, he has been a researcher and lecturer in sociology at the University Niccolò Cusano in Rome. He was a visiting professor at Charles University in Prague. He has authored many scientific works on social theory, especially complexity theories, common goods, innovation theory and historical sociology. In the area of historical sociology, he has focused on epistemic problems and identity-building processes.

Jiří Šubrt studied sociology and economics at Charles University in Prague. Since 1990, he has lectured at the Faculty of Arts there. In 2009, he founded, and has since stood as guarantor of the study programme of historical sociology at the Faculty of Humanities. He is the author and editor of many books published in Czech and English, mainly dealing with themes of contemporary sociological theory, particularly with regard to issues of action, structure and social systems. Over an extended period, he has given attention to issues of time and memory. In the area of historical sociology, he has focused on the problems of the civilization process, civilizational comparative analysis, social change, and modernization processes.

Nicolas Maslowski (b. 1972) studied at the University of Saclay, at the Institute of Political Science in Paris (IEP), received his PhD from the University of Paris X – La Défense Nanterre in 2009. He worked at EHESS (Paris) at the CADIS research group on a project under the direction of Michel Wieviorka (2001-2003). He worked as a lecturer at Charles University in Prague, at Prague University of Economics and Business. From 2016 to 2022 he was director of the Center for French and Francophone Cultural Studies at the University of Warsaw, this is a French-Polish Social Sciences and Humanities Center founded by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in 1958., then at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies of the same university. He was interim coordinator of the Franco-Georgian University (2024). He is co-director of the French Center for Human and Social Sciences in Vilnius, formerly the Franco-Belarusian Center for European Studies. He is interested in European and Central and Eastern European issues, International Relations, Collective Memory, and Historical Sociology.