Human Being(s) in 2050

Since 2004, the Futuribles International association has regularly (first annually, then since 2014 biennially) published a report exploring the major trends, discontinuities or weak signals that characterize our societies, or focusing on a specific future-related issue. After a 2020 edition devoted to ‘Shocks and Discontinuities’, the 2023 edition, published officially this summer, is concerned with the major anthropological transformations facing Western societies that will exert a lasting influence on individuals’ conditions of existence. Seven major themes have been selected for studying these transformations: the relation to life and living matter; the relation to life territories; birth and death; technologies and being human; gender and the sexes; relations to knowledge and institutions; crises and timescales. On each of these themes, the methodology consisted in combining the foresight approach with the anthropological, producing an analysis on three levels: the evolution of the sociocultural representations and imaginaries associated with the theme under consideration, both today and in the future; transformations of the collective rules and norms applying to the theme in question; individual realities observed in 2023 and to be envisaged in the years to 2040-2050. Cécile Désaunay and Marie Ségur, who coordinated the production of this report and wrote several of its chapters, here present a brief overview of this sizeable piece of work.