Coloniality in humanitarian futures thinking

This article is concerned with the coloniality of humanitarian futures thinking. It interrogates the assumptions that crises such as climate change and the apparent end to liberal internationalism threaten the future of humanitarianism as future crises. Instead, through a critical reflection on our involvement in futures thinking work with an international humanitarian organization, we argue that thinking about crises in future terms, and the scenario planning methodologies deployed for mastering this uncertain and dangerous future, highlight and threaten to reproduce the coloniality of the humanitarian industry. Through attempting to govern the future through anticipatory practices the ongoing structural effects of colonialism, patriarchy, and racial capitalism are overlooked, while the norms of Western liberal humanism, what Black feminism would call Man as Homo economicus more broadly, and the positionality and experiences of humanitarians located in the Global North are overrepresented and universalized, resulting in the marginalization of alternative positionalities, experiences, potentialities, and ways of being. The article focuses on the geo-ontological, epistemological, and operational assumptions through which coloniality is expressed in work on humanitarian futures thinking while holding space for the radical potentiality of prefiguring a different future.