Causal Layered Analysis: Towards a Theory of the Multiple

Abstract

Causal layered analysis (CLA) is a key tool for Deep Futures approach, which is seen by numerous experts as a prospective trend in evolution of Foresight studies. It reveals hidden basic prerequisites for actual incidents thus providing an information basis for the making efficient decisions.

The paper considers the nature, features and possibilities of CLA drawing on the works of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari who offer the organic metaphor of the rhizome as a way to understand the hybrid and multiple nature of reality. In this relation it  argues that CLA is a method of the multiple that offers a process–theory of knowledge that facilitates new becomings and alternative futures. It makes the case that agency and social learning are enhanced through understanding human contexts as layered and dynamic. CLA is an ideal vehicle for articulating this insight and enabling futures practitioners in their work to empower stakeholders to realise their preferred futures.

Concepts have effects and therefore can be understood best through application and reflection. CLA’s uses can be in the academic sphere as taxonomy or in the applied sphere of process method in which it functions pedagogically as a critical facilitator of libratory consciousness and the social learning. Thus it treats any singular projection of reality with suspicion, instead embracing the plural as the creative inversion of given context. In this way structure becomes flexible and open to transformation whilst agency finds itself located in structure so as to critique and influence it in ways that make it more reflective of optimal current and future possibilities.