The World has changed rapidly and dramatically since the publication of The Postnormal Times Reader in 2019. We have moved from ‘climate emergency’ to an era of ‘global boiling’. ‘Climate refugees’ has become a recognised term. Open AI has metamorphized into ChatGPT. The revolutionary gene editing technology CRISPR has been replaced with even more revolutionary CRISPR-Cas3 which can ‘chew up DNA like Pac-Man’. Insects started appearing on the menus of posh restaurants. Fascism became a global phenomenon, with democracy under pressure everywhere. We had hardly recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic when the Ukraine-Russia war created yet another world-wide ‘cost of living’ crisis, adding to our apparent state of permacrisis. Our ways of learning and knowing – our very cultures and worldviews – are now being crafted by postnormal times.

The Postnormal Times Reader Volume 2 demonstrates that the time for preparation is over. We must now navigate the storm from within. Postnormal times are no longer about anticipating something that is lurking over the horizon. Postnormal times are already here – with their attended consequences of contradictions, complexity, and chaos. It presents an expanded and updated version of the postnormal times theory, which is now being employed in a wide range of disciplines – from political science and policy studies to science education, museology and drama and theatre education. This volume also throws light on how we can move beyond the transition of postnormal times into sane and sustainable mutually assured futures, through transformative creativity and bold imagination.

Understanding and learning to navigate postnormal times has now become crucial for our own survival, as well as the endurance of the abode of our terrestrial journey – the planet.

 

Edited by Ziauddin Sardar, Shamim Miah, and C Scott Jordan

Published by IIIT & CPPFS

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