The concept of the future is re-emerging as an urgent topic on the academic agenda. In this article, we focus on the ‘politics of the future’: the social processes and practices that allow particular imagined futures to become socially performative. Acknowledging that the performativity of such imagined futures is well-understood, we argue that how particular visions come about and why they become performative is underexplained. Drawing on constructivist sociological theory, this article aims to fill (part of) this gap by exploring the question ‘how do imagined futures become socially performative’? In doing so, the article has three aims to (1) identify the leading social–theoretical work on the future; (2) conceptualize the relationship of the imagination of the future with social practices and the performance of reality; (3) provide a theoretical framework explaining how images of the future become performative, using the concepts ‘techniques of futuring’ and ‘dramaturgical regime’.

未来的概念正在重新成为学术议程上的紧迫话题。在本文中，我们将重点放在“未来的政治”上：使特定的想象中的未来成为具有社会表现力的社会过程和实践。承认这种想象中的未来的操演是很好理解的，我们认为如何产生了特定的愿景，并解释了为什么它们变得具有表演性。本文以建构主义社会学理论为基础，旨在通过探讨“想象中的未来如何成为具有社会表现力的”问题来填补（部分）这一空白？为此，本文的三个目标是（1）确定未来的主要社会理论工作；（2）概念化未来想象力与社会实践和现实表现之间的关系；（3）使用“融合技术”和“手术方式”的概念，提供了一个解释未来形象如何成为表演的理论框架。