Modern Social Imaginaries (Public Planet Books)

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The lifeworld is a different matter. I tend to think that it was a transitional concept, and that we can now do without it. Husserl did not invent it, but his use of it became the main inspiration for later reformulations, sometimes with a very different thrust (think of the interpretation of the lifeworld in Habermas’s theory of communicative action). Husserl was trying to build a bridge between transcendental phenomenology and history; I think that this problem has now been neutralized – on the one hand by the post-transcendental turn of phenomenology and the focus on the world, on the other by Castoriadis’s elucidation of the social-historical. In short, we now have conceptual resources that make the lifeworld redundant. Blyth, J. (1983). English university adult education 1908–1958: The unique tradition. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bellah RN (2005) What is axial about the axial age? Eur J Sociol 46:69. doi: 10.1017/s0003975605000032 Krummel, John W.M. 2016. Introduction to Miki Kiyoshi and his Logic of the Imagination. Social Imaginaries 2(1):13–24. https://doi.org/10.5840/si2016212. Cremin, L. (1961). The transformation of the school: Progressivism in American education 1876–1957. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

The International Journal of Social Imaginaries thus reflects on questions of contemporary politics and the political, including in relation to the economic. The recent trend in civic disengagement in the context of the rise of ideologies of neo-liberalism have masked the profound crisis that now affects Western modernity in its specific relationship to the natural world. The theoretical response to this exhaustion of the central imaginary significations of modernity has failed to articulate the full significance of the crisis, counter the loss of collective vision, and inspire a new political imaginary. There is thus an urgent need to find new theoretical approaches and interpretative frameworks that can re-assert the capacity of human societies for political autonomy and at the same time conceptualize its fundamental connection to the natural world. Bellah RN (1970) Beyond belief; essays on religion in a post-traditional world. Harper & Row, New York The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination in which Sartre discusses his concept of the imagination and the nature of human consciousness. Subsequent thinkers have extended Sartre's ideas into the realms of philosophy and sociology. While not constituting an established reality, the social imaginary is nevertheless an institution in as much as it represents the system of meanings that govern a given social structure. These imaginaries are to be understood as historical constructs defined by the interactions of subjects in society. In that sense, the imaginary is not necessarily "real" as it is an imagined concept contingent on the imagination of a particular social subject. Nevertheless, there remains some debate among those who use the term (or its associated terms, such as imaginaire) as to the ontological status of the imaginary. Some, such as Henry Corbin, understand the imaginary to be quite real indeed, while others ascribe to it only a social or imagined reality. Taylor C (2013) Retrieving realism. In: Schear JK (ed) Mind, reason, and being-in-the-world: the McDowell-Dreyfus debate. Routledge, Abingdon, pp 61–90Peter Olshavsky has analyzed the imaginary in the field of architecture. Based on the work of Taylor, the imaginary is understood as a category of understanding social praxis and the reasons designers give to make sense of these practices. The International Journal of Social Imaginaries emerges from the journal Social Imaginaries, which consisted in an effort to gather philosophical, social-theoretical, and broader social-scientific research on the role of the creative imagination and of social imaginaries. A growing variety of approaches and disciplines focus on social imaginaries as ways in which people collectively and pre-theoretically make sense of their social and personal existence, to constitute a collective space of meanings or semantic space for co-being. 1 The International Journal of Social Imaginaries intends to build on the earlier publication effort, and helps to create a global platform for a dynamic and evermore interdisciplinary and intercultural interest in social imaginaries and aims to capture the increasingly prominent and interdisciplinary contributions in one globally accessible journal. In this, the International Journal of Social Imaginaries seeks to bring theoretical and analytical clarity in discussions on the imaginaries. It intends to do so by means of publishing established and emerging authors in human and social sciences who are shaping the field of social imaginaries. Alexander, Jeffrey C., and Philip Smith. 2010. The Strong Program. Origins, Achievements, Prospects. In Handbook of Cultural Sociology, ed. John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff, and Ming-Cheng Lo, 13–24. London/New York: Routledge. James, Paul (2019). "The Social Imaginary in Theory and Practice". In Chris Hudson and Erin K. Wilson (ed.). Revisiting the Global Imaginary: Theories, Ideologies, Subjectivities. Palgrave-McMillan. Andacht, Fernando. A Semiotic Framework for the Social Imaginary. Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway, 2000.

A recent research led by a team from the Université Grenoble Alpes offer to develop the concept of imaginary and understand how it functions when faced with serial works of art. Binder, Werner. 2017. The Drama of Politics: Jeffrey Alexander’s Liberal Sociology of Political Performances. Thesis Eleven 142(1):112–129. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513617727904. Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1957. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Steger, Manfred B., 2008. The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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Frank, Thomas, Albrecht Koschorke, Susanne Lüdemann, and Ethel Matala de Mazza. 2002. Des Kaisers neue Kleider: über das Imaginäre politischer Herrschaft; Texte, Bilder, Lektüren. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. J. Childers/G. Hentz eds., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1995) p. 152 Steger, Manfred B. 2008. The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bringing new dimensions and insights to existing debates, such as currently in constitutional law and theory (‘constitutional imaginaries’), human rights law (‘human rights imaginary’), democratic theory (‘democratic imaginaries’), and populist politics (the ‘populist imaginary’).

Vries, Imar de. Tantalisingly Close: An Archaeology of Communication Desires in Discourses of Mobile Wireless Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012. "Tantalisingly Close". Arnason, Johann P. 1989. The Imaginary Constitution of Modernity. In Autonomie et autotransformation de la société: La philosohie militante Revue Europeene des Sciences Sociales, Vol. XXVII, ed. Giovanni Busino, 323–337. Geneva: Droz. Mosco, Vincent (2005-01-01). The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262633291. Marcus, George E. (1995-04-01). Technoscientific Imaginaries: Conversations, Profiles, and Memoirs. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226504445.

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Alexander, Jeffrey C., Dominik Bartmanski, and Bernhard Giesen. 2012. Iconic Power. Materiality and Meaning in Social Life. New York/Houndmills: Palgrave.