Redefining the Social Imaginary: Hegemony and Critical Thinking

Since the contributions of Cornelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor, the concept of the social imaginary has firmly entered the toolbox of social sciences to highlight the importance of the political and cultural dimension in understanding how social reality is constructed and perceived. It has also proven to be fundamental for illuminating how social action takes on cogency in relation to the way expectations and aspirations are articulated.

Different social imaginaries compete to present themselves as a credible, worthy, and "real" representation of reality. In their capacity to shape a reality not yet fully realized, social imaginaries are spaces where it is possible to think differently. In addition, they have a normative aspect: when shared, they can guide individual and collective action and perception. So, they are a space of political contention where the definition of a shared reality that makes specific actions plausible, just, and necessary, while excluding others, is at stake.
The session encourages both theoretical and empirical contributions that highlight:
a. strengths and weaknesses of the concept of the social imaginary as a tool for interpreting social dynamics
b. methodological aspects of the analysis of contemporary social imaginaries
c. The empirical domains in which different social imaginaries compete for hegemony over the meanings attributed to social reality (e.g., climate imaginary, sociotechnical imaginary, political imaginary, youth imaginary, etc.)
d. The relationship between social imaginaries and forms of social critique
e. The relationship between social imaginaries and the representation of the future and, more generally, with the temporal dimension