Résultat de la recherche
Imagining collective futures. Perspectives from social, cultural and political psychology
The idea of this book came from a common observation: although the construction of a collective future is often seen as the end game of many social phenomena (e.g., collective memory, ideology, social change, creativity, etc.), this process is most often left unexplored. The aim of this book is thus to bring together researcher working on imagination and future construction, collective phenomena and social change, in order to gain a better understanding of how collective futures are imagined. The contributions to this book are expected to engage with the processes by which social groups, communities and nations create possible futures. By doing so, this book will shed new lights on the importance of the future in shaping present ideas, values and behaviours. The list of contributors includes junior and more established researchers, therefore providing a great opportunity for a fruitful exchange of ideas. This book will be published in the Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture (Springer), edited by Vlad Glaveanu & Brady Wagoner.
Uses of the past: History as a resource for the present
Research on collective memory – exploring the lay representations of history – has been booming in the past decades, particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this context, the past has started to be seen as not only interesting in itself, but as especially relevant to understand the present: it weighs on it by shaping our relations with other groups and by defining who we are, to use terms common in collective memory research. The past is thus given authority over the present (and often the future), by assuming that its transformations and deformations play a determining role in the way we understand ourselves and act with others, as members of social groups. In this special issue, we propose to look, on the contrary, at how the past is transformed and mobilised for the present. That is, instead of conceiving the past as weighting on the present, we would like to explore how it is mobilised and brought to the present, as a resource to give meaning to present actions and groups as well as to imagine collective futures. The contributions to this special issue will thus focus on how history is used in the present, for what purpose and with what results. The aim of this special issue is also to offer a space to PhD students and post-doctoral fellows to develop new ideas and to promote them within the scientific community. The issue will thus be composed of two parts: a series of articles proposed by ‘junior’ researchers and a series of commentaries by ‘experts’ in the field.
Imagining the collective future: A sociocultural perspective
The present chapter examines how groups imagine their future from a sociocultural perspective. First, we present our sociocultural model of imagination and its three dimensions, before building on it to account for how collectives imagine the future. We maintain that it is a mistake to assume that because imagination is “not real”, it cannot have “real” consequences. Imagination about the future, we argue, is a central steering mechanism of individual and collective behaviour. Imagination about the future is often political precisely because it can have huge significance for the activities of a group or even a nation. Accordingly, we introduce a new dimension for thinking about collective imagination of the future— namely, the degree of centralization of imagining—and with it, identify a related aspect, its emotional valence. Based on two examples, we argue that collective imaginings have their own developmental trajectories as they move in time through particular social and political contexts. Consequently, we suggest that a sociocultural psychology of collective imagination of the future should not only document instances of collective imagining, but also account for these developmental trajectories— specifically, what social and political forces hinder and promote particular imaginings.
Thinking through time: From collective memories to collective futures
In this chapter I look at the links between collective memory and the imagination of collective futures. Drawing on works on imagination and autobiographical memory, I first discuss the role of past experiences in imagining the future. I then explore the consequences of such a perspective for collective memories and collective futures, which will lead me to argue that the former provides the basis for the latter. Three case studies are presented, each illustrating a different type of relation between collective memory and collective imagination: 1) collective memory as a frame of reference to imagine the future; 2) collective memory as a source of experiences and examples to imagine what is likely, possible or desirable; and 3) collective memory as generalisable experience from which representations of the world – Personal World Philosophies – are constructed and in turn used to imagine the collective future. This will lead me to the conclusion that representations of the world are characterised by “temporal heteroglossia”, the simultaneous presence of multiple periods of time, and that they mediate the relation between collective memory and collective imagination, allowing us to “think through time”.