Utopias and world-making: Time, transformation and the collective imagination

Utopias have a long and contested history of steering social change; bringing the imagined ideal collective future into reality has been seen as both a noble endeavour and the herald of totalitarian regimes and political violence. This chapter will investigate this tension in two parts: the first will explore the distinctly human future-oriented psychology and argue that imagination is central to human thinking and social organisation. The second part will discuss the role of utopias in motivating and guiding social change. We will explore the dangers of utopianism and conclude that while we need utopian visions to chart the shared path forward, it is essential that such visions are not hegemonic, but a polyphonic and ever-evolving collective imagination of the future.