Modern Social Imaginaries (Public Planet Books)

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Several authors have criticized Taylor by saying he is unduly affirming that the exclusive humanist position is less deep and fuller that that of transformative religion (McLennan 2008; Bernstein 2008) and even that the use of a sense of fullness is misleading per se (Ward 2008). Taylor’s own response goes along the lines of recognizing that it is impossible for positions defending belief (“strong religion”) and unbelief to apodictically prove their points and that in any of those stances there are meta-theoretical views which are also of a normative kind. (McLennan 2008, 2010). Differences between them may prove to be intractable. However, it would still be possible to phenomenologically describe (Casanova 2008) the ways in which human fullness is sought as belonging to a continuum between religion and exclusive humanism (Marty 2008). Koschorke, Albrecht, Susanne Lüdemann, Thomas Frank, and Ethel Matala de Mazza. 2007. Der fiktive Staat: Konstruktionen des politischen Körpers in der Geschichte Europas. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections upon the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bellah RN (1970) Beyond belief; essays on religion in a post-traditional world. Harper & Row, New York

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.Ricoeur, Paul. 2007. Ideology and Utopia. In From Text to Action. Essays in Hermeneutics II, 308–324. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Milbank J (2009) A closer walk on the wild side: some comments on Charles Taylor’s a secular age. Stud Christ Ethics 22:89–104 One of the principal concerns of The International Journal of Social Imaginaries is the issue of modernity, especially the possibility of multiple modernities as recently suggested by Shmuel Eisenstadt. We are also interested in how the labyrinths of meaning and power through imaginaries unfold in distinct regions of the world. One interesting case is East Asia during World War 2, especially Japan in its unique modernization process. How did modernity arise in Japan and how was it received by its intelletuals? The Kyoto School, a school of philosophy that arose in connection with the Dept. of Philosophy at the Imperial University of Kyoto in the decades preceding and during the war, and which gave birth to a number of major modern philosophers rom the 1920 even up to the 60s, has been noted—quite infamously—for its participation, along with other intellectuals, in a number of published round-table discussions and symposia, critiquing modernity. Well-known today, in particular, are two such meetings: the ‘Overcoming Modernity’ symposium of 1942 organized by the Bungakkai journal and the ‘The World-Historical Standpoint and Japan’ symposia of 1941–42 organized by the Chūōkōron journal. In her article, ‘“Overcoming Modernity,” Overcoming What?: “Modernty” in Wartime Japan and its Implication,’ Atsuko Ichijo examines the Zeitgeist of the period that was behind this questioning of ‘modernity’ in connection with what these intellectuals meant by ‘modernity’ and its ‘overcoming.’ She suggests that Eisenstadt’s notion of ‘multiple modernities’ may be helpful in understanding the motives of these intellectuals.

The development of this concept allows a better understanding of the close link between the ability to condition and organize exchanges between an experience and its representation, and a procedure based on the rhythmical repetition of one, or several, paradigms in a determined and coherent body, which allows their reproduction and inflection 6. Strauss, Claudia. "The Imaginary". Anthropological Theory vol. 6 issue, 3 September 2006, p.322–344.Smith, Philip, and Jeffrey C. Alexander. 2005. Introduction: The New Durkheim. In The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Philip Smith, 1–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. John R. Searle uses the expression "social reality" rather than "social imaginary". [3] Castoriadis [ edit ]

Marcus, G.E. Technoscientific Imaginaries. Late Editions Vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. With contributions by Livia Polanyi, Michael M.J. Fischer, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Paul Rabinow, Allucquere Rosanne Stone, Gary Lee Downey, Diana and Roger Hill, Hugh Gusterson, Kim Laughlin, Kathryn Milun, Sharon Traweek, Kathleen Stewart, Mario Biagioli, James Holston, Gudrun Klein, and Christopher Pound. Steger, Manfred B.; James, Paul (2013). " 'Levels of Subjective Globalization: Ideologies, Imaginaries, Ontologies' ". Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 12 (1–2): 23. doi: 10.1163/15691497-12341240. Luhmann, Niklas. 1990. Meaning as Sociology’s Basic Concept. In Essays on Self-Reference, 21–79. New York/Oxford: Columbia University Press. Binder, Werner. 2016b. Magma und Scholle. Das soziale Imaginäre und die Wissenssoziologie. In Wissensforschung – Forschungswissen. Beiträge und Debatten zum 1. Sektionskongress der Wissenssoziologie, ed. Reiner Keller, Jürgen Raab, 533–543. Weinheim/Basel: BeltzJuventa.Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1988. Culture and Political Crisis. ‘Watergate’ and Durkheimian Sociology. In Durkheimian Sociology. Cultural Studies, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander, 187–224. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. We might add a third theme of importance for the demarcation of social imaginaries and for further work in this field: how does it relate to the linguistic turn – or turns, if we accept that there are different versions of it, phenomenological as well as analytical? Let us start with the very interesting but frustratingly sketchy section on “imaginary significations in language” in Castoriadis’s Imaginary Institution of Society; and we can draw on Taylor’s Language Animal to spell out some hints.

Elucidating new perspectives on the relationship of the past and present in a variety of world regions (in research on the emergence and transformations of democracy, public politics and movements, capitalism, nationalism, the entanglement of civilizations and states, and the cultural diversity of ways of being). Several media scholars and historians have analyzed the imaginary of technologies as they emerge, such as early communication technology, [23] mobile phones, [24] and the Internet. [25] [26] Serial imaginary [ edit ] Gilleard, Chris. 2017. From Collective Representations to Social Imaginaries: How Society Represents Itself to Itself. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology https://doi.org/10.1080/23254823.2017.1409130.Taylor C (2011) Dilemmas and connections: selected essays. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA Arnason, Johann P. 2003. Civilizations in Dispute. Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Alexander, Jeffrey C., Dominik Bartmanski, and Bernhard Giesen. 2012. Iconic Power. Materiality and Meaning in Social Life. New York/Houndmills: Palgrave.