Social Imaginaries In A Globalizing World

How to study the contemporary dynamics between the religious, the nonreligious and the secular in a globalizing world? Obviously, their relationship is not an empirical datum, liable to the procedures of verification or of logical deduction. We are in need of alternative conceptual and methodological tools. This volume argues that the concept of ‘social imaginary’ as it is used by Charles Taylor, is of utmost importance as a methodological tool to understand these dynamics. The first section is dedicated to the conceptual clarification of Taylor's notion of social imaginaries both through a historical study of their genealogy and through conceptual analysis. In the second section, we clarify the relation of ‘social imaginaries’ to the concept of (religious) worldviewing, understood as a process of truth seeking. Furthermore, we discuss the practical usefulness of the concept of social imaginaries for cultural scientists, by focusing on the concept of human rights as a secular social imaginary. In the third and final section, we relate Taylor's view on the role of social imaginaries and the new paths it opens up for religious studies to other analyses of the secular-religious divide, as they nowadays mainly come to the fore in the debates on what is coined as the ‘post-secular.’

DIVAn accounting of the varying forms of social imaginary that have underpinned the rise of Western modernity./div

Other Cities, Other Worlds brings together leading scholars of cultural theory, urban studies, art, anthropology, literature, film, architecture, and history to look at non-Western global cities. The contributors focus on urban imaginaries, the ways that city dwellers perceive or imagine their own cities. Paying particular attention to the historical and cultural dimensions of urban life, they bring to their essays deep knowledge of the cities they are bound to in their lives and their work. Taken together, these essays allow us to compare metropolises from the so-called periphery and gauge processes of cultural globalization, illuminating the complexities at stake as we try to imagine other cities and other worlds under the spell of globalization. The effects of global processes such as the growth of transnational corporations and investment, the weakening of state sovereignty, increasing poverty, and the privatization of previously public services are described and analyzed in essays by Teresa P. R. Caldeira (São Paulo), Beatriz Sarlo (Buenos Aires), Néstor García Canclini (Mexico City), Farha Ghannam (Cairo), Gyan Prakash (Mumbai), and Yingjin Zhang (Beijing). Considering Johannesburg, the architect Hilton Judin takes on themes addressed by other contributors as well: the relation between the country and the city, and between racial imaginaries and the fear of urban violence. Rahul Mehrotra writes of the transitory, improvisational nature of the Indian bazaar city, while AbdouMaliq Simone sees a new urbanism of fragmentation and risk emerging in Douala, Cameroon. In a broader comparative frame, Okwui Enwezor reflects on the proliferation of biennales of contemporary art in African, Asian, and Latin American cities, and Ackbar Abbas considers the rise of fake commodity production in China. The volume closes with the novelist Orhan Pamuk’s meditation on his native city of Istanbul. Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Teresa P. R. Caldeira, Néstor García Canclini, Okwui Enwezor, Farha Ghannam, Andreas Huyssen, Hilton Judin, Rahul Mehrotra, Orhan Pamuk, Gyan Prakash, Beatriz Sarlo, AbdouMaliq Simone, Yingjin Zhang

This book offers a new perspective into the world of international schools and the lucrative industry that accompanies it. It examines how the notion of the ‘global’ becomes a successful commodity, an important social imaginary and a valuable identity marker for these communities of privileged migrants and host country nationals. The author invites the reader on an ethnographic journey through an international school community located in Germany – illuminating the central features that define and maintain the sector, including its emphasis on ‘globality’, engagement with the concept of ‘Third Culture Kid’, and its wider contentious relationship with the ‘local’. While much attention is placed on ‘global citizenship’, international school communities experience degrees of isolation, limited mobility, over-protection and dependency on the school community– impacting their everyday lives, inside and outside the school. This book is guided by larger questions pertaining to the education and mobilities of ‘migrant’ youths and young adults, as well as the notion of what it means to be ‘global’ today.

Manfred B. Steger’s extensive body of work on globalization has made him one of the most influential scholars working in the field of global studies today. His conceptualization of the global imaginary is amongst the most significant developments in thinking about globalization of the last three decades. Revisiting the Global Imaginary pays tribute to Steger’s contribution to our intellectual history with essays on the evolution, ontological foundations and methodological approaches to the study of the global imaginary. The transdisciplinary framework of this field of enquiry lends itself to investigation in diverse sites. This volume of essays explores practices associated with the reproduction of the global imaginary in such diverse sites as mobile money, Irish pubs, cyber-capitalism, urban space, music in post-apartheid South Africa and global political movements, amongst others.

A tour de force examination of the contemporary ideological landscape by one of the world's leading analysts of globalization.

Travelling through various historical and geographical contexts, Social Imaginaries of Space explores diverse forms of spatiality, examining the interconnections which shape different social collectives. Proposing a theory on how space is intrinsically linked to the making of societies, this book examines the history of the spatiality of modern states and nations and the social collectives of Western modernity in a contemporary light.

The critical role of visual literacies in the 21st century realm is widely acknowledged and the construction of the profile of the visual literate person as a responsible participant in the face of global challenged is a top listed goal in nowadays agenda.