Imaginaries and Imaginations: A Critical Review of the "Imaginative Turn" in Sociology of Education

• In Event: 31.033 - Imagination, Imaginaries, and Policy Sociology in Education: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed ‘an imaginative turn’ in the social sciences, in the form of a rejuvenated theoretical and empirical interest in the concepts of ‘imaginary’ and ‘imagination’. Scholarship concerning ‘the imaginary’ has emerged largely in relation to the work of Castoriadis (1987) and Taylor (2004), who understand the imaginary as an ontological field of production that provides societies with a normative sense of coherency and shared identity. Scholarship concerning the ‘imagination’ has emerged in relation to the work of Appadurai (1996), who understands imagination as a social practice that is central to forms of individual and collective agency, and as a key constitutive component of cultural and economic globalization.

In both sociology of education and policy studies in education, there has been an explosion of research that has sought to harness the concepts of imaginary or imagination to understand a wide range of issues. Theories about the imaginary, for example, have been used to conceptualize global shifts in education policy (Rizvi and Lingard 2010), young people’s identities in global cities (Dillabough and Kennelly 2010), and the political dispositions and practices of individuals in communities adversely influenced by global capitalism (Gibson-Graham 2006). Theories about the imagination have been used to argue the need for raising the aspirations of socially marginalized groups (Sellar and Gale 2011), for conceptualizing shifts in education policy (Savage 2011), and for analysing relationships between space, place and identity (Kenway, Kraack and Hickey-Moody 2006).

The proliferation of work associated with the imaginative turn has revealed important insights, but also poses a range of theoretical and empirical problems. A growing number of researchers, for example, use the terms imaginary or imagination but do not adequately clarify their use of these terms, what the explanatory power of such terms is, what normative work these terms do, or what the limits of these terms might be. Some researchers also use the terms imaginary and imagination interchangeably, assuming the terms mean the same thing and thus confusing or contradicting the distinct theoretical traditions from which the terms have emerged. In other cases, these concepts are used as ‘catch all’ terms for hegemonic cultural or political forces, indistinct from ideology.

This paper establishes a conceptual framework for discussing these critical issues, by examining the origins and appeal of the concepts of imaginary and imagination, and their recent proliferation in sociology of education. In particular, it considers differences between the imaginary and imagination, as well as relationships between these terms that are often ignored or silenced in contemporary scholarship. It will also examine important distinctions between these concepts and the notion of ideology. In doing so, the paper will combine a theoretical analysis of the imaginary and imagination with a critical literature review of empirical uses of each concept in sociology of education research. By critically examining the imaginative turn and its manifestations in contemporary research, the paper will contribute valuable critical insights and serve as a provocation to scholars working in this expanding field.

Authors

• Fazal A. Rizvi, University of Melbourne

• Glenn Clifton Savage, The University of Melbourne