Social imaginaries and Big History: Towards a new planetary consciousness?

Abstract

A sustainable global future depends on a fundamental shift from the currently dominant national imaginary to a global imaginary. Most of human reasoning is based on prototypes, framings and metaphors that are seldom explicit; although they can be forged, usually they are merely presupposed in everyday reasoning and debates. The background social imaginary offers explanations of how ‘we’ fit together, how things go on between us, the expectations we have of each other and outsiders, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie those expectations. We argue that although the 17th and 18th century scientific and social revolutions generated prototypes, metaphors, framings and related conceptions of time and space that pointed towards a global imaginary, there were deep-seated structural reasons for the ‘nation’ to become, at least temporarily, the central category of human existence and belonging. By the early 21st century, there are already widespread metaphors that envisage the human world as a whole—from the ‘global shopping mall’ or ‘global village’ to the ‘spaceship Earth’. Yet, compared to the rich poetics of national imaginaries, the proposed prototypes, metaphors and framings are often thin. Evoking innovative myths about shared human existence and destiny, Big History helps to articulate the rising global imaginary in terms that motivate transformative and progressive politics in the 21st century.