This article outlines an approach to a critical cosmopolitan social theory derived from the thought of the Japanese philosopher, Watsuji Tetsurō. In order to develop this, his thought is positioned against the works of the British sociologist, Gerard Delanty, and the Argentinian semiotician, Walter Mignolo. This will be done through the concepts of space, time and the imagination. From their respective intellectual positions these other two have attempted to develop an approach to social theory that cannot be reduced to the (...) optic of conceptual Eurocentrism. However, while they have made significant and important contributions to the development of critical approaches to cosmopolitan social theory, of providing tools to re-imagine the world, they have done so through maintaining old ways of seeing the world. What emerges from Watsuji’s work is an account of a critical cosmopolitanism that moves beyond conceptual Eurocentrism through an approach to social theory grounded in a relational social ontology. His focus on the ontology of social relationships also provides a cosmopolitanism that makes room for the ‘non-social’ and identifies a cosmopolitan view of the world as plural and as ‘hetero-spatial-temporal’. The social ontology developed by Watsuji also forces us to reconsider our understanding of the imagination, and its potential, beyond the dichotomy of an individual faculty or the product of social context. By expanding the notion of the Imaginal of Chiara Bottici, the article introduces a new understanding of the imagination into the debate. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks (...) for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

The article focuses on the historical resources of the China’s model. Understanding the model is one of necessary preconditions of an analysis of China’s dynamic rise and development in recent decades. First, the article analyses the concept of historical development of multiple civilisations and modernities. It then examines the characteristics of China’s old civilisation and the associated model. It ends by showing how the historical Silk Road lives on in an updated modernised global version.