Imagination and transformations to sustainable and just futures

Abstract

The ability of individuals and groups to identify, assess, and pursue alternative possible futures is an essential component of their ability to deliberately and collectively respond to major sustainability challenges rather than experience unguided or forced change. Deliberately engaging in transformation processes inevitably requires imagination. We refer to imagination for transformations as interdependent cognitive and social processes that create representations of present and possible future states of the world that can inform public deliberation, policy, decision making, and behavior from the individual to the global scale. We contend that imagination is an essential capacity for securing ecological, social, economic, and cultural well-being in times of rapid and often unpredictable global change. We sketch an emerging interdisciplinary research agenda on imagination as a transformational capacity and its role in transformation processes, building on contributions to a special issue on this subject. We specifically focus on imagination in relationship to transformative agency, causation, and individual-collective dynamics. Our aim is to identify research questions and challenges that are most pressing with a view to supporting efforts of transformations toward sustainability.

Crisis, transformation, and agency: Why are people going back-to-the-land in Greece?

“…By envisioning new futures characterized by different relationships to nature and work (Author et al . in prep), interviewees engaged in transgressive, potentially transformative, and deeply affective exercises of their imagination, all of which are essential to foster internal and external agencies and for the emergence of new sustainable and just future pathways (Moore and Milkoreit 2020 ).…”

“…Internal agency has been extensively discussed in psychology (Bandura 1982 , 2000 , 2006 ; Mitchell 1982 ) and applied in climate change and natural hazards vulnerability and adaptation studies that seek to understand the subjective dimensions of adaptive capacity (i.e., how people perceive risk and opportunity differently based on differing cognitive and psychosocial attributes) (Grothmann and Patt 2005 ; Frank et al 2011 ; Kuruppu and Liverman 2011 ; Fresque-Baxter and Armitage 2012 ; Eakin et al 2016 ). In transformations research, the emphasis is on the role of imagination and affect in shaping how people interpret and act in light of rapid social–ecological changes that shape anew their sense of place, identities and relationships with human and non-human others (Eakin et al 2019 ; Moore and Milkoreit 2020 ).…”

“…Marginalized individuals and communities often have their agency limited by structural barriers that prevent them from mobilize for change. Nonetheless, understanding agency remains fundamental because given equal capacity, some people manage to mobilize to imagine and seek to shape new futures while others do not (Moore and Milkoreit 2020 ).…”

Advancing a toolkit of diverse futures approaches for global environmental assessments

“…Imagination can be augmented in scenario approaches by using creative processes such as storytelling, or science-fiction prototyping (Milkoreit 2016;Merrie et al 2018), and experiential futures and games (Candy and Dunagan 2017;Vervoort 2019). Using imagination as an approach offers possibilities to facilitate the creation of narratives and visions in visual and interactive ways (Milojević 2017;Moore and Milkoreit 2020). Models can potentially demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of these imaginative transformation scenarios/ pathways where applicable.…”

Business models for the Anthropocene: accelerating sustainability transformations in the private sector

“…Unearthing the leverage points that allow for non-linear shifts in these pathways is a central task in pursuing sustainability (Abson et al 2017 ; Meadows 2008 ). To accelerate transformative shifts toward sustainability, the formation of new capabilities built on practices that nourish imagination, creativity, and play are foundational for collective action on sustainability and resilience (Pereira et al 2019 ; Moore and Milkoreit 2020 ). While fixed routines and processes in firms reinforce organizational culture, they also allow organizations to establish momentum, language and rhythms belonging to their codes of practice (Feldman 2000 ).…”