Imagination in people and societies on the move: A sociocultural psychology perspective

Abstract

This paper proposes a sociocultural psychology approach to mobility. It distinguishes geographical mobility, drawing on mobility studies, from symbolic mobility, that can be achieved through imagination. After the presentation of a theoretical framework, it examines the possible interplay between geographical and symbolic mobility through three case studies: that of people moving to a retirement home, that of a young woman’s trajectory through the Second World War in the UK, and that of families in repeated geographical mobility. The paper thus shows that imagination may expand or guide geographic mobility, but also, in some case, create some stability when geographic mobility becomes excessive. More importantly, it shows that over time, people engage in trajectories of imagination: their various geographical and symbolic mobilities can eventually transform their very mode of imagining.

Exploring the interplay between (im)mobility and imagination

“…Mobility, when not physically occurring, can be ultimately imagined. Tania Zittoun (Zittoun, 2020), Alexandra D'Onofrio and Johaness Sjoberg (D'Onofrio & Sjoberg, 2020), and Jovchelovitch et al (2020) in their studies show this very creative character of imagination, and how imaginative power can support and enable mobility also in cases in which mobility is not actually happening or when borders (or symbolic boundaries) seem difficult to cross. They make the case of various experiences where people or communities imagine moving, returning or alternative lives as migrants.…”

“…In Imagination in people and societies on the move: A sociocultural psychology perspective, Tania Zittoun (Zittoun, 2020) makes explicit all these three cases. The author explores how trajectories of imagining enable mobility and how mobility in turn transforms people's imagination by considering three very different cases of im/mobility: residents in a retirement home in the Swiss mountains, the war diary of a young woman during the Second World War moving internally in the UK and the case of families in repeated international professional mobility.…”

On imagination and imaginaries, mobility and immobility: Seeing the forest for the trees

“…Tania Zittoun’s (2020) ‘imaginary loop model’ is one way of trying to understand and explain, socioculturally, the process of imagination, as a symbolic kind of mobility through distal spheres of experiences, back and forth loops. It is important, however, not to confuse the process of imagination with its products , or what people imagine.…”

“…Underlying virtually all of the contributions is the philosophical question whether there is a ‘reality’ out there, present in an objective, unmediated form. Zittoun’s (2020) model of imagination, for example, suggests imaginative loops out of the here-and-now experiences connected to (material) reality. Drawing on this model, Gail Womersley describes how imagination can be locked in an ‘alternative reality’ (2020).…”

“…Both concepts have rich and complex genealogies—in Michel Foucault’s sense of connections between history, discourse, bodies and power. Reading the various contributions that make up the issue (Cangià, 2020; Cangià & Zittoun, 2020; D’Onofrio & Sjöberg, 2020; Jovchelovitch, Priego-Hernandez, Dedios, & Nogueira, 2020; Veale & Andres, 2020; Womersley, 2020; Zittoun, 2020), it becomes immediately clear that the respective authors are familiar with different bits and pieces of those genealogies. They do not necessarily share the same understanding and definition of both key concepts while, for the sake of simplicity, we are not even considering translation issues between languages and academic disciplines.…”