Hegemonies of the social imaginary: An analytical conceptualization

Abstract

The concept of social imaginary is central in the social sciences to grasp the cultural dimension of social and political action. The classic works of Cornelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor have traced – in their difference and complementarity – the theoretical contours within which to frame the concept of social imaginary, also in temporal terms. This article critically reviews the idea of these two authors to underline the importance of considering the social imaginary as a battlefield, where the stake is the definition of a new possible reality. The article highlights the heuristic and analytical potential of the conception of the social imaginary as a battle for hegemony of the meaning to be attributed to reality, generated by a critique of the existing that elaborates, in an original way, the future on the basis of the present and the past, and which has as its objective the orientation of collective action toward a particular form of social order. The imaginaries linked to the climate crisis will be used as an exemplary contemporary arena in which the battle for hegemony of the social imaginary is fought. The analytical proposal developed in the article is that the social imaginary should be viewed as a specific social field of struggle to gain hegemony through the creation of ‘plausible’ and (potentially) ‘realizable’ scenarios that render specific actions necessary.

Framing social imaginary

Since the 1970s, in social sciences, the concept of social imaginary has been the subject of a fruitful debate that has sought to define its features and contents, and to highlight its heuristic potential to grasp the importance of cultural dimensions in understanding social and political action – that is, how social reality is constructed, experienced, and made accountable. Today, in a world where the social imaginary is increasingly intertwined with technology, and where even utopian visions are monopolized by tech billionaires, taking the hegemonic struggle around the imaginary into account becomes paramount.

This article critically discusses the concept of the social imaginary, developed by Cornelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor, to highlight the analytical utility of considering the social imaginary as a ‘battlefield’, a conflictual space in which different images of the future clash, intermingle, and organize to define how to act in the present. This requires reflection on both the origins of the contents of the various social imaginaries that compete with each other – in a given historical and social context – and on the means by which they are conveyed and transformed in an attempt to become hegemonic, that is, to become the shared social imaginary. Thus, in this article, we will use the plural term to refer to the plurality of future imaginaries that are continually produced, and the singular term to refer to the aspiration, never fully realizable, of becoming the future imaginary that imposes itself as the only possible one. Hence, to develop this analysis – as an in-between space between Castoriadis and Taylor – we will focus in particular on the dimension of temporality, on the connections between the representation of the past, present, and future and the ability to develop a social imaginary that is alternative to the current common sense.

Social theory has pursued two main lines of analysis. On the one hand, the social imaginary has been understood as the result of the innate human capacity to create or give shape to the social forms of collective existence (Castoriadis, 1975[1987], 1997, 2007), a process whereby a ‘new possible’ is produced, a distinctive social reality is shaped. On the other hand, the social imaginary has been understood as the symbolic matrix – not fully conscious or explicable – within which human beings can give meaning to their social reality, think of themselves, and act as active social subjects: that is, the symbolic set of factors that constitutes the preconditions, the background of the taken-for-granted that regulates the social fabric (Taylor, 2002, 2004, 2007). In both cases, the social imaginary is seen as a complex symbolic configuration that characterizes an era, or a society (modern imaginary, democratic imaginary, capitalist imaginary, technological imaginary, etc.).

The theoretical and empirical analysis related to the development of the concept of the social imaginary in the social sciences can be seen as part of the ‘cultural turn’ (Chaney, 1994; Jameson, 1998) and the related emphasis on agency or subjectivity and the rejection of deterministic models of society associated with structural-functionalism (Arnason, 1989; Nash, 2001). In this context, the concept of social imaginary has been an effective tool with which to highlight the construction character of social reality and the interactive and iterative relationship between agency and structural constraints.

Despite its potential utility, the concept of the social imaginary has not been free from criticism (Calhoun et al., 2015; Roher and Thompson, 2023; Stankiewicz, 2016). In particular, critics have highlighted its under-theorization and its sometimes superficial use as an imprecise synonym of culture, social representation, ideology, and individual imagination. This article aims to suggest the usefulness of conceiving the social imaginary as a battlefield, characterized by constant struggle and confrontation between different social imaginaries competing for hegemony. It proposes a concept of the social imaginary not as a neutral space of representations but rather as a space that foregrounds the critical potential of images of the future. This definition of social imaginary highlights the conflictual nature and dimensions of power that define the scope of each social imaginary in its specific socio-historical context. This can help clarify how reinterpreting the present and the past, and prefiguring the future, can favor one or another content of competing social imaginaries, orienting aspirations, expectations, and collective social action in a specific direction.

In the next sections, the article introduces the central aspects of the concept of social imaginary developed by Cornelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor – the two theorists who have contributed most to introducing the concept in the social sciences – highlighting its strengths and underlining where it is possible to reinforce its heuristic capacity. The aim is not to provide an exegesis of the two authors’ work, nor to precisely contrast their theoretical perspectives – an analysis already adequately developed by other authors (Adams, 2023; Gaonkar, 2002; Strauss, 2006). Rather, the aim is to highlight the central points of the two authors’ work that define the conceptual space of the social imaginary, as it is primarily used in current social science debates, and then to indicate a possible in-between area for moving beyond the two conceptual polarities represented by these two authors – one emphasizing creativity, the other focusing on everyday life and common sense. The attempt is to move in the direction of a conceptualization that takes into account the plurality of social imaginaries and the conflictual nature that characterizes the representation of the future. The article then illustrates some aspects of the current debate and proposes a conception of the social imaginary that foregrounds the dimension of conflict for hegemony of the definition of the symbolic matrices

that frame individual subjects’ lived experience of an inordinately complex world and/or inform collective calculation about that world. They comprise a specific configuration of genres, discourses and styles and thereby constitute the semiotic moment of a network of social practices in a given social field, institutional order, or wider social formation. (Jessop, 2010: 344)

The proposal is to conceptualize the social imaginary as always constituted by different social imaginaries of the future competing to define concrete forms of action in the present. Thus conceived, social imaginaries emerge from a critique of the existing and the ability to elaborate the future in original ways based on a critical review of the present and the past, intending to create a particular social order (Colombo and Rebughini, 2025). The imaginaries linked to the climate crisis will be used as an exemplary contemporary arena in which the battle for hegemony of the social imaginary is fought.

Conceptualizations of the social imaginary

In developing his theory of the imaginary institution of society, Cornelius Castoriadis argues that an imaginary creation essentially defines different societies. He proposes a distinction between the instituting imaginary, that is, the creative force that produces meanings, and the instituted imaginary, that is, the meanings that, in a particular historical period, are stabilized in institutions. For Castoriadis, the radical imaginary is a creation ex nihilo that extends beyond social experience. It is not an interpretation of – much less a reflection on – something existing:

The imaginary of which I am speaking is not an image of. It is the unceasing and essentially undetermined (social-historical and psychical) creation of figures/forms/images, on the basis of which alone there can ever be a question of ‘something’. What we call ‘reality’ and ‘rationality’ are its works. (Castoriadis, 1975[1987]: 3)

The radical imaginary is conceived as the constant emergence of representations, desires, and affects that find the possibility of stabilization – and, therefore, of existence – through processes of signification. It is the productive energies of self-creation, which, in turn, generate social imaginary significations and the institutions of each particular society (Elliott, 2012). The radical imagination therefore constitutes an essential human capacity – a constant magmatic capacity, potentially always ready to emerge – which consists in creating new meanings; meanings which, to exist, must take the form of symbolizations. That is, they must be fixed in a communicable form (word, image, action, object, etc.) which thus becomes ‘real’ and a part of ‘reality’ (part of the world, objects of experience, ideas, rules, mores, institutions, etc.), which becomes an established imaginary (Castoriadis, 1997: 149; Arnason, 1989).

The collectivity, Castoriadis (1997: 131) observes,

can exist only as instituted. Its institutions are always its own creation, but usually, once created, they appear to the collectivity as given (by ancestors, God, nature, reason, the laws of history, the working of competition, etc.); they become fixed, rigid, and are worshipped.

Once created, both social imaginary meanings and their symbolic externalizations can crystallize and consolidate to constitute the established social imaginary. The latter ensures the continuity and stability of society, the reproduction and repetition of those same forms that henceforth become ‘the reality’, regulate the life of human beings, and last until a slow historical change or a new, powerful creation modifies them or radically replaces them with others.

Castoriadis deserves credit for having indicated with the idea of radical imaginary the capacity to create new realities, ‘the capacity to see in a thing what it is not, to see it other than it is’ (Castoriadis, 1975[1987]: 127). The notion of the social imaginary highlights the constructed nature of social reality and foregrounds the importance of the creative force in giving form and consistency to social experience. However, the insistence on the creative ex nihilo nature of the social imaginary risks de-historicizing and de-socializing the processes whereby reality is socially constructed. For Castoriadis, the meanings created by the radical imaginary do not have a referent; they do not refer to something that already exists; they do not imitate a given model; they do not follow an already-established rule; they are not a representation, a modification or a substitution of what pre-exists (Adams, 2023).

If the imaginary is considered as a ‘creation out of nothing’, it is problematic to account for its critical dimension and possible political use. It is difficult to think that the consolidation of the existing or its subversion, the legitimation and criticism of the already given, occurs ‘in a vacuum’, without referents to the existing state of affairs. Rather, they always occur within a reality that is already given. They start from a series of figures that are already rooted in the shared social imaginary, and in which a critical reflection, a distancing, or questioning can subsequently be inserted (Adams, 2017; Ricoeur, 1986). If the imaginary is considered as pure creation, the political dimension of the radical imaginary and the possibility of strategies and tactics that use it to delegitimize, contest, and modify the existing order – symbolic, material, and political – are hidden. The ability to consider a more conscious use of the social imaginary to construct certain social realities is lost. It becomes difficult to consider the production of images of the future as a possible form of action around which collective identities and forms of action that bring into play ‘resistances’, alternatives to the taken-for-granted, conflicts are created and condensed. There is thus a risk of reproducing a rigid opposition between a magmatic, innate, constitutive creative force, and an institutional structure that tends to constrain, channel, and repress it. What remains under the surface is the constant tension between what is already given and the capacity for criticism, the middle ground between pure creativity and institutionalization or ideologization. This intermediate space is precisely our area of interest, the constant battle for the definition of reality in which at stake is the hegemonic capacity to define in a stable, shared, and definitive way what this reality consists of.

It is important not to restrict the social imaginary to a radical opposition between the existing – the structure and its constraints – and the possible – the agency and its creative capacity. It is, instead, useful to place it in the space of a constant, co-constitutive relationship between the existing and its transformation, between the already given and the still possible. Thus posited, the social imaginary can emerge as a critical action, as a constant push to transform the existing into new forms of social order. In this way, the social imaginary can be conceived as a conflictual space in which a battle is fought for hegemony over the meaning of social reality.

A further significant contribution to developing the concept of the imaginary in the social sciences has been made by Charles Taylor. He defines the social imaginary as ‘The ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations’ (Taylor, 2004: 23). These constitute the common-sense ‘background’ of lived social experience.

The imaginary is thus conceived as a horizon of shared meanings – which remain largely tacit and pre-reflective – that constitute the taken-for-granted social fabric, a framework in which to understand social reality and our place in it. In Taylor’s (2007: 30) words, ‘The social imaginary is that common understanding that makes common practices possible’. Social imaginaries do not consist of sets of ideas; rather, they are what enable, through sense-making, the practices of a society (Taylor, 2002).

They embody (1) a sense of the normal expectations we have of one another, (2) the kind of common knowledge that enables us to conduct the social practices that constitute our social life and (3) a sense of the world in which our lives intersect in the co-conduction of common practice.

In this case, the social imaginary is seen as a prerequisite for the functioning of society; it constitutes a ‘common understanding’ of our social life that is both ‘factual’ and ‘normative’ (Bazzani, 2023: 387). Social imaginaries define the moral order within which perception, interpretation, judgment, understanding, and action acquire meaning, and within which people imagine their communal existence (Steger, 2009). Unlike Castoriadis, who tends to consider the radical social imaginary to be in action in specific, and rare, historical moments when the tension toward autonomy stimulates the renewal and reinterpretation of the existing, for Taylor, the social imaginary does not manifest itself only in the moment of innovation; instead, it always operates as an interpretative framework, a habitus, a compass (Taylor, 2007).

From Taylor’s perspective, the social imaginary should therefore be understood as a specification of culture, as the domain of meaning that refers to the idea of society and that provides the elements essential for understanding social reality and oneself as a member of a society (Vandevoordt et al., 2018: 183). It would be useful for indicating the implicit moral order that orients and ensures the stability and meaning of the constructed social order. It would guarantee order and integration, as well as the possibility of imagining oneself as a member of a community, and of assuming a shared collective identity.

While Castoriadis underscores the human capacity to create what is not materially present, Taylor tends to consider the social imaginary as shared, unproblematic, and non-confrontational (Grant, 2014). But this perspective risks reducing the social imaginary to doxa, to common knowledge, so that it loses the characteristic of being a critical force able to transcend what is already given. As a premise and horizon of meaning that defines the forms and identities of a community, the social imaginary ends up flattening out on established reality, giving insufficient emphasis to the open, dynamic, and conflictual nature of the different possible imaginaries competing with each other, within the same society, to define social reality. This vision tends to hide how imaginaries are always ‘situated’: that is, they incorporate and express different social positions. The social imaginary understood as an unreflective background, as shared common sense, risks presenting itself as a simple description of the hegemonic imaginary or as the representation of the society of the dominant group. The social imaginary thus tends to be seen as a vehicle of order and integration, the taken-for-granted that works because no one questions it (Schütz, 1944).

Again, the space between Castoriadis and Taylor is that of a social imaginary understood neither as pure imaginative creativity nor as uncontested shared meaning, but rather as what can emerge from uncertainty, the ability to grasp elements of change, fractures, and spaces for action within an already-established imaginary. All this has to do with power and the presence of alternative competing social imaginaries (Warner, 2002). This concerns how one specific imaginary is formed rather than others, or how it is constantly subjected to criticism by other possible imaginaries.

Toward a conflictual conceptualization of social imaginaries: The role of temporality

Considering the contributions of Castoriadis and Taylor as two key components of the debate on the social imaginary, let us now move within but also beyond these two positions to elaborate a conceptualization of the social imaginary that takes the issues of power and conflict into account. The element of temporality is a dimension we use to analyze this median space between Castoriadis and Taylor.

From Castoriadis’ reflections, it is useful to retain the idea that the imaginary should be associated with the creative force that gives shape to social reality. However, such creativity has to be situated in time and space and cannot be an a-historical and pre-social drive that arises ex nihilo. Nor does it seem sufficient to link the social imaginary to historical contexts through a purely hermeneutic dimension that connects the creative character of the imaginary to the ‘open’ character – always interpretable in a new way and within a new and different horizon of meaning – of every meaning (Adams, 2023; Ricoeur, 2007). It seems more useful to conceive of the social imaginary as a driver of temporally situated reaction to the established social order, as an alternative or an adjustment to what is already given, as the capacity to transcend the present and give shape to a different possible reality. Such reshaping, transforming, or opposing the existing enables us to grasp its ‘political’ dimension and situating it in relation to the interpretation of the past/present relationship, as well as in relation to the foreshadowing of the future. Highlighting the critical nature of the social imaginary, its tendency to overcome what is already given, does not entail recognizing a necessarily progressive nature, an intrinsic force of emancipation. Imagining the future can nourish both openings – in which the present is transcended into a future dimension – and closures – in which the present is denied or exorcized in an escape into the past. In this way, it is possible to

elucidate the ways in which cultural configurations of meaning creatively configure the human encounter with – and formation (as articulation and doing) of – the world, on the one hand, and, articulate their centrality for the emergence, formation and reproduction of social institutions and practices, that is, of social change and social continuity, on the other. (Adams et al., 2015: 19)

From Taylor’s work, it is useful to retain the idea that the imaginary constitutes the horizon of meaning within which understanding and action are possible. However, this position is more focused on the present and on the common sense that makes it possible, but less attentive to the foreshadowing of the future or the elaboration of the past. Therefore, it is analytically useful to conceive the social imaginary as a battlefield rather than as uniform and shared, an arena in which different actors act to direct common choices in view of the institution of specific forms of organization of collective life. What is at stake is defining a distinctive horizon of meaning, a possible image of the world as ‘reality’, normality, and the norm.

We believe it might be useful to conceptualize an analytical space between the construction of possible worlds and the crystallization of these worlds in a shared present. Specifically, this involves considering the process of producing social imaginaries as indications of possible futures arising from a critical or problematic vision of the present, and viewing this field of production of possible futures as characterized by a constant struggle between competing possibilities. It therefore involves the different social imaginaries that, in a particular historical-social context, confront, clash, and merge to become hegemonic – that is, to become the norm, the reality, the only credible, and valid shared social imaginary. This is not simply a work of fantasy, but a political enterprise that aims to transform the present using, as a goal or warning, a specific representation of the future.

Our analytical proposal is to consider the social imaginary as the specific domain in which plausible future social scenarios are generated to guide the present. This domain is a battlefield where different social imaginaries (always plural) compete in a particular socio-historical context to become hegemonic – that is, to become the shared, true, and inevitable (singular) social imaginary. Following Gramsci (1975), hegemony can never be achieved completely and stably. The battle is played out at the cultural level, but its stakes are political: orienting and regulating interactions and institutions in a specific way. It is a battle fought with persuasion, the ability to gain support, and the generation of emotions that convey a sense of involvement and commitment. Precisely for this reason, the social imaginary is a battlefield for the hegemony of shared meaning, in which different possible images of society, tied to different ideal and material interests, are constructed in a situated temporality, with reference to certain representations of the past and attempts to prefigure the future in present practices. What is at stake in this battle is the ability to orient experiences and actions, the understanding of reality, and the normative coordinates that regulate collective life.

The concept of the social imaginary helps to envision that part of the significant action that, even starting from what is available, is able to create new connections and new meanings. In this way the active action – autonomous, critical, unexpected, disconcerting, and astonishing – of human subjects is recognized, without necessarily presenting it as an isolated action detached from that ‘background’ and those ‘conditions’ that make it possible and endowed with recognizable meaning.

Thus conceived, the social imaginary can be considered as a potential resource for social critique: being able to create a different image of the existing world implies being able to think about it differently, to start from the existing world and move beyond it. The analytical specificity of the concept of the social imaginary we propose is to indicate that space of social action that intends to impact the present, transforming it, through the prefiguration of the future. This is a generative capacity connected to the capacity to imagine alternatives to what is perceived as unsuitable, unjust, incomplete, undesirable, or harmful, but also to foreshadow the consequences of current actions. It is a form of criticism constituted by ‘a web of temporally forward-oriented, projective symbolic orders and orders of knowledge, which is expressed through and embodied in futuring practices and discourses’ (Altstaedt, 2024: 281). While common knowledge – the taken-for-granted – tends to be conservative, justifying, induces unreflective practical action (that’s how it’s done) and is oriented toward an everlasting present, the emerging of a new imaginary is proactive, revolutionary, or aiming to restore the past, utopian, or dystopian; it induces an action of change and is oriented toward another future.

The social imaginary involves the perception of uncertainty and the transient nature of the present; it entails the feeling that something is changing and should change. The critique of the present linked to the production of social imaginaries is based on the feeling/belief that tomorrow cannot – and should not – be like the present. For that reason, the production of social imaginaries is linked to a temporal dimension: to the creation of a future conceived as a critique of the present, even when a return to the past is imagined (Cantó-Milà and Seebach, 2024; Oomen et al., 2022: 253–254).

Although social imaginaries are configured as alternatives to the present, they maintain a strong significance for the present because they define the field of the possible oriented toward the (desired or feared) future (Beckert, 2013). They also include an evaluation of the past that has led to the present reality. They contribute to creating an organized field of social practices in which the present action is connected with the aspiration for the future and a critique of the past.

The analysis of our imaginaries of the future holds significance because these imaginaries profoundly shape the present. They influence the decisions we make, the actions we take, the perspectives we share, the lifestyles we create and follow and the causes we champion. (Cantó-Milà and Seebach, 2024: 304)

Therefore, the imagined alternative reality is always temporally ‘situated’: that is, imaginable and thinkable starting from specific social situations, power relations, interests, and experiences. Successfully imagining – that is, conceiving an ‘alternative’ reality capable of becoming a social, shared, credible imaginary – requires the ability to exercise power. Producing the social imaginary also constitutes a form of power: this constructs reality in specific ways that include asymmetries of power. By associating Gramsci with Foucault (1975), it is possible to consider a social imaginary as a form of disciplining and construction of a hegemonic vision of reality, a power able to guide people’s actions without imposing itself by force, but rather with seduction and consensus about a vision of the future. Social imaginaries aim at creating a specific ‘reality’ which orients actions; they must be able to have a propulsive force that pushes people to overcome the inertia of the existing. For this reason, the emotional dimension that the different social imaginaries are able to elicit is central to their ability to fight in the struggle for hegemony of the meanings to be attributed to social life (Oomen, 2023). The emotional content that social imaginaries are able to generate ensures what (Bourdieu, 1990; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) called illusio: an affective orientation toward things in the world that are perceived as valuable or worth pursuing. The emotional aspects of social imaginaries create the feeling that ‘I am involved’, ‘It matters to me’. Emotional investment, in the present, here and now, makes social imaginaries performative; they constitute a push to action guided by the belief in the value of what is pursued and by the need to act to implement a specific social reality (Threadgold, 2020).

To assume the status of a social imaginary, the meanings produced in the imagination need to stabilize, to transform themselves into ‘possible’, ‘plausible’ and ‘credible’, concealing the particular and contingent constructed character that is intrinsic to them. Social imaginaries are constructed through the creation, expression, distribution, circulation, and contestation of symbolic resources: all elements that imply and convey power asymmetries. Producing a social imaginary requires the possibility/ability to exercise a power able to define as ‘credible’ or ‘true’ what is continually produced. Often, a too superficial constructionist perspective limits itself to focusing attention on the construction process, underestimating the importance of stabilizing what has been built. Socially, it is not significant to produce social reality if it does not have shared effects, if it is not considered worthy of attention and true, and if it is not able to institutionalize itself and present itself as ‘reality’. The crucial aspect is not ‘building’ but being able to make such constructs – always in competition with other possible alternatives – ‘real’, ‘necessary’, and ‘common’.

Locations of social imaginaries: The battlefield of climate change

Taking into consideration an exemplary case, we now briefly illustrate the competition between two broad and different social imaginaries on climate change in the contemporary debate, in order to highlight the usefulness of conceiving the social imaginary as a conflictual field of resistance and creation of ‘not yet realities’. The purpose of this example is to give greater substance to the argument put forward so far. Among all the battles of the social imaginary waged by current social mobilizations, that on climate is definitely the most exemplary and effective.

Indeed, the competition between climate change social imaginaries is highly political, being linked to economic and ideological orientations, national strategies and international tensions, and therefore to global power dynamics and power relations. Moreover, the battle over the imaginary of the environmental crisis is of central importance because of its connections with the broader imaginary of the technologies that increasingly govern our lives.

The broad social imaginaries we consider are, on the one hand, those produced within conservative thought, and on the other, those promoted by various social movements active in the fight against climate change. This polarized example is useful in shedding light on how the battlefield is created.

Aware of the inevitable generalization and internal differences, in this comparison we will consider each of the two camps – the conservative one and that of environmental social movement activists – as part of the same epistemic community. That is, we will consider them as largely sharing the main dimensions of their social imaginaries and highlight what collectively differentiates and contrasts them with the competing social imaginaries. The comparison will therefore focus on the shared aspects and overlaps of the imaginaries within the two camps, placing less emphasis on the internal differentiations within each camp. The goal is to highlight both the different temporal articulations between past, present, and future, and the political stakes, that is, the different types of social relations that the two imaginaries contrast. In analyzing these two different social imaginaries that are in conflict to gain hegemony, the aim is not to provide a detailed empirical analysis of the two conflicting fields, but rather to highlight some examples of the analytical direction that the concept of the social imaginary as a battlefield allows to develop. ¹ The example is simply intended to indicate a possible direction for future, more detailed research on the social imaginaries generated by the climate crisis, highlighting how they compete to shape a particular present. We believe that the battle between eco-neoliberal positions and those of environmental activists to impose a certain image of the consequences of climate change as ‘real’, ‘desirable’, or ‘to be avoided’, even at the cost of reducing their respective positions to ideal types, reflects the main lines of tension currently underway in the battle between two different models of society. We believe that highlighting the essential lines of the two different social imaginaries created with respect to climate change is useful for grasping the political stakes of social imaginaries and highlighting the analytical utility of viewing the social imaginary as a battlefield where cultural hegemony is at stake.

Social imaginaries play an important role in shaping climate knowledge and action. They promote, criticize, or destabilize visions of the future that favor or inhibit specific social practices, public policies, and active citizen participation. Social imaginaries on climate change provide a clear example of how criticism, dissatisfaction, and fear of the present produce future scenarios that are simultaneously a criticism of the past – of the factors that have caused the current situation – an accusation of the present – of the responsibilities of those who maintain the status quo and do not intervene to prevent future risks – and an original elaboration of the future – of the common necessity to address the already real consequences of the crisis. They give shape and substance to possible different worlds beyond the constraints of the given present (Yusoff and Gabrys, 2011) and compete for recognition, power, and control over common-sense knowledge that makes it possible to adapt, overcome, control, or reduce the danger of climate change (Davoudi and Machen, 2022).

In the exemplary case of climate change, the dimension of temporality is decisive in shaping the social imaginary and delineating the space of competition between opposing visions. Both conservative camps and ecological social movements tend to view climate change as real and significant, but they differ in the temporal perspective within which it is situated. Having largely overcome the opposition between climate deniers and environmental activists that characterized the debate at the end of the last century, which was played out primarily in the scientific field and based on evidence denying or supporting the hypothesis of climate change, the debate today tends to be firmly situated in the political realm, that is, in defining what measures to adopt to adapt society to the evidence of climate change. In the realm of political dispute, social imaginaries assume a central role and demonstrate their capacity to generate futures that can guide present actions.

The social imaginaries produced by the conservative camp tend to be situated within a timeline of substantial continuity with the present. Acknowledging the reality of climate change, they construct a future scenario in which it can be addressed thanks to available technical expertise and economic resources. The problematic nature of the situation is used to foster a sense of belonging and community closure. In this social imaginary, to ensure that the future characterized by climate change does not threaten the current way of life, it is necessary, on the one hand, to implement technological measures and control systems that guarantee climate safety, including through centralizing decision-making and reducing the democratic procedures justified by the state of exception created by the crisis. On the other hand, protecting the current way of life is considered a priority, justifying, if necessary to achieve this goal, the sacrifice of the rights and even the survival of the weakest. The potentially problematic future induced by climate change fosters a social imaginary in which a zero-sum struggle for the survival of the fittest is inevitably triggered. Not losing this struggle means being prepared to exclude those who might pose a threat and to strengthen the chances of success of those with the most economic, technological, and military resources. The sense of fear and threat to the security of one’s way of life is balanced, in this social imaginary, by the idea that the dominant group can be ‘resilient’ and, thanks to its resources and privileged position, is able to protect itself and overcome the crisis by closing itself off in enclaves with borders strong enough to keep physical threats and those posed by competing groups outside (Adloff and Hilbrich, 2021; Campion, 2023). By leveraging trust and fear, this social imaginary supports and justifies actions in the present that promote an autocratic society in which the suspension of certain democratic guarantees constitutes the necessary cost of avoiding the most negative effects of the climate crisis, allowing the dominant group to survive without renouncing its positions of privilege. This perspective supports the imaginary of a society

that – in the interest of further self-aggrandizement – overly departs from the values of equality, human rights, the rule of law, or a good life for all, and instead, ever more openly relies on the right of the strongest – physically, technologically, and financially. (Blühdorn, 2025: 21)

On the contrary, the social imaginary produced by climate activists presents a radical break with the present. From this perspective, the essential rhetorical elements are the idea of social justice, rather than survival. Current reality requires radical transformation because it leads to a future of increasing injustice. The future is represented as problematic because it is the result of unjust choices and behaviors, both past and present. This social imaginary is openly generated by a critique of the existing order and seeks to offer an alternative theory of the role of science and technology and the relationship between science and society (Latour, 2017); of the economic principles of profit and utility and the logic of capitalism and consumerism (Moore, 2015); of the relationship among human beings, other living species and the natural environment (Haraway, 2016); of a rigid distinction between humans and nature that sees the former as masters of the latter (Braidotti, 2019); of the rules of an elitist and self-referential politics that excludes the voices of minorities and young generations (Pickard, 2019).

The social imaginary of these social movements places solidarity, sharing, and the development of a community in harmony with the ecosystem, with non-humans and other-than-humans at its center. The themes of care and intersectionality become central. Care is an important element of a prefigurative politics, in which caring for what surrounds us, in our daily experience and in the here and now, is a concrete way to give consistency and present reality to the social imaginary (Fians, 2023). On the other hand, the idea of intersectionality helps situate the climate crisis within a broader context of social justice, thus underscoring the critical dimension and the drive for transformative action in the present that characterizes this social imaginary. Intersectionality serves to construct a social imaginary in which reducing the risks of climate change necessarily entails a commitment to reducing gender and racial discrimination, to combating an excessive gap between rich and poor, and to promoting forms of grassroots democratic participation that foster the expression and listening of the interests of marginalized and excluded groups.

Representing different futures, the two social imaginaries confront and clash in a battle for hegemony – that is, to establish the most convincing, attractive, and ‘real’ representation of a future that serves as a compass for the decisions needed in the present. This battle is played out in the field of communication, in the ability to mobilize people and make them feel emotionally engaged, in the creative capacity to give shape to something that, although not yet fully experienced, is now part of the immediate. This is a political battle whose stakes are creating in the present what our future will be.

Conclusion

Building on the work of Castoriadis and Taylor, this article has proposed a conflictual conception of social imaginaries. The case of possible responses to the climate crisis has been used as one example, among many others, to highlight how critique of the present stimulates the production of social imaginaries that, by prefiguring possible futures, mobilize concrete actions and guide different political scenarios. These political scenarios compete for hegemony, that is, to become consensual, shared, and plausible models for understanding and organizing social reality. The analytical choice was to focus on temporality as a key element in the formation of a social imaginary and as a selective element of the rhetoric that composes it and puts it in competition with alternative social imaginaries.

Social imaginaries constitute an important constitutive element of senso comune and, as Gramsci emphasized, succeeding in the battle for the hegemony of shared meaning is a major stake in the control of social order. Analyzing the field of the social imaginary as a battlefield for the representation of possible realities allows us to grasp both the importance of shared meanings and the political stakes in representing the future. The social imaginary has been understood as a battlefield, a space of constant production of critique of the existing that articulates the past, the present, and the future in original terms that make it possible to develop a vision of an alternative reality able to promote social action and that aspires to become hegemonic. Social imaginaries are seen as the result of the ability to transcend the already given to create new realities that must become ‘plausible’, ‘credible’ and ‘shared’ to orient action and create a new and different social order. This is an important aspect of the battle fought to acquire hegemony over the meaning to be attributed to social reality. By creating specific images of the world, social imaginaries orient the experience, action, and understanding of reality. These images of the world are tied to the specific contexts of their creation, and they are in constant conflict with other images of the world arising from different experiences and interests.

The analytical proposal developed in the article is that the social imaginary should be looked at as a specific social field of struggle to gain hegemony through the creation of ‘plausible’ and (potentially) ‘realizable’ scenarios that make specific actions necessary, a field that has its specific set of professionals, distinctions, oppositions, capitals, and careers. The exemplary case of social imaginaries revolving around the fundamental question of climate change has been used precisely to show how much the question of temporality – addressed differently from classical references such as Castoriadis and Taylor – is at the heart of these processes. Observed from the point of view of temporality, social imaginaries clearly appear as a heterogeneous set of representations, ideas, and practices that can orient the structuring of social interaction toward a certain type of social reality –that is, on the dynamics and practices that, starting from a critique of the present, orient collective actions toward specific forms of social order.