Handbook of Imagination and Culture

Edited by Tania Zittoun and Vlad Glăveanu

Frontiers in Culture and Psychology

Focuses on imagination as a social and cultural process
Connects imagination to play and creativity
Recovers foundational scholarship from psychology and the social sciences for a modern interpretation

Handbook of Imagination and Culture

Edited by Tania Zittoun and Vlad Glăveanu

Frontiers in Culture and Psychology

Description

Imagination allows individuals and groups to think beyond the here-and-now, to envisage alternatives, to create parallel worlds, and to mentally travel through time. Imagination is both extremely personal (for example, people imagine unique futures for themselves) and deeply social, as our imagination is fed with media and other shared representations.

As a result, imagination occupies a central position within the life of mind and society. Expanding the boundaries of disciplinary approaches, the Handbook of Imagination and Culture expertly illustrates this core role of imagination in the development of children, adolescents, adults, and older persons today.

Bringing together leading scholars in sociocultural psychology and neighboring disciplines from around the world, this edited volume guides readers towards a much deeper understanding of the conditions of imagining, its resources, its constraints, and the consequences it has on different groups of people in different domains of society. Summarily, this Handbook places imagination at the center, and offers readers new ways to examine old questions regarding the possibility of change, development, and innovation in modern society.

Handbook of Imagination and Culture

Edited by Tania Zittoun and Vlad Glăveanu

Frontiers in Culture and Psychology

1. Imagination at the Frontiers of Cultural Psychology
Tania Zittoun and Vlad Glăveanu

SECTION I: CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL CLARIFICATIONS
2. The Philosophy of Imagination
Dorthe Jørgensen

3. Roots of Creativity: Variability Amplification through Persistent Imitation
Jaan Valsiner

4. Creative Imagination
Vlad Petre Glăveanu , Maciej Karwowski, Dorota M. Jankowska, and Constance de Saint-Laurent

5. Imagination - Methodological Implications
Lene Tanggaard and Svend Brinkmann

SECTION II: IMAGINATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
6. Imagination in Children Entering Culture
Sandra Jovchelovitch, Jacqueline Priego-Hernandez, and Vlad Petre Glăveanu

7. Playing and Being - Imagination in the Life Course
Pernille Hviid and Jacob W. Villadsen

8. The Mnemonic Imagination and Second-Generation Migrant Experience
Michael Pickering and Emily Keightley

9. Imagination in Adults and the Aging Person: Possible Futures and Actual Past
Tania Zittoun and Tatsuya Sato

SECTION III: FRAMES FOR IMAGINATION
10. Imagination In and Beyond Education
Sanne Akkerman

11. Theatre and Imagination to (Re)Discover Reality
Tania Zittoun and Adeline Rosenstein

12. Music and Imagination
Sven Hroar Klempe

SECTION IV: IMAGINATION IN SOCIETY, FROM PAST TO FUTURE
13. Imagination in Community Engagement
Colette Daiute

14. Imagining the Self through Cultural Technologies
Alex Gillespie, Kevin Corti, Simon Evans and Brett Heasman

15. From Imagination to Well-Controlled Images: Challenge for the Dialogical Mind
Ivana Marková

CONCLUSION
16. The Future of Imagination in Sociocultural Research
Vlad Glăveanu and Tania Zittoun

Handbook of Imagination and Culture

Edited by Tania Zittoun and Vlad Glăveanu

Frontiers in Culture and Psychology

Author Information

Tania Zittoun is a sociocultural psychologist interested in the development of people across the course of life. She has studied informal learning and transitions, as well as the role of fiction, art, and religion in life. She works across the boundaries between cultural psychology, psychoanalysis and the social sciences, both theoretically and methodologically.

Vlad P. Glăveanu is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology at Webster University Geneva.

Contributors:

Sanne Akkerman
Institute of Education
Utrecht University
Utretcht, the Netherlands

Svend Brinkmann
Department of Communication and Psychology
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark

Kevin Corti
Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
The London School of Economics and Political Science
London, England, UK

Colette Daiute
Department of Psychology
The Graduate Center-City University of New York
New York, NY

Constance de Saint-Laurent
Institute of Psychology and Education
University of Neuchâtel
Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Simon Evans
Gender Institute
The London School of Economics and Political Science
London, England, UK

Alex Gillespie
Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
The London School of Economics and Political Science
London, England, UK

Brett Heasman
Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
The London School of Economics and Political Science
London, England, UK

Sven Hroar Klempe
Department of Psychology
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway

Pernille Hviid
Department of Psychology
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark

Dorota M. Jankowska
The Maria Grzegorzewska University
Warsaw, Poland

Dorthe Jørgensen
Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, School of Culture and Society
Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark

Sandra Jovchelovitch
Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
The London School of Economics and Political Science
London, England, UK

Maciej Karwowski
The Maria Grzegorzewska University
Warsaw, Poland

Emily Keightley
Department of Social Sciences
Loughborough University
Leicestershire, England, UK

Ivana Marková
Department of Psychology
University of Stirling
Stirling, Scotland, UK

Michael Pickering
Department of Social Sciences
Loughborough University
Leicestershire, England, UK

Jacqueline Priego-Hernandez
Bournemouth University
Bournemouth, England, UK

Adeline Rosenstein
Brussels, Belgium

Tatsuya Sato
Department of Psychology
Ritsumeikan University
Kyoto, Japan

Lene Tanggaard
Department of Communication and Psychology
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark

Jaan Valsiner
Department of Communication and Psychology
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark

Jacob W. Villadsen
Department of Psychology
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark

Handbook of Imagination and Culture

Edited by Tania Zittoun and Vlad Glăveanu

Frontiers in Culture and Psychology

Reviews and Awards

"The authors investigate "the temporal and historical aspects of magination by proposing a life course perspective," and they "examine imagination as it takes place in specific domains of activity or social ettings" (209). Those domains or settings are education, theater, and usic. These richly represent relevant knowledge and conjecture. For anyone interested in these topics from a sociocultural perspective, this book is the place to go." -- Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture