Holistic eco-social imaginaries for a life-centered future

Bibliographic Data

ID12950448
AuthorsSandra Waddock (0000-0003-1089-7686, Boston College, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume19
Issue6
Pages2119-2134
Publication date2024-09-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSustainability Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1862-4057 • E-ISSN: 1862-4065
PublisherSpringer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1007/s11625-024-01564-9
OpenAlexW4402219331
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited64

This paper argues that for humanity to deal with the intersecting, existential threats of polycrisis, broad-based narrative changes are needed to make practical and relevant eco-social (or social ecological) imaginaries and related contracts. An imaginary is how people conceive or think about the world around them and their relationship to it. Social contracts are explicit and implicit agreements about how humans structure their social institutions, including rights and obligations, privileges, benefits, and restrictions. Current imaginaries (and related contracts) are almost solely human-centric, while the shift argued for here is towards eco-social imaginaries, in which both humans and nature are granted rights to flourish. Such new imaginaries have the potential to shift ideas about humans as actors in the world towards life-centric eco-social understandings in which human beings are seen as part of and interdependent with nature, and develop economies and societies oriented towards wellbeing for both humans and nature. While historically social imaginaries and their related social contracts have been human-centric, more ecologically centric imaginaries have been emerging for several decades, and in the early 2020s, as this paper documents, have now begun to become explicit. This paper identifies seven recent efforts to define and make explicit the broad parameters of such eco-social imaginaries that might be widely deployed to begin the difficult and long-term process of systemic change needed to achieve flourishing for humans and nature

Biology · Environmental ethics · Environmental planning · Geography · Landscape ecology · Nature Conservation · Sociology · Sustainable development · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Environmental, Ecological, and Cultural Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Ecology