Holistic eco-social imaginaries for a life-centered future

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12950448
AutoresSandra Waddock (0000-0003-1089-7686, Boston College, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume19
Fascículo6
Páginas2119-2134
Data de publicação2024-09-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSustainability Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1862-4057 • E-ISSN: 1862-4065
EditoraSpringer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1007/s11625-024-01564-9
OpenAlexW4402219331
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas64

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