Imagination in Human and Cultural Development

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development PDF Author: Tania Zittoun
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135103208
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This book positions imagination as a central concept which increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices, and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming, to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency. In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination, and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest in development, social change, cultural psychology, imagination and creativity.

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development PDF Author: Tania Zittoun
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135103208
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book

Book Description
This book positions imagination as a central concept which increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices, and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming, to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency. In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination, and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest in development, social change, cultural psychology, imagination and creativity.

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development PDF Author: Tania Zittoun
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135103194
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book positions imagination as a central concept which increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices, and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming, to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency. In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination, and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest in development, social change, cultural psychology, imagination and creativity.

Handbook of Imagination and Culture

Handbook of Imagination and Culture PDF Author: Tania Zittoun
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190468718
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
The Handbook of Imagination and Culture is a unique interdisciplinary collection of chapters showing the centrality of imagination in the development of persons and societies. This book brings together a group of psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, and artists to explore imagination through psychological, social, and cultural processes.

The Psychology of Imagination

The Psychology of Imagination PDF Author: Brady Wagoner
Publisher: Information Age Publishing
ISBN: 9781681237091
Category : Imagination
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Designing Culture

Designing Culture PDF Author: Anne Balsamo
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822344459
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The cultural theorist and media designer Anne Balsamo calls for transforming learning practices to inspire culturally attuned technological imaginations.

The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination

The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination PDF Author: Marjorie Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199909199
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
Children are widely celebrated for their imaginations, but developmental research on this topic has often been fragmented or narrowly focused on fantasy. However, there is growing appreciation for the role that imagination plays in cognitive and emotional development, as well as its link with children's understanding of the real world. With their imaginations, children mentally transcend time, place, and/or circumstance to think about what might have been, plan and anticipate the future, create fictional relationships and worlds, and consider alternatives to the actual experiences of their lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination provides a comprehensive overview of this broad new perspective by bringing together leading researchers whose findings are moving the study of imagination from the margins of mainstream psychology to a central role in current efforts to understand human thought. The topics covered include fantasy-reality distinctions, pretend play, magical thinking, narrative, anthropomorphism, counterfactual reasoning, mental time travel, creativity, paracosms, imaginary companions, imagination in non-human animals, the evolution of imagination, autism, dissociation, and the capacity to derive real life resilience from imaginative experiences. Many of the chapters include discussions of the educational, clinical, and legal implications of the research findings and special attention is given to suggestions for future research.

Creativity, Culture, and Development

Creativity, Culture, and Development PDF Author: Ai-Girl Tan
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9812876367
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This volume presents a collection of writings on the relations among creativity, culture and development. The editors invited “like-minded” researchers of creativity from around the world to share their respective notions of creativity. Given that human creativity is a potential that can and should be nurtured in the course of lifespan development and across all cultural backgrounds, the volume emphasizes the importance of promoting creativity in all cultures and through societal-educational opportunities, and offers a venue for the authors to make conceptual, empirical and practical inquiries into the relations among creativity, development and culture. The authors represent a varied “mix” of contemporary and emerging creativity researchers who use different methodologies to investigate the importance of culture in creativity development and the reciprocal role of developing creativity and cultural enrichment. The volume represents an attempt on the part of the editors and the authors to broaden our current understanding of creativity in the contexts of human and cultural development, and in so doing to enhance our understanding of creativity, culture and development in the contexts of flourishing human and societal activities. As the first volume in a book series on “Creativity in the Twenty-First Century”, the book invites readers and researchers to engage in future interdisciplinary and intercultural discourses and dialogues on the importance of creativity for human and cultural development.

The Evolution of Imagination

The Evolution of Imagination PDF Author: Stephen T. Asma
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622516X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Consider Miles Davis, horn held high, sculpting a powerful musical statement full of tonal patterns, inside jokes, and thrilling climactic phrases—all on the fly. Or think of a comedy troupe riffing on a couple of cues from the audience until the whole room is erupting with laughter. Or maybe it’s a team of software engineers brainstorming their way to the next Google, or the Einsteins of the world code-cracking the mysteries of nature. Maybe it’s simply a child playing with her toys. What do all of these activities share? With wisdom, humor, and joy, philosopher Stephen T. Asma answers that question in this book: imagination. And from there he takes us on an extraordinary tour of the human creative spirit. Guided by neuroscience, animal behavior, evolution, philosophy, and psychology, Asma burrows deep into the human psyche to look right at the enigmatic but powerful engine that is our improvisational creativity—the source, he argues, of our remarkable imaginational capacity. How is it, he asks, that a story can evoke a whole world inside of us? How are we able to rehearse a skill, a speech, or even an entire scenario simply by thinking about it? How does creativity go beyond experience and help us make something completely new? And how does our moral imagination help us sculpt a better society? As he shows, we live in a world that is only partly happening in reality. Huge swaths of our cognitive experiences are made up by “what-ifs,” “almosts,” and “maybes,” an imagined terrain that churns out one of the most overlooked but necessary resources for our flourishing: possibilities. Considering everything from how imagination works in our physical bodies to the ways we make images, from the mechanics of language and our ability to tell stories to the creative composition of self-consciousness, Asma expands our personal and day-to-day forms of imagination into a grand scale: as one of the decisive evolutionary forces that has guided human development from the Paleolithic era to today. The result is an inspiring look at the rich relationships among improvisation, imagination, and culture, and a privileged glimpse into the unique nature of our evolved minds.

The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination

The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination PDF Author: Anna Abraham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108429246
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 865

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Book Description
The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined - what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.

The Creative Spark

The Creative Spark PDF Author: Agustín Fuentes
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101983957
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth? Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in plain sight. Agustín Fuentes argues that your child's finger painting comes essentially from the same place as creativity in hunting and gathering millions of years ago, and throughout history in making war and peace, in intimate relationships, in shaping the planet, in our communities, and in all of art, religion, and even science. It requires imagination and collaboration. Every poet has her muse; every engineer, an architect; every politician, a constituency. The manner of the collaborations varies widely, but successful collaboration is inseparable from imagination, and it brought us everything from knives and hot meals to iPhones and interstellar spacecraft. Weaving fascinating stories of our ancient ancestors' creativity, Fuentes finds the patterns that match modern behavior in humans and animals. This key quality has propelled the evolutionary development of our bodies, minds, and cultures, both for good and for bad. It's not the drive to reproduce; nor competition for mates, or resources, or power; nor our propensity for caring for one another that have separated us out from all other creatures. As Fuentes concludes, to make something lasting and useful today you need to understand the nature of your collaboration with others, what imagination can and can't accomplish, and, finally, just how completely our creativity is responsible for the world we live in. Agustín Fuentes's resounding multimillion-year perspective will inspire readers—and spark all kinds of creativity.