I have a terrible habit of using this word with little to no explanation, instead hoping that the reader will just vibe out my intended meaning, because to be honest, that’s how my understanding of the word developed in the early stages of my PhD. But in fact, it does need explaining, because different theorists from different disciplines use this word and I do not in fact vibe with all of them. So here goes - instrumental in the ongoing reproduction of “collective self-understandings”, and closely connected to “imagined communities”, imaginaries encompass stories, concepts, tropes, stereotypes, myths, and so on and so on. In Jasanoff, the full phrase is “sociotechnical imaginary”; in my PhD, I use the term “affective imaginary” to apply the same way of thinking to how game developers think about player emotions. An imaginary sets tacit expectations about what something is, what it does, how it should make you feel, who does it belong to, etc. Jasanoff describes imaginaries as “voyaging concepts” that “facilitate theorizing across disciplinary boundaries by taking in ordinarily neglected dimensions of social thought and practice”. Person: Sheila Jasanoff
Year: 2004