CONCEPT
Social Imaginary (Taylor)
Taylor's term for the pre-theoretical common understanding that makes social practices possible — the shared background of images, stories, and normative expectations that lets strangers coordinate without explicit agreement.
The social imaginary, developed most fully in Taylor's Modern Social Imaginaries (2004), is something broader and deeper than the intellectual schemes people entertain when they think about social reality in a disengaged mode. It is the way people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations. It is carried in images, stories, and legends; shared by large groups if not the whole society; and constitutes the common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy. The AI amplifier is transforming the social imaginary at a depth and speed that no previous technology has matched.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The social imaginary is not a theory; it is the background against which theories become intelligible, the pre-theoretical understanding of social life that ordinary people carry as they navigate their daily