ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews a wide range of literature exploring how the social and cultural world nourishes imagination. Imagining always takes place in a specific social space and historical time, the paramount reality. It shows how societies set imaginative horizons beyond which it very difficult for its members to imagine. The chapter examines how people use social representations and cultural elements as resources for imagining. The role of other people and material objects in carrying and guiding streams of imagination is focused. The chapter overviews individual experience, demonstrating how, out of the cultural basis of imagination, individual imaginative experiences emerge. Imagination is collectively produced on the basis of widely shared films, TV series, narratives and images. The field of social representations research for imagining has been at the forefront of analysing the contents of culture as they circulate within contemporary societies.
