National and global fragmented social imaginaries

• Main Author: Luís Lóia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas, Centro de Estudos de Filosofia 2020-06-01
• Series: International Journal of Philosophy and Social Values
• Subjects: Nation state; Globalism; Democracy; Social imaginaries
• Online Access: https://revistas.ucp.pt/index.php/philosophyandsocialvalues/article/view/9990

National State seems to be a key concept to understand modern political life and many scholars have been devoting their attention to it. On the one hand, they intend to demonstrate that we are witnessing a failure of National States to provide the needed answers to modern claims that nowadays can only be solved at international levels. On the other hand, National States seem to be the only type of social organization through which, especially in democratic regimes, people become effective in shaping the kind of world they want to live in. Taking into due account this problematic view, our aim is to show that both approaches are real and need to be understood in their interconnected realms. Dealing with it, we recover the category of social imaginary that could enlighten a more adequate comprehension of this phenomenon that is currently presented as a feature of democratic decay. Our thesis is that National State involves a social imaginary that is becoming increasingly fragmented and, on the other hand, the cosmopolitical appeal of globalisation does not yet provide a global social imaginary that could be recognizable beyond the scope of the national states, and, therefore, presents itself as fragmented as the former. New social imaginaries are needed to overcome this fragmentation.