Shared social imaginaries shape practice, which in turn reinforces the imaginary

Evidence

The social imaginary further supports a repertoire of practices by providing a common understanding of how people should engage with one another and the world around them. This shared framework enables the development and reinforcement of specific practices that are in line with the values and expectations of the social imaginary (Vertovec, 2012). … This demonstrates the cyclical relationship between understandings and practice at the heart of social imaginaries – where practices are not only contextualised by the understandings behind the social imaginaries but act to reinforce the social imaginary itself (Taylor, 2004). — Nadia Haq, ‘The National Media Just Sees Muslims…, 61

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A compact statement of the recursive loop between collective understanding and everyday practice — the mechanism underlying how any group’s common sense reproduces itself.
• XREF: Taylor’s social imaginary framework connects to Zamyatin’s We, where a single enforced imaginary produces and is reproduced by ritualized practice.
• SEED: Angle: ‘How Common Sense Reproduces Itself’ — the feedback loop between what a society assumes and what it does, using journalism as the test case.