Imagination

Like imaginaries in general, tourism imaginaries have a function: to satisfy social needs, aspirations, and fantasies. Identities of destinations and their inhabitants are endlessly (re)invented, (re)produced, (re)captured and (re)created in a bid to obtain a piece of the lucrative tourism pie.

Brand relationships have traditionally been theorized as simulating interpersonal relationships, which are reflected in self-identity or self-expansion theory. However, such a perspective often ignores or overlooks conceptual differences between true interpersonal relationships and parasocial brand relationships. Considering the characteristics of parasocial relationships, the present study explored the role of imagination and brand personification in the formation of brand relationships. A total of 468 subjects evaluated their favorite brands in a 2 (high vs. low product involvement) × 2 (utilitarian vs. symbolic products) factorial design. The results provided an alternative explanation of brand relationship formation: Imagination may play a greater role in brand relationships than traditionally conceived in self-expansion theory, and brand personification may moderate the effect of self-expansion theory. The implication of the research is that encouragement of consumers’ imaginative ability is one route to strengthening consumer–brand relationships.

"The World Heritage Site, old town of Lijiang, is one of the most
popular inbound tourism destinations of China, and has attracted
millions  of  tourists  in  the  context  of  a  direct  encounter  with
Chinese  ethnic  cultures.  To  satisfy  demands  of  both  the  inbound and  domestic  tourism,  the  commoditization  of local  cultures  and its manifestation in the indigenous religion and folk festivals have Grounded  in  the  tourism  development  of  Lijiang  in  the  past  two decades, this paper aims to explore how tourism imaginaries are produced,  negotiated,  and  transformed  to  intersect  and  establish the dynamic network of actors including different individuals and groups  in  the  tourism  industry  of  Lijiang.  The  consciousness  of cultural  flows  made  by  the  mutual  communication  between  the local  community  and  the  tourism  is  addressed  as  part  of  global dynamics. In this sense, the mediation between the global and the local  strengthens  a  continuity  of  cultural  forms  of  the  past,  and synthesizes transculturality in different places through reinvention
and innovation."

"This paper seeks to elucidate Aquinas’s “turn to phantasms”
by investigating what he means by “turning”. It argues that the
key to the underlying conceptual framework of “intellectual
turning” is found in two Islamic sources that were immensely
influential on thirteenth - century Latin philosophical psychology,
and that present specific technical concepts of “turning”
as a kind of dependence: the anonymous Liber de causis, and
the Persian philosopher Avicenna’s Liber de anima. This paper,
then, aims at recovering this underlying historical paradigm, by
examining how these two key sources conceive of “turning” and
how Aquinas incorporates their insights into his account of the
“turn to phantasms”."

""Résumé
Henry Corbin a écrit qu’« un Maître Eckhart et un Jacob Boehme eussent parfaitement compris Ibn ʿArabî, et réciproquement. » Mais comment assurer ce dialogue et cette compréhension réciproque pressentie par Henry Corbin? Cette recherche porte essentiellement sur les conditions de possibilités de ce dialogue, puisque la comparaison entre Ibn al-ʿArabī et Böhme n’est encore qu’à ses balbutiements. En choisissant le prisme de l’imagination, le but est double : pouvoir traiter de manière non réductrice les phénomènes spirituels en parcourant et analysant la logique spécifique de l’imagination ; et, sous l’égide de la hiérohistoire, explorer le rôle de l’imagination dans la métaphysique et l’éthique d’Ibn al-ʿArabī et de Böhme. Il s’agit donc d’essayer de lire Ibn al-ʿArabī et Böhme comme ils lisaient eux-mêmes le Livre révélé de leur tradition respective. Au final, il appert que le théophanisme caractéristique tant de la métaphysique d’Ibn al-ʿArabī que de celle de Böhme est une riche terre d’accueil de l’imagination et de l’imaginal. Et que, si la comparaison strictu sensu entre Ibn al-ʿArabī et Böhme est impossible, l’esprit comparatif et transdisciplinaire de cette recherche, ainsi que la méthode phénoménologico-herméneutique, offrent de nouvelles avenues de réappropriation pour l’ensemble des phénomènes spirituels.

Abstract
Henry Corbin wrote that a “Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme would fully understand Ibn ʿArabî, and vice versa.” But how can we ensure this dialogue and mutual understanding anticipated by Henry Corbin? This research is essentially on the conditions of possibilities of this dialogue, especially because the comparison between Ibn al-ʿArabī and Böhme is still in its infancy. By choosing the prism of the imagination, the goal is twofold: approach spiritual phenomena in a non-reductive way by browsing and analyzing the specific logic of imagination; and, under the auspices of the concept of hierohistory, explore the role of imagination in the metaphysics and ethics of Ibn al-ʿArabī and Böhme. It is therefore an effort to read Ibn al-ʿArabī and Böhme as they read themselves the revealed book of their respective tradition. Finally, it appears that the theophanism characteristic of the metaphysics of both Ibn al-ʿArabī and Böhme is a rich haven for imagination and imaginal. If the comparison between Ibn al-ʿArabī and Böhme is stricto sensu impossible, the comparative and transdisciplinary spirit of this research, as well as its the phenomenological-hermeneutic method, opens up new avenues of re-appropriation for all spirituals phenomena.""

This article reflects critically on “The Radial Imagination: A Research Project About Movements, Social Change, and the Future,” an engaged social movement research project conducted with self-identified “radical” activists in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In so doing, the authors explore a research strategy that seeks not merely to observe the radical imagination—the ability to envision and work toward better futures—but to convoke it: to mobilize the singular location of academic inquiry to create a research environment within which the radical imagination can be better understood.Through a critical examination of the project’s theoretical architecture and methodological framework the authors investigate the promises, possibilities, and difficulties implicated in critical social movement research carried out through a strategy of convocation, contrasting it with more conventional approaches to social movement research.

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

"[Book now under review]

This dissertation explores issues of identification, relatedness, and belonging on a global scale, through an ethnographic study of Portugal’s urban Marranos (descendants of fifteenth-century forced converts to Catholicism) and foreign Jews who travel from abroad to meet them. Although not Jewish according to Jewish law, given centuries of intermarriage, Marranos are nonetheless widely considered to be part of “the Jewish family,” “lost brethren” who should be welcomed back to the Jewish people. Many Jews view them within the metanarrative of Jewish destruction and survival, the “eternal spark” that remains despite the Inquisition’s attempted elimination of Judaism from the Portuguese landscape. However, for numerous local reasons the present-day Marranos are not welcomed by Portugal’s tiny normative Jewish community. As a result, the urban Marranos, who feel strongly that they are Jews by descent, turn to foreign Jewish travelers as sources of educational, spiritual, and material assistance in their bid to join the Jewish world and attain recognition as Jews in the present.

Based on two years of fieldwork in Marrano organizations in Lisbon and Porto and traveling alongside Jewish tourists and outreach workers, the dissertation undertakes a processual analysis of the constitution of ancestral Jewish identity and of the role of transnational, cross-cultural affective ties in affording a sense of global Jewish belonging. The primary questions driving this work are, first, how and why do far-flung people come to feel that they are related to one another, and what terms do they use to characterize and think through that feeling of relatedness? Second, to what extent are their perceptions of essential connection disrupted or transformed by face-to-face contact? By interrogating the cultural logics of kinship writ large—the language and conceptual frameworks people use to articulate and make sense of their feelings of relatedness to one another—and then examining how those logics play out “on the ground,” this study provides a fine-grained ethnographic analysis of the mechanisms through which global and ancestral imaginings become concretized in social interaction. Ultimately, I argue, physical proximity remains the productive sphere for identification and belonging, even as global interconnection provides new opportunities for encounter."

"Nesse texto, procuro discutir, a partir de o Ar e os Sonhos, a proposta de Bachelard sobre a participação do leitor em universo onírico textualizado de forma a contribuir para uma melhor contribuição dos questões recepcionais de sua obra.
Como provocação, demonstro como Bachelard aponta para um paradigma performativo ao tornar relevante na dinâmica  da leitura o papel ativo do leitor.
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