New Articles from Sandra Waddock

This paper argues that for humanity to deal with the intersecting, existential threats of polycrisis, broad-based narrative changes are needed to make practical and relevant eco-social (or social ecological) imaginaries and related contracts. An imaginary is how people conceive or think about the world around them and their relationship to it. Social contracts are explicit and implicit agreements about how humans structure their social institutions, including rights and obligations, privileges, benefits, and restrictions. Current imaginaries (and related contracts) are almost solely human-centric, while the shift argued for here is towards eco-social imaginaries, in which both humans and nature are granted rights to flourish. Such new imaginaries have the potential to shift ideas about humans as actors in the world towards life-centric eco-social understandings in which human beings are seen as part of and interdependent with nature, and develop economies and societies oriented towards wellbeing for both humans and nature. While historically social imaginaries and their related social contracts have been human-centric, more ecologically centric imaginaries have been emerging for several decades, and in the early 2020s, as this paper documents, have now begun to become explicit. This paper identifies seven recent efforts to define and make explicit the broad parameters of such eco-social imaginaries that might be widely deployed to begin the difficult and long-term process of systemic change needed to achieve flourishing for humans and nature.

The central question that this special issue poses is ‘What will allow new systemic approaches to emerge that include all humans and all living beings in the benefits of life, rather than expecting some to suffer for the benefit of others?’ This paper argues that a key starting point for systems change, and the changed awareness or awakening that it brings, is developing new narratives or stories that form the basis for new core cultural mythologies, replacing currently dominant social imaginaries, which describe how people envision and act in their worlds, that are no longer fit for purpose. Today’s polycrisis, a set of intersecting, intractable and civilization threatening crises, means that more people need to work considerably more effectively to catalyze the systemic transformations so desperately needed. Developing and deploying new ecological-social (eco-social) imaginaries based in principles (among others) of relationality, equity, inclusiveness, and flourishing for all beings is an important step to moving transformational change efforts forward; indeed, it is core to the catalysis process needed for transformative change. Doing that, change makers can potentially work to build eco-social imaginaries that enable humans to find ways to live, as many Indigenous peoples have done for millennia, within the constraints of Earth’s capacities. Two recent examples, the Natural Social Contract and the Regenerative Lens, underscore the potential and possibilities for creating powerful, positive, and inspiring new narratives to develop holistic new visions that can potential inform needed new eco-social imaginaries.

This article offers a synthesized perspective on a future-oriented process for 

transformational change makers, here called transformation catalysts, to catalyze systemic change through processes of connecting, cohering, and amplifying the transformational change work of multiple initiatives in numerous social-ecological contexts. Oriented towards purposeful or deliberate system change towards just, equitable, inclusive, and thriving social-ecological systems, the outlined processes of connecting, cohering, and amplifying provide a template or framework for organizing co-creative approaches. This process brings multiple, typically independent individuals and initiatives into alignment, connecting them through shared understanding of the system and determining what is already happening and who is doing what through mapping key stakeholders and their activities. Through visioning and similar processes, transformation catalysts enable different actors to align and cohere their shared aspirations and develop joint and individual action plans in what can then emerge as a self-aware and potentially more effective transformation system comprised of these actors. The amplification process involves the implementation of planned actions, both independently and in concert with others, evaluating and learning from those processes, and adapting future

efforts. The latter includes developing, if appropriate, additional transformational effortsand catalysts in different parts of the system to create ongoing momentum. The example of WEAll, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, with information drawn from the website, is used to illustrate these ideas.