Notes from Self-Isolation: Imagination in Times of Ruptures

Area of Science:

• Sociocultural Psychology
• Crisis Studies
• Public Health

Background:

• The Covid-19 pandemic presented an unprecedented global health crisis.
• The crisis significantly disrupted daily lives, established meanings, and perceptions of time and future.
• Understanding individual and collective adaptation mechanisms is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore how participants experienced the Covid-19 crisis as a rupture.
• To investigate the functions of imagination in managing uncertainty and adapting to the crisis.
• To analyze the role of imagination in constructing new meanings and future outlooks.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative analysis of collective diary data from 17 participants.
• Diary entries collected during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Slovenia (March-May 2020).
• Application of sociocultural psychology concepts to understand imagination's role.

Main Results:

• The pandemic crisis was experienced as a rupture across temporality, spatiality, sociality, and embodiment.
• Imagination served critical functions in adaptation stages: experiencing rupture, meaning-making, distanciation, symbolic mobility, and temporal projection.
• Participants utilized symbolic resources to interpret the situation, cope with uncertainty, and envision future possibilities.

Conclusions:

• Imagination is central to repairing ruptures caused by crises, facilitating semantic reconfiguration.
• Imagination guides future-oriented actions and aids in adapting to novel and disruptive situations.
• The study highlights imagination's adaptive role in personal and collective responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.