Interrogating the imaginary turn: Technology, war, and world politics in an era of great power competition

Overview

This article provides a conceptual and methodological interrogation of the 'imaginary turn' in scholarship examining technology, warfare, and international relations during a period of intensified great power competition. The work traces the genealogy and deployment of 'imaginary' across three distinct but interconnected research traditions: social imaginaries, sociotechnical imaginaries, and security imaginaries. The article positions itself as an introductory framework for a special issue, establishing the scope and stakes of imaginaries research within critical international relations and security studies scholarship.

Methods and approach

The article employs a literature-mapping and genealogical approach to trace how the concept of the imaginary has been operationalized across three overlapping research traditions. Rather than conducting empirical analysis of specific cases, the work examines how different scholarly communities have theorized and deployed imaginaries as an analytical lens. The methodology involves systematic interrogation of conceptual frameworks, identifying core analytical properties, and synthesizing methodological approaches that have proven viable for studying imaginaries in security and technology contexts.

Key Findings

The analysis identifies and delineates core analytical properties constitutive of imaginary-focused scholarship while cataloguing multiple viable research methods for engaging with the concept empirically. The article establishes that the three research traditions—social imaginaries, sociotechnical imaginaries, and security imaginaries—operate with overlapping but distinct emphases and concerns. The genealogical tracing reveals how imaginaries function as objects of investigation capable of illuminating dimensions of technology and war otherwise obscured by conventional analytical frameworks.

Implications

The interrogation of imaginaries research carries direct implications for how scholars in international relations and security studies conceptualize the relationship between technological development, military strategy, and geopolitical competition. By establishing what the imaginary contributes analytically, the article provides scaffolding for assessing whether imaginaries constitute a productive research orientation or represent conceptual redundancy within existing frameworks. The work positions imaginaries as potentially generative for understanding contemporary great power dynamics, while simultaneously raising critical questions about the concept's analytical utility and methodological operationalization.