Exploring the Immortological Imagination: Advocating for a Sociology of Immortality

Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska () and Paula Kiel ()
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Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska: Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1SB, UK
Paula Kiel: Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London WC2A 2AE, UK

Social Sciences, 2024, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-10

Abstract: The digital age has rekindled popular and academic interest in immortality. While the idea of immortality has long been recognized as fundamental to human societies, unlike death, within the field of sociology, immortality has not yet established itself as a distinct and autonomous field of study. This paper contributes to the recently emerging scholarship promoting a sociology of immortality. Drawing inspiration from C. Wright Mills’s sociological imagination (1959) and building upon significant research in the field of immortality, we offer to use the concept of the immortological imagination as an analytical and conceptual tool for further developing a sociology of immortality. We refer to the immortological imagination as a complementary concept to Penfold-Mounce’s thanatological imagination , seeing both concepts as stemming from two different lineages and academic traditions. After defining the immortological imagination and how it differs from and complements the thanatological imagination, the paper moves to discuss examples in popular culture establishing the potential impacts and influences of the immortological imagination, particularly within the digital context.

Keywords: sociology of immortality; immortological imagination; thanatological imagination; digital immortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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