The psychological imagination of the social in contemporary China

Psychological expertise has developed in market economies along with the priority of individualised, self-responsible and productive citizenship, thus directing people’s evaluative glance inwards. Yet psychology, as a field of knowledge production, also interprets and classifies wider socioeconomic processes, including defining the emotional experience of different structural conditions. Extending the concept ‘the psychological imagination’ (Nehring and Frawley, 2020), which highlights how globalised psychological expertise induces perceptions of individualised self-accountability, I propose the ‘psychological imagination of the social’, illustrating how this expertise configures socioeconomic factors. I draw on texts and commentaries by mainland Chinese psychologists in the popular media, state-run press, self-help literature and academic writing, as well as interviews with practitioners in Jinan, delineating how psychologists address economic reforms, commodification, digitalisation and social competition. This imagination buttresses the positivist trajectory of market expansion as a ‘civilising’ and ‘emotionally emancipating’ process, while also stressing the emotional toll of contemporary urban lifestyles. Thus, this expertise advertises its unique contribution to elevating immaterial ingredients in the Chinese social experience through ongoing negotiation between market ideologies and the party-state’s agenda.