Methodology

Tommaso Durante’s Visual Archive Project of the Global Imaginary (2007—present) is a research initiative that bridges the gap between globalization studies and visual culture (Durante, 2013). It shifts the academic focus from globalization as a purely economic or objective phenomenon toward its subjective-reflexive dimensions, exploring how visual formations construct representations of people, events, and ideas (Durante, 2014).

Theoretical Grounding

The project is rooted in Walter Benjamin’s use of the archive, and on the textual-philosophical concept of the social imaginary (Appadurai 2005; Castoriadis 1975; Steger 2008; Taylor 2004; Thompson 1984), and mostly on Paul Ricoeur’s framework of the social imaginary (1975), with whom I feel in debt, ideology, and utopia provides a critical approach to understanding how societies create meaning, structure power, and conceive of the future. However, none of these scholars explained how the social imaginary is symbolically constructed and manifests in people's everyday lives (Durante 2007, 2013). Building on, contesting, and expanding previous theories of the social imaginary, Durante argues that images are crucial in a society dominated by images, which are neither neutral nor text-based and are eclipsing textuality. In that sense, the images of the global are "active players" in establishing or threatening social values (Mitchell, 2005), and for these reasons, they need to be better understood and explained.

The project investigates the power of visual-discursive formations to shape how the common sense of "global" is perceived and enacted in specific places and across the different materiality of the social web.

Key Concepts

Visual-ideological Markers of Globality

A central methodological tool conceptualized by the author is essential for deciphering how contemporary global imaginaries are constructed and stabilized through specific iconographies. By identifying these markers—ranging from architectural landmarks and digital interfaces to corporate branding—researchers can trace how abstract processes such as neoliberalism and digital connectivity are rendered visible and "common sense" to a global audience. This framework moves beyond mere semiotics; it provides a rigorous lens to analyze the power dynamics of global visual culture, revealing how certain images are mobilized to legitimize global ideologies while simultaneously obscuring or erasing localized, non-dominant narratives.

Condensation Symbols of Globality

This is another methodological tool adapted from Murray Edelman and expanded to investigate the global media cultures. In Durante’s framework, these are images that condense spatial-symbolic scales—the local, national, and global—into a single visual formation.

The Techno-symbolic Global Imaginary, or Algorithmic Global Imaginary

By coining the “techno-symbolic global imaginary” as a social practice, Durante represents a shift from the modern to late-modernity social imaginary. Durante makes a dual claim. First, he argues that AI-driven systems — computer vision, machine learning, recommendation engines, generative AI — are now primary agents in the symbolic construction of what counts as “global” in everyday perception. Computer vision, and neural networking algorithms combined with visual digital technologies and cloud-based voice services are colonizing at deep-subjective level people’s social imaginaries and ideologies, while contributing to what some scholars define as the “reglobalization” of the world. Second, as with the social imaginary of modernity, he argues that this process cannot be understood through economic analysis alone; it requires attention to how aesthetic practices and visual-symbolic systems interact with the infrastructures of digital capitalism to reshape global consciousness.

Global Iconology

The method and approach of global iconology is accordingly updated to encompass the latent dimension of algorithmic infrastructure. These visible and invisible elements operate as mechanisms of dominant (algorithmic) ideology and, in this sense, function ideologically as a coherent set of code/ideas shaping perception and meaning. This dual focus on the manifest and the latent is what distinguishes Durante’s approach from more purely political-economic accounts of digital capitalism (e.g., Fuchs 2022; Hassan 2020; Zuboff 2019) and from more purely discursive theories of the global imaginary.

Approach and Methodology

The VAPGI employs a qualitative, interpretive methodology that treats the global imaginary as a set of deeply embedded material practices.

1. Visual Archiving: Offline and Online Fieldwork

The methodology involves the systematic collection of digital and physical visual data from diverse global urban centers (e.g., Athens, Hong Kong, Milan, Shanghai, Washington D.C.) and the internet. Durante documents cultural objects—ranging from "global city" signage and logos to commercial products like T-shirts and AI-generated imagery—to trace how the common sense of the "global" is visually produced, circulated, and consumed in local-global contexts (Durante 2026).

2. Extension and Contestation of Political Semiotics

Durante posits that due to new media technologies and architectural interfaces, visuality is increasingly eclipsing textuality, making images the primary "cultural objects" through which we understand the modern world.In this respect,Durante argues for the limitations of semiotic analysis in relation to the complexity of the current production, circulation, and consumption of mixed-media digital objects, and expands the use of condensation symbols from political science and the study of globalization to that of the global media cultures. By analysing images that serve as visual-ideological markers of globality, he identifies and explains how these symbols carry embedded systems of values and ideologies (Durante, 2014).

3. Interdisciplinary Framework

The approach integrates several disciplines:

  • Globalization Studies: To provide the macro-context of shifting social mindsets.

  • Visual Culture: To analyze the symbolic power of images.

  • Media Aesthetics: To investigates how the formal, technical, and sensory elements of images (still and moving) influence perception, meaning, and emotional engagement. It goes beyond just "beauty" to analyze how the visual structure of media shapes the viewer's experience and communicates messages, particularly focusing on the interaction between technology and the senses.

  • Social Philosophy: To explore the abstract dimensions of the social imaginary through concrete visual evidence.

Critical Discussion

The VAPGI provides a significant alternative to traditional globalization research, which often prioritizes statistical data over cultural experience.

Strength

Material Grounding: It moves the "global imaginary" from an abstract philosophical concept to tangible visual evidence.

Technological Relevance: Recognizes the eclipse of textuality in the digital age, making it highly relevant to contemporary global media consumption.

Urban Focus: Effectively demonstrates how global consciousness is localized in specific "global cities" and in the different materiality of the social web.

Potential Critique

Interpretive Subjectivity: As an interpretive framework, the analysis of condensation symbols and other visual-ideological markers of globality may be shaped by the researcher's cultural biases.

Methodological Scalability: While deep in insight, the project's reliance on specific "archived" moments may struggle to capture the rapid, viral "visual contagions" of the AI era.

Digital-Physical Gap: While it notes digital interfaces, much of the documented archive focuses on physical urban space, potentially under-representing purely digital global imaginaries.

Comparison with Other Approaches

While Durante focuses on the ideological and subjective power of the image, other contemporary researchers like Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (2010) utilize digital methods and big data to study "visual contagions"—the epidemiology of how images circulate globally. Whereas Joyeux-Prunel focuses on the pathway and frequency of image circulation, Durante focuses on the depth of meaning and the symbolic construction of the global mindset.