The Cambridge Handbook of Social Representations

Handbook of Social Representations

A social representations approach offers an empirical utility for addressing myriad social concerns such as social order, ecological sustainability, national identity, racism, religious communities, the public understanding of science, health and social marketing. The core aspects of social representations theory have been debated over many years and some still remain widely misunderstood. This handbook provides an overview of these core aspects and brings together theoretical strands and developments in the theory, some of which have become pillars in the social sciences in their own right. Academics and students in the social sciences working with concepts and methods such as social identity, discursive psychology, positioning theory, semiotics, attitudes, risk perception and social values will find this an invaluable resource.

This paper attempts to discuss the 'versatility' of the concept of social representations, in the context of the Anglo-saxon tradition of social psychological research. This is done by analysing some of the concept's internal featureswhat we call the 'openness' of the concept -along with the various ways in which it has been incorporated by other approaches within social psychology -bringing about what we call the 'closure' of the concept. It is suggested that the theory has provided a 'convenient social package' to social psychological perspectives historically criticized as being asocial. The use of pre-established methods and techniques combined with social representations theory provides a "safe" territory to do research, where one introduces something allegedly "novel", i.e. the social, and at the same time does not assume the full consequences of that novelty. We argue that while the very openness and flexibility of the concept might invite convenient combinations, these are usually achieved at a cost. The theoretical integrity of the concept is compromised, mainly by treating social representations as a technological answer to theoretical lacuna of other perspectives. The outcome is a premature epistemological closure of the concept, which disempowers its otherwise lively theoretical resources. This paper has benefited greatly from comments

'This book is a state-of-the-art showcasing of work in social representations theory, focusing on its application to contemporary social issues. The major thinkers of this approach are included alongside up and coming figures. Social Representations in the 'Social Arena' will be of particular interest to psychologists struggling to develop theoretically informed interventions into social life.'

Social Representations in the 'Social Arena', 2012

The series Cultural Dynamics of Social Representation is dedicated to bringing the scholarly reader new ways of representing human lives in the contemporary social sciences. It is a part of a new direction-cultural psychology-that has emerged at the intersection of developmental, dynamic and social psychologies, anthropology, education, and sociology. It aims to provide cutting-edge examinations of global social processes, which for every country are becoming increasingly multi-cultural; the world is becoming one 'global village', with the corresponding need to know how different parts of that 'village' function. Therefore, social sciences need new ways of considering how to study human lives in their globalizing contexts. The focus of this series is the social representation of people, communities, and-last but not least-the social sciences themselves. Contents List of illustrations vii Contributors xiv Series editor's preface xvii Introduction Taking stock: a theory with more than half a century of history 1

Papers on social representations, 1993

Doise (in press) has emphasised that researchers have focused empirical work on only one aspect of the theory of social representations. They have mainly been concerned either with describing the content of existing representations or they have been interested in examining how anchoring and objectification operate. They have left largely unexplored Moscovici's hypotheses concerning the ways in which, at the level of the metasystem, social groups generate representations which serve group purposes. Representations serve different types of group interest and Moscovici describes three: diffusion, propagation and propaganda. Representations serving these three communicative purposes have different structures and organisation. They differ particularly in the extent to which they are consensually shared within a group or a subgroup. The defining property of a social representation is not simply that it should be shared. The predicted internal structure of the representation and the extent to which it is dispersed within a recognisable group or social category will depend upon the functions it is serving.

2015

This paper aims to briefly review the ways in which the concept of social representation has been approached, starting from the vast field of collective mentalities from which it originates and reaching the current meanings of the term. The premise from which our approach starts is that each social actor builds one’s own grid of reading reality, based on representations, but one is also subject, at the same time, to the common definitions of the members of the group to which one belongs. The methodology used consists of a structural analysis, followed by an interpretative approach of a symbolic interactionism type. The emphasis lays on revealing the structure and functions of representation, and the conclusions highlight the fact that social representation is a continuously evolving social construct which plays an important role in defining individual and group identity.

Papers on social …, 1993

This paper attempts to discuss the 'versatility' of the concept of social representations, in the context of the Anglo-saxon tradition of social psychological research. This is done by analysing some of the concept's internal featureswhat we call the 'openness' of the concept -along with the various ways in which it has been incorporated by other approaches within social psychology -bringing about what we call the 'closure' of the concept. It is suggested that the theory has provided a 'convenient social package' to social psychological perspectives historically criticized as being asocial. The use of pre-established methods and techniques combined with social representations theory provides a "safe" territory to do research, where one introduces something allegedly "novel", i.e. the social, and at the same time does not assume the full consequences of that novelty. We argue that while the very openness and flexibility of the concept might invite convenient combinations, these are usually achieved at a cost. The theoretical integrity of the concept is compromised, mainly by treating social representations as a technological answer to theoretical lacuna of other perspectives. The outcome is a premature epistemological closure of the concept, which disempowers its otherwise lively theoretical resources. This paper has benefited greatly from comments

Asian Journal of …, 1999

This paper gives an overview of social representation theory, definitions of the key terms and of the social processes leading to a representation and to social identity. Six empirical studies are presented and details of their methods and findings are given to illustrate this social psychological approach. These studies are about the ontogenesis of gender, the public sphere in Brazil, madness on British television, images of androgyny in Switzerland, individualism and democracy in post-communist Europe and metaphorical thinking about conception. The methods are ethnography, interviews, focus-groups, content analysis of media, statistical analysis of word associations, questionnaires and experiments. Finally, social representation theory is compared to theories of attitudes, schemata and social cognition.

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2008

The study " Psychoanalysis-its image and its public " intimates that common sense is increasingly informed by science. But common sense asserts its autonomy and, in turn, may affect the trajectory of science. This is a process that leads to many differentiations-in common sense, in scientific innovation and in political and regulatory structures. Bauer and Gaskell's toblerone model of triangles of mediation provided a distillation of their reading of "La Psychanalyse." Here it was argued that representations are multi-modal phenomena necessitating the use of multiple methodologies (comparative and longitudinal; qualitative and quantitative). In this paper we briefly summarise these arguments and elaborate ways in which social representation theory can be considered a progressive research programme. "Progressive" because as the theory has developed it has extended the range and depth of its conceptual basis; it provides a new synthesis for the social scientific understanding of the phenomena of common sense and of representation; it acts as an antidote to the reductionism of public opinion and, finally, it is a stimulus to depart from disciplinary silos. However, there remain unresolved issues: how to segment the relevant social milieus and how to close the feedback loop from common sense to science?

To mark 50 years of research on social representations (SR), we planned both a special issue and a conference to bring together some of the most significant papers from the last 50 years.