Representational Projects and Interacting Forms of Knowledge

This paper focuses on the concept of the reified and consensual universes in the theory of social representations, and the relationship between them. Having examined the different ways in which Moscovici discusses this concept, and the different ways in which these discussions have been interpreted, I will suggest that many of the criticisms levelled at this facet of social representations theory appear somewhat misplaced. However, it does seem that some aspects of the concept of the consensual and the reified universes are rather under-developed within the theory as a whole. It will be suggested that the recent addition of the notion of the representational project to the theory of social representations goes some way towards addressing some of these emergent issues, most notably with regards to the relationship between knowledges from different spheres. As an example, the area of representations of health and illness will be considered: drawing on work that takes the perspective of the sociology of scientific knowledge, it will be suggested that the theory of social representations needs to make the possibility of a bi-directional relationship between knowledge from the fields of scientific and common sense understanding more explicit.     

Social Representations Theory: A Progressive Research Programme for Social Psychology

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?     

More than a Theory: A New Map of Social Thought

In this article we revisit two different temporal phases related to the publication of Serge Moscovici's book La Psychanalyse, son image et son public, and we examine two key concepts of the theory: cognitive polyphasia and anchoring. The first phase, initiated by the Durkheimian circle, gives us an opportunity to retrieve traces of the intellectual debate about collective psychology and reconsider this debate in today's light. The second, more recent phase, is inspired by classical and modern research in the field of social representation, and it serves us as a basis for a new hypothesis about anchoring. We suggest that the traditional concept of familiarisation attributed to anchoring can also have an opposite significance: it can transmit and guarantee the non‐familiar and so establish strangeness. Finally, we argue that social representations are more than a simple theory, just like the symbol is always more than what it symbolizes.     

From cognitive dissonance to cognitive Polyphasia: A sociocultural approach to understanding meat‐paradox

Cognitive Dissonance Theory seeks to understand inconsistency by situating it within individual cognition. By doing so, it overlooks the role of the social context in the experience and management of inconsistency and dissonance and fails to capture the processes through which it is negotiated when it appears. On the other side, the cognitive polyphasia hypothesis together with a dialogical approach on Social Representations provide a socioculturally situated, process‐oriented understanding of inconsistency. In this paper, meat‐paradox, the phenomenon of simultaneously declaring love and respect towards animals and also consuming animals, mainly studied through Cognitive Dissonance Theory, is used in order to highlight the merits of a sociocultural approach to inconsistency. Four relevant empirical examples from interviews and focus groups with meat‐eaters and vegetarians in Cyprus are used to illustrate the approach. The examples illustrate how meat‐eaters manage dissonance in ways that exhibit coexistence of contradictory representations and ways of thinking. Three different modalities of knowledge coexistence are identified, as proposed by cognitive polyphasia researchers: displacement, selective prevalence and hybridisation. We discuss the importance of a sociocultural approach to studying paradoxes, the epistemological and methodological implications of such a theorisation and we suggest other life contexts in which such an approach can be applied.     

The Epistemological Significance of the Theory of Social Representations

The theory of social representations must be understood in terms of its proper epistemology so that it can accomplish its full potential in social sciences. This is often difficult to achieve because researchers comprehend it in terms of concepts that are part of static and individualistic Newtonian epistemology rather than in terms of dynamic and relational Einsteinian epistemology. This article considers three signposts that Moscovici identifies and analyses in the theory of relativity, namely the relation between epistemology and science, theory and method, and the argument against the explanation of effects by their causes. The following question is posed: are these signposts also characteristic of the theory of social representations? This question is examined focusing on interactional epistemology, theory and method and the diversity of natural thinking and communication. Moscovici's Psychoanalysis shows that natural thinking appears in a plurality of modes according to the situation in which it takes place and according to social groups towards which it is directed. Natural thinking is controversial and communication‐centred. Different professionals, groups and lay people use different kinds of speaking and different communicative genres when they try to resolve “the same” problem. The article suggests that bringing together dialogicality, dialogical linguistics and the theory of social representations may open up new possibilities for theoretical developments in social psychology.     

Social Representations: The Beautiful Invention

Psychoanalysis: Its Image and Its Public is a perfect illustration of Tarde's claim that ‘beautiful’ should be reserved for ideas that lead to a discovery of more ideas and to an invention that we can judge as fruitful for the future. The article examines the influence of the book in geographical, historical and scientific contexts and traces the development and diffusion of the theory of social representations throughout four periods. The article highlights the difference between the first edition in 1961, and the second one in 1976, and it examines the development of Moscovici's ideas over time. The first edition of Psychoanalysis, based on the criticism of sociology of knowledge, underlines common sense as a new object of study, attempting to capture complex social phenomena. It shows common sense as a legitimate object of study that interweaves social, cultural and individual dimensions in the constitution of social reality. The 1976 edition emphasises that language and communication and its role in the theory of social knowledge. The book has had manifold impact on new areas of study. An overview of international research in social representations shows how this work has inspired scholars all over the world, has lead to creating Schools of research and to innovative proposals not only in terms of domains that have been studied but also in terms of theoretical models and methodological concerns.     

Re‐conceptualizing Abstract Conceptualization in Social Theory: The Case of the “Structure” Concept

I this paper, I draw on recent research on the radically embodied and perceptual bases of conceptualization in linguistics and cognitive science to develop a new way of reading and evaluating abstract concepts in social theory. I call this approach Sociological Idea Analysis. I argue that, in contrast to the traditional view of abstract concepts, which conceives them as amodal “presuppositions” removed from experience, abstract concepts are irreducibly grounded in experience and partake of non‐negotiable perceptual‐symbolic features from which a non‐propositional “logic” naturally follows. This implies that uncovering the imagistic bases of allegedly abstract notions should be a key part of theoretical evaluation of concepts in social theory. I provide a case study of the general category of “structure” in the social and human sciences to demonstrate the analytic utility of the approach.     

The First Social Psychologist

Because both the individual and the state call for simultaneous investigation in social psychology, one could argue that in some sense Serge Moscovici, with the publication of Psychoanalysis, put forward the first systematic large scale empirical study of cognitive representations in, as it happily proved, various blocs of French understandings of psychoanalysis, admitting, characteristically, doubts about the individual, bloc, and the state representations.     

The Change in the Daily Knowledge of Madness in Turkey

The transformation and change of social knowledge in Modern Turkish Republic has begun with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Whilst the transformation of knowledge took place in daily knowledge, the change that took place in the political structures had a broad influence in the language, religion and tradition. The appearance of a new form of daily knowledge created a new common sense and this has opened the road towards the possibility of investigating social representations of various phenomena. Among these the social representations of madness in daily knowledge have already existed in common sense knowledge for a long time. With this in mind, the main goal of this paper is to explore contemporary urban Turkish social representations of madness. This study has shown that both scientific and common sense knowledge exist at present in citizens' daily knowledge and practices.     

Formalism, Behavioral Realism and the Interdisciplinary Challenge in Sociological Theory

In this paper, I argue that recent sociological theory has become increasingly bifurcated into two mutually incompatible styles of theorizing that I label formalist and behavioral-realist. Formalism favors mathematization and proposes an instrumentalist ontology of abstract processes while behavioral-realist theory takes at its basis the "real" physical individual endowed with concrete biological, cognitive and neurophysiological capacities and constraints and attempts to derive the proper conceptualization of social behavior from that basis. Formalism tends to lead toward a conceptually independent sociology that in principle requires only minimal reference to the empirical and ontological storehouse of other disciplines, while behavioral-realist theory leads to an interdisciplinary sociology that can be located within a hierarchy of behavioral sciences, leading to questions regarding the relationship between sociology and other disciplines as well as issues of transdisciplinary unification and possible interdisciplinary reduction. I explore the consequences of this split for the project of explanatory sociological theory within the context of how it has manifested itself in sociological network theory and social psychology. I close with a critique and assessment of formalist tendencies in sociological theorizing.     

Alienation as Atrophied Moral Cognition and Its Implications for Political Behavior

I present a theory of alienation that accounts for the cognitive processes involved with moral thinking and political behavior in modern societies. On my account, alienation can be understood as a particular kind of atrophy of moral concepts and moral thinking that affect the ways individuals cognize and legitimate the social world and their place within it. Central to my argument is the thesis that modern forms of social integration—shaped by highly institutionalized, rationalized and hierarchical forms of social life—serve to constrain the moral‐ cognitive powers of subjects leading to a condition of alienation as moral atrophy. This state results from the withering of the subject's internal powers of moral reflection and an overriding predisposition to rely on external value schemas to make sense of moral and political problems. I then present an analysis of alienated moral consciousness and its implications for modern social theory.     

Sensitising Concept, Themata and Shareness: A Dialogical Perspective of Social Representations

This article aims at clarifying some critical, yet under-explored, conceptual issues of social representations from a dialogical perspective. The article recasts the notion of social representations as a sensitising, rather than a definitive, concept, based on the distinction between dialogical and monological epistemologies. It is argued that the introduction of the concept of themata into the theory suggests the dialogical interdependence between common thinking and social morphology, between the genesis and structure of social representations, and between implicit underlying themata and their pragmatic manifestations in structuring social representations. At the same time, the concept of themata implies that a social representation may be, at one and the same time, shared and communicated in hegemonic, emancipated and polemical ways in a complementary manner. These three ways of "sharing" are dialogically interrelated to each other.     

The Cognitive Origins of Bourdieu's Habitus

This paper aims to balance the conceptual reception of Bourdieu's sociology in the United States through a conceptual re-examination of the concept of Habitus. I retrace the intellectual lineage of the Habitus idea, showing it to have roots in Claude Levi-Strauss structural anthropology and in the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, especially the latter's generalization of the idea of operations from mathematics to the study of practical, bodily-mediated cognition. One important payoff of this exercise is that the common misinterpretation of the Habitus as an objectivist and reductionist element in Bourdieu's thought is dispelled. The Habitus is shown to be instead a useful and flexible way to concep-tualize agency and the ability to transform social structure. Thus ultimately one of Bourdieu's major contributions to social theory consists of his development of a new radical form of cognitive sociology, along with an innovative variety of multilevel sociological explanation in which the interplay of different structural orders is highlighted. In keeping with the usual view, the goal of sociology is to uncover the most deeply buried structures of the different social worlds that make up the social universe, as well as the "mechanisms" that tend to ensure their reproduction or transformation. Merging with psychology, though with a kind of psychology undoubtedly quite different from the most widely accepted image of this science, such an exploration of the cognitive structures that agents bring to bear in their practical knowledge of the social worlds thus structured. Indeed there exists a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, between the objective divisions of the social world . . . and the principles of vision and division that agents apply to them (Bourdieu, 1996b[1989], p. 1).     

Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe: Neither Complete Altruists nor Free-riders

In the framework of the SOCCARE Project, focusing on families dealing with a double front of care for children and frail elderly people, similarities can be found in Italy, France and Portugal beyond their different welfare regimes. The comparison of family histories and caregiving strategies, by the methodology of case‐matching, gives an interesting overview of the relationship between the debate on social care and that on the intergenerational contract. The paper aims to understand which are the available combinations of family, informal and institutional resources making a heavy burden of care “acceptable and still normal”: this focuses both typical situations of each country and common features through the countries. The results show how changes in the representations of obligation and duty in the intergenerational pact produce different outcomes and demands in welfare systems. The analysis of shifting boundaries between the public and private spheres in care provides useful policy recommendations, aimed at improving choices and “sustainable” responsibilities of individuals, families and social networks. Sustainable policies seem to be more dependent on family and structural types and resources of networks than on different welfare and services support.     

Symbolic Boundaries and Collective Violence. A New Theoretical Argument for an Explanatory Sociology of Collective Violent Action

The sociology of violence still struggles with two critical questions: What motivates people to act violently on behalf of groups and how do they come to identify with the groups for which they act? Methodologically the article addresses these puzzling problems in favor of a relational sociology that argues against both micro‐ and macro‐reductionist accounts, while theoretically it proposes a twofold reorientation: first, it makes a plea for the so called cognitive turn in social theory; second, it proposes following praxeological accounts of social action that focus on the dynamic interpenetration of cognition and socio‐cultural practices. The argument is that symbolic boundaries constitute the “missing link” that allows for overcoming the micro‐macro gap in violence research: Symbolic boundaries can cause people's participation in collective violence by providing the essential relational resources for violent action and by triggering the cognitive/affective mechanisms necessary for social actors to become drawn into mobilization processes that can cause their engaging in coordinated attacks on sites across the boundary. The article offers a new theoretical argument by drawing on knowledge from violence research, social action theory and cognitive science allowing for a non‐reductionist theory of action that explains how and why people engage in collective violence.     

Social work and social problems: A contribution from systems theory and constructionism

Social work builds its identity on social problems. The goal is to generate knowledge about causes, consequences and solutions. However, there is a lack of theory of social problems. We suggest that research on social problems can benefit by ‘bringing the observer in’: Loseke's constructionist framework and Luhmann's systems theory. According to Loseke, social problems appear differently when constructed by different observers. Constructions vary in terms of morality, conditions, victims/villains and solutions. From Luhmann we learn that modern society consists of a multitude of social systems (e.g. politics, science, economy etc.), each operating with their own communicative codes. Combining both approaches, we hypothesise that any social system constructs its own (version of) social problems. Illustrating with the empirical case ‘suicide among mentally ill people’, we examine how a phenomenon is constructed differently as a social problem by four different social systems: the disability movement, politics, medicine and social work.     

Linking Science to Common Sense

The distinction between the reified universe of science and the consensual universe of common sense introduced by Serge Moscovici in the Psychoanalysis and reiterated in further texts always gave rise to debate and puzzled interrogations. In the present text it is argued that for Serge Moscovici there is both a discontinuity and continuity between the two fields of science and common sense although at different levels of analysis. They would be discontinuous at the operative theoretical level corresponding to the logic of verification in the sense of Popper. Truth and truthfulness are not the same. But there would be continuity at the metatheoretical thematic level, where either scientists or lay people seem to follow the same non conscious insightful processes enabling them to look beyond the empirical observables as well as beyond the traditional beliefs and common places.