Social Representation
Summary |
Emile Durkheim in 1942 and later Jean Piaget have demonstrated the importance of basic motor and postural in imitative representation.
Michel Foucault , in a perspective epistemological and archeology of knowledge , in turn introduced the concept of episteme : it is a worldview that brings together different paradigms or mental representations individuals relating to the practice the world, the history , the cosmology , ... Michel Foucault thinks that we are entering a new era, he calls hyper.
Furthermore, work examining the conditions of understanding and language exchange ( John Searle ) postulate a background culture , tacit knowledge, conventions, that is to say that the representation is office.
In a clinical perspective inspired by psychoanalysis D. Kaes articulates, for his part in its work processes, cognitive representations to the order of desires and emotions.
The recent contributions of history ( Georges Duby ), sociology ( Bourdieu ), anthropology ( Marc Aug ) recognize and explain the function of representation in the constitution of orders and reports social orientation of collective behavior and the transformation of the social world. For example Georges Duby about the imagination of feudalism speaks of representation as a "frame", "latent", " image only "social organization and ensure the transition to different symbolic systems.
These different approaches that allow cognitive psychology and social sciences can be found through social psychology.
In France, Serge Moscovici lays the terminals of a vast field of research centered around social representations. In his various works , , , it demonstrates the role of social representations in the establishment of a consensual reality, their social-cognitive function in the integration of novelty, the orientation of communication and behavior. It also shows that social representations can be studied globally as the dimensions of content (information, values, opinions ...) are coordinated by an organizing principle (attitude, norms ...) or as focused as knowledge structures organizing all the meanings on the object. This second approach is to compare the central organizing concept developed by Solomon Asch in 1954 during his research on the formation of impressions.
D. Jodelet in 1985 and 1991 , and then Rouquette ML in 1996 specify the specific phenomena representative with regard to ideology:
Social representation to an object (eg mental illness) while ideology is for a class of objects whose borders remain open permanently. For example, the communist ideology could inspire judgments about religion but also psychoanalysis, etc..
The ideology and interpreter does not distinguish between what is interpreted and what does not. Ideology is seen as a set of conditions and cognitive constraints in drawing a family of social representation, it is at a greater level of generality. These are the same conditions and cognitive constraints that bind together the one hand certain representations and other representations reject different or antagonistic. This mechanism partly explains how the group members identify reflexive without knowing. ML Rouquette wrote "Behind the apparent diversity of preferences and commitments are configurable rules of social origin."
Definition of
After this overview of the history actually quite short of the concept of social representation, we now attach to define it precisely.
Several authors (Piaget , Moscovici C. Herzlich ) attempted to formulate definitions reflecting the different dimensions of the concept of social representation, we propose two, one dynamic (Jodelet) the other more descriptive (Fischer):
According to D. Jodelet
"The concept of social representation means a specific form of knowledge, knowledge of common sense, whose contents show the operation of generative processes and functional socially marked. More broadly, it refers to a form of social thought. Social representations are ways of thinking practice-oriented communication, understanding and mastering the social, material and ideal. As such, they present specific features in terms of content organization, operations and mental logic. Social tagging content or process of representation is to refer to the conditions and contexts in which representations emerge, communication through which they circulate, the functions they serve in the interaction with the world and others. "
According to Fischer GN
"The social representation is a process, cognitive status, allowing them to understand aspects of ordinary life by a reframing of our own behavior within social interaction"
Structure of a social representation
According Abric ( 1984 , 1989 ), the social organizers to structure elements, stable and non-negotiable (forming the nucleus of the representation) about which elements devices unstable and negotiable exercise as a buffer to reality. In the experiment, which allowed him to advance this theory, Abric brought to light an example, the nuclear components of the social representation of the Artisan: the five elements that are "manual worker", "love the art", "work custom "," good work "and" Apprentice ", are known as non-negotiable because they constitute the essential elements that object must have to belong to this representation. Thus, a craftsman who does not love some of the art, for example, can be truly considered as such. Many more volatile components can characterize the objects without necessarily being associated consistently. Such elements "peripheral" can readily classify an object in the social representation - while fulfilling their role as facilitator of management of social reality - while maintaining flexibility: the object may or may not present such information without that their nature is not fundamentally affected.
Conversely, a change of one element of the core, as shown Guimelli (1985), will effect a radical transformation of the representation.
References
- Emile Durkheim. 1898. Representations individual and collective representations. In Journal of metaphysics and morality. VI, 273-302p.
- Henri Wallon. 1942. From the act to thought. Paris, Flammarion
- Jean Piaget. 1950. Introduction to genetic epistemology. Paris, PUF
PIAGET (J.). 1962. "The role of imitation in the formation of the representation." Developments in psychiatry. p 27, p. 141-150. - Michel Foucault. 1966. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences. Reissued by Gallimard in 1995 , NRF. Public.
- John Searle. 1983. Intentionality. An essay in The Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
- D. Kaes, 1976 The group psychic apparatus. Construction Group, Paris, Dunod. Kaeser (R), 1980-1981 "Elements for a psychoanalysis of attitudes, Psychological Bulletin, p. 34, p. 451 - 463.
- Pierre Bourdieu. 1982. What language means. The economics of linguistic exchanges, Paris Fayard.
- Marc Aug. 1979. Symbol, Function, History. The questions of anthropology. Paris, Hachette.
- Georges Duby. 1978. The three orders or the imagination of feudalism. Paris, Gallimard.
- Serge Moscovici. 1961. Psychoanalysis, its image and its audience. Paris, PUF.
- Serge Moscovici. 1984. The field of social psychology. Introduction to S. Moscovici (Ed). The social psychology. Paris, PUF.
- a and b Serge Moscovici. 1961. Psychoanalysis, its image and its audience. Paris, PUF
- Solomon Asch. 1954. Effects of group pressure and distortion On The modification of Judgement. In H. Guetzkow Groups, Leadership and Men. Pittsburgh, Carnegie.
- D. Jodelet. 1985. Civils and Bredin relative to the folly and social representation of mental illness. Thesis for doctoral status. Paris, EHESS
- JODELET (D.). 1991. Ideology in the Study of Social Representations. In V. Aesbischer, JP Deconchy, R. Lipiansky. Ideologies and social representations. DelVal: Fribourg.
- ROUQUETTE (ML). 1996. "Representations and ideology". In JC Deschamps, JL Beauvois attitudes to authority. Grenoble, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, p 171.
- Jean Piaget. 1926. The representation of the world in children. Paris, PUF
- Herzlich (C.). 1969. Health and Disease Analysis of a social representation. Paris, SHEEP
- JODELET (D.). 1984. Social Representations: phenomena, concepts and theory. In: MOSCOVICI. (S), Social Psychology. Paris, PUF, p. 357-378.
- FISCHER (NG). 1987. The fundamental concepts of social psychology. University Press of Montreal. Dunod. p 118.
Bibliography
- Jean-Marie Seca , 2003, Social representations, Paris, Armand Colin
Notes
Related articles
External Links
- (En) Social representations: File Psychoweb.fr Definitions, methods of investigation
- (En) Central Nucleus Theory and Experiment Abric (1984)
- (En) Processing conditions of social representations (Guimelli, 1985)
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