representation of culture

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Cultural representation refers to the ways in which different cultures, identities, and social groups are depicted in various forms of media, art, and public discourse. It plays a vital role in shaping perceptions and understandings of diverse communities, influencing how they are viewed and understood in society. By analyzing cultural representation, we can uncover the power dynamics, biases, and stereotypes that exist within artistic expressions and institutional narratives.

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5 Must Know Facts For Your Next Test

• Cultural representation can reinforce or challenge societal norms and power structures by highlighting underrepresented voices and experiences in art.
• Women artists have historically faced barriers to representation in art history, often leading to a lack of visibility for their contributions and narratives.
• Museum studies critically examine how cultural representation influences the display of art and artifacts, shaping public understanding of different cultures.
• Intersectionality emphasizes the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, gender, and class in understanding how cultural representation varies among different groups.
• Art analysis through diverse feminist perspectives reveals how cultural representation has been used both as a tool for empowerment and as a means of perpetuating stereotypes.

Review Questions

• Cultural representation significantly affects the visibility of women artists by often sidelining their work within traditional narratives of art history. This can lead to a lack of recognition for their contributions and limit the diversity of perspectives presented in art. By examining how women artists have navigated these barriers, we can better understand their impact on the art world and advocate for more inclusive representation.
• Critical approaches in museum studies focus on how cultural representation shapes the narratives presented within museums and galleries. These approaches analyze the power dynamics involved in curatorial decisions, questioning whose stories are told and whose are omitted. By evaluating these practices, scholars aim to promote more equitable representation of diverse cultures and histories in museum exhibitions.
• Intersectionality is essential in analyzing cultural representation as it allows for a more nuanced understanding of how various identities overlap and influence experiences. In contemporary art, this framework enables critics and audiences to appreciate the complexities of artists' work by recognizing how factors such as race, gender, and class shape artistic expression. This comprehensive evaluation can lead to richer interpretations and greater inclusivity in discussions surrounding art.

Related terms

Cultural Identity : The sense of belonging to a particular culture, influenced by shared values, traditions, language, and historical experiences.

Representation Theory : A theoretical framework that explores how meanings are constructed and conveyed through images, symbols, and language in cultural texts.

Stereotypes : Oversimplified and widely held beliefs or ideas about a particular group of people, often leading to misrepresentation and prejudice.

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Representation, cultural

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• Carla A. Santos 3 &
• Erin McKenna 3  

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Representation is a concept that has long engaged philosophers, sociolinguists, sociologists, and anthropologists. The term embodies a range of meanings and interpretations advanced by the works of Bourdieu ( 1991 ), Foucault ( 1972 ), Hall ( 1997 ), and Said ( 1978 ), among others. It can be defined both as a function of language and in social terms. As a function of language, the concept can be conceived of as the representation of empirical experience and as the representation of thoughts. In social terms, it can be conceived of as the linking of mass-mediated practices and social norms to the representation of particular social groups and the construction of their identities, as well as the complex and relational depiction of the interests of political subjects or issues (the foundational principle of a representative democracy). Consequently, the study of representation calls on the analysis of language, including social structure and cultural practices to understand how meanings are...

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Bourdieu, P. 1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity.

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Dann, G. 1996 The Language of Tourism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Oxford: CABI.

Foucault, M. 1972 The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon.

Hall, S. 1997 Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.

Morgan, N., and A. Pritchard 1998 Tourism Promotion and Power: Creating Images, Creating Identities. Chichester: Wiley.

Spivak, G. 1988 Can the Subaltern Speak. In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, eds., pp.271-313. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Said, E. 1978 Orientalism. New York: Patheon.

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Santos, C.A., McKenna, E. (2016). Representation, cultural. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01384-8_159

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The ‘Politics of Representation’ in Post-Colonial Studies

Representation refers to how ideas, beliefs, values, and other aspects of different societies and cultures are imagined, expressed, shared, and understood by others, in both language-based or visual form.

This is considered ‘political’ because of considerations linked to who holds the power to create representations; whose voices are heard and amplified; which cultural practices are privileged or suppressed; and how the representations are interpreted and weaponised as a tool for domination or resistance, whatever the original intentions of the people who created the representation (Said 1973; Lockmann 2004).

When used in the context of post-colonial studies, the term “politics of representation” refers to how colonisers and colonised peoples were depicted and understood, as well as how their relationship was interpreted.

This includes examining power dynamics between the two groups, understanding the cultural and historical context for their interactions, and looking at how colonization still impacts present-day society.

Assessing the politics of representation makes it possible to better understand the complexities behind colonialism , imperialism, racialisation, and other dynamics that have shaped our contemporary world.

In this essay I will first address the issue of representation in anthropology, with a particular focus on the links between the discipline and colonialism, which led to much scholarly debate and criticism in the 1980s about potential bias in ethnographic and other scholarly representations of the colonised during the colonial era, which subsequently became the foundation for the emergence of post-colonial studies (Lockmann 2004).

I will then broaden the discussion to include other forms of representation, including the representation of power relations through discourse, photography and movies.

Anthropology is a representational discipline in which anthropologists seek to contextualize and interpret the complexities of the societies they study, representing their findings in the form of documentation, images, photos, artifacts, and stories kept in their archives or displayed in exhibitions and museums, scholarly papers and presentations made at conferences, as well as articles and books written for a general audience (Vargas-Cetina 2013).

It initially emerged as the study of the ‘primitive’ and the ‘exotic,’ with its origins firmly rooted in the power structures of the colonial era (Said 1973; Assad 1973; Lockmann 2004; Vargas-Cetina 2013; Gleach 2013).

Early anthropologists gained access to the subjects they were to study as part of the colonial apparatus, and while they may have tried to be neutral observers, it would be naïve to claim that their positionality, which hinged on the power inequalities in the relationship between coloniser and colonised, did not shape the outcomes of their research (Lockmann 2004).

This influence was one of the main thrusts of Said’s argument about the flawed representation of colonised nations by scholars representing the Orient –

‘… for a European or American studying the Orient there can be no disclaiming the main circumstances of his actuality: that he comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second. And to be a European or an American in such a situation is by no means an inert fact’ Said 1973

(Said 1973, as cited in Lockmann 2004: 188).

Thus, anthropology came into being as the study by Europeans of non-European societies ruled by European powers, with the resulting representations meant for a European audience (Assad 1973: 90).

Beyond ethnographic representations created by early anthropologists, there were of course other forms of representation which shaped the Western public’s views of colonised peoples and cultures.

Artwork, literature, photography, cartoons and even human ‘zoos’ have been used to propagate ideas about ‘the Other’ that constructed a distorted vision of these societies while also reinforcing colonial power relations (Said 1973; Lockmann 2004; Vargas-Cetina 2013).

One of the seminal texts in the field is Edward Said’s Orientalism , which examines the politics of representation in the context of colonialism and imperialism in Eastern countries.

He argues that Western (European and American) perceptions of the East were shaped by a cycle of representation that presented “the Orient” as exotic, mysterious, and inferior.

The core premise perpetuated by the dichotomization of the East and the West, was the ‘othering’ of the East, based on preconceptions and attitudes that had little or no foundation.

In fact, many of the representations in question were often produced with little regard for or knowledge of the culture they were representing.

Through this process, he argues, colonised cultures were reduced to a set of stereotypes that explained and justified the inequality and oppression perpetuated upon them by Western powers (Said 1973; Lockmann 2004; Shohat & Stam 2014; Lutz and Collins 2020).

In the article ‘Shattered Myths,’ Said posits that much of the body of knowledge created by European and American scholars about ‘Arab society’ was in fact an exercise of ‘mythification,’ since ‘Arabs all told number over a hundred million people and at least a dozen different societies’ so it was impossible to study them ‘as a single monolith’ (Said 1975: 90).

He illustrates his point by referring to several examples of blinkered representations by Orientalists or Arabists (scholars who profess ‘to know the Arabs’ (Said 1975: 91)), focusing on articles written by Professor Gil Carl Alroy and Dr Harold Glidden as flagrant examples of the contentious ‘othering’ of non-Western cultures.

The former author makes several sweeping statements about Arabs, claiming that they are obsessed with violence and bloodshed and ‘psychologically incapable of peace,’ citing as proof of his claims various articles which appeared in Egyptian newspapers, ‘as if the two, Arabs and Egyptian newspapers, are but one’ (Said 1975: 90).

The latter, on the other hand, published an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry which purported to be a distilled psychological analysis of the Arab worldview, namely an obsession with revenge, the inability to be objective and make rational decisions, and the predilection for constant conflict, which were presented as the antithesis of Western ideals of peace and harmony (Said 1975: 91).

These two examples are not only reflective of a reductive view of Arab society, but are also highly political, since such representations can be, and in fact have been, used to legitimize and even encourage aggressive policies by Western powers, masking their aggression as an attempt to control or police the behaviour of people living in eastern countries.

The political implications of the abovementioned articles are very clear, but in other representations, such as those in photography and film, they can be covert, and one could argue, even more pernicious.

Through a careful selection of images and composition, photographers and filmmakers create narratives which have a powerful effect on how audiences understand and imagine the people and cultures being depicted (Shohat & Stam 2014; Lutz and Collins 2020).

The proliferation of photography and videography coincided with the heights of the imperial expansion projects of countries such as Britain, France and the United States.

Movies were much more accessible than literature or scholarly articles, creating new opportunities to craft representations of other cultures aimed for the consumption of the general public, including the illiterate (Shohat & Stam 2014).

When films were first introduced, audiences accepted what they saw on the big screen as fact, unaware of how filmmakers were manipulating the images and narratives to create different stories and portrayals.

A case in point is Nanook of the North: A Story of Life and Love in the Actual Arctic , which was released by Robert Flaherty in 1922 and became a box-office hit.

The film was hailed as the first ‘documentary,’ but in truth it was fiction.

The characters in the film were actors, and the family that the camera supposedly followed unobtrusively for a year were simply acting a part.

Furthermore, by then the Inuit were using guns to hunt, but the movie showed them using old-fashioned harpoons.

Flaherty justified misrepresenting the lives that contemporary Inuit were living as an attempt to capture and ‘preserve’ on film the Inuit’s culture before it was tainted by modernity – however the audience who ended up watching the film accepted it as factual and a representation of the way the Inuit lived in 1922, and not a recreation of the ways of the past (Mackay 2017).

A similar phenomenon occurred when photographers and videographers travelled to far flung places in the empire.

The images and films they produced presented and ‘otherizing’ the alien cultures and landscapes as exotic and inferior to those of the West (Said 1973; Lockmann 2004; Vargas-Cetina 2013).

The natives were pictured as ‘primitive’ and infantilized, with videographers such as Martin and Ola Johnson, in the 1920s, portraying them as a form of wildlife, comparable to monkeys (Shohat & Stam 2014: 122).

This was by no means an accident, for the Western imagination was at the time enamoured of the Darwinian notion that Westerners were the apogee of the evolutionary process, while the natives discovered in the far-flung parts of the globe were inferior beings, much lower down on the evolutionary ladder.

This evolutionary perspective led to atrocities such as the caging of Ota Benga, an African Pygmy, at the Bronx Zoo, for the delectation of the American public; and the study of the anatomy of black people by zoologists, who compared them to mandrills and baboons (Shohat & Stam 2014: 122).

With time, videography ‘progressed’ from what was purported to be documentary or ‘fly-on-the-wall’ representations, to storytelling.

This gave film makers even more licence, and the result were movies in which Africans were presented as cannibals or the people of India portrayed as needing protection.

These storylines lent themselves well to the glorification of the colonisers as philanthropists committed to reforming or saving the savages. An excellent example is the 1937 film Wee Willie Winkie , where Colonel Williams explains to Shirley Temple that –

‘Beyond that pass, thousands of savages are waiting to sweep down and ravage India. It’s England’s duty, it’s my duty, to see that this doesn’t happen’ Colonel Williams (Shohat & Stam 2014: 126)

Lutz and Collins (2020) conducted an analysis of the photographs shown in National Geographic magazines between 1950 and 1986.

Their findings indicate that images were chosen to match an imaginary evolutionary scale based on skin colour, ranging from black / poor / strenuous physical labour / low technology / ethnic clothing / superstitious to white / wealthy / time for leisure / high technology machinery / western clothing / science.

Black people were thus portrayed engaged in strenuous physical labour, using simple tools and wearing ethnic clothing. They were also more likely to be shown conducting ‘exotic’ activities such as ritual dances.

People with bronze skin tones, on the other hand, were portrayed as less poor than those who were black and using tools that were slightly more advanced.

And finally, at the other end of the scale, white people were portrayed using state-of-the-art machinery, wearing western clothes and the trappings of wealth, and in several cases at leisure (Lutz and Collins 2020: 97-100).

The authors concluded that the selection of images sent a subliminal message to readers that ‘at one point people of color were poor, dirty, technologically backward and superstitious – and some still are. … [but] With guidance and support from the West, they can in fact overcome these problems, acquire the characteristics of civilized peoples, and take their place alongside them in the world’ (Lutz and Collins 2020: 99).

What better way of justifying Euro-American exploitation of African and Asian countries than by deploying a narrative that black and bronze people were ‘poor’ and ‘backward’ and that the Western forays into their countries would help them to modernize and improve their quality of life?

The politics of representation is thus a very important part of post-colonial studies because it examines how certain images, words and stories were used to represent non-western peoples, creating over-generalisations based on an ethnocentric cultural hierarchy of differences and values, acting as justification and camouflage for the exploitation and subjugation of the ‘Other’ in the name of progress.

Bibliography

Asad, T. (1979) ‘Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter.’ In Huizer, G., Mannheim, B. (eds), The Politics of Anthropology: From Colonialism and Sexism Toward a View from Below . De Gruyter, Inc., Berlin/Boston.

Gleach, F. (2013) ‘Notes on the Use and Abuse of Cultural Knowledge.’ In Vargas-Cetina, G, Nash, J., Igor Ayora-Diaz, S., Conklin, B.A. and Field, L.W. (eds), Anthropology and the Politics of Representation . The University of Alabama Press: Tuscaloosa, pp. 176–190.

Lockman, Z. (2004) ‘Said’s Orientalism:  A Book and Its Aftermath.’  Contending Visions of the Middle East. Cambridge University Press, pp. 182–214.

Lutz, C., and Collins, J. (2002) ‘The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of Race and Gender.’ In Askew, K., Wilk, R. (eds), The Anthropology of Media . Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.

Said, E. (1975) ‘Shattered Myths.’ In Naseer, H. (ed.), Middle East Crucible . Medina University Press, pp. 410 – 427.

Shohat, E., Stam, R. (2014)  Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media  (2nd ed.). Routledge, London.

Mackay, R. (2017) ‘Nanook of the North: All the Worlds a Stage.’  Queen’s Quarterly , vol. 124, no. 2, pp. 249–258.

Vargas-Cetina, G. (2013) ‘Introduction: Anthropology and the Politics of Representation.’ In Vargas-Cetina, G, Nash, J., Igor Ayora-Diaz, S., Conklin, B.A. and Field, L.W. (eds) Anthropology and the Politics of Representation . The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 1–15.

Claudine Cassar began her professional journey in business, earning a BSc in Business and Computing from the University of Malta, followed by an MSc in International Marketing from the University of Strathclyde and an MPhil in Innovation from Maastricht Business School. At the age of 23, she founded her first company, which she successfully sold to Deloitte 17 years later.

At 45, Claudine made a bold career shift, returning to university to pursue a degree in Anthropology. Three years later, she graduated with a BA (Hons) in Anthropological Sciences. In 2022, she published her debut book, “ The Battle for Sicily’s Soul. “

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22 Social Representations As Anthropology of Culture

Ivana Marková, Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, UK

• Published: 21 November 2012
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The Theory of Social Representations studies formation and transformation of meanings, knowledge, beliefs, and actions of complex social phenomena like democracy, human rights, or mental illness, in and through communication and culture. This chapter examines the nature of interdependence between social representing, communication, and culture. It first explains differences between mental, collective, and social representations with respect to culture and language. It then focuses on two meanings of social representing: first, on representations as a theory of social knowledge and second, representations as social and cultural phenomena and as interventions in social practices. Rationality of social representations is based on diverse modalities of knowing and believing shared by groups and communities; it is derived from historically and culturally established common sense. This perspective justifies the claim that social representations should be treated as anthropology of contemporary culture. Finally, the chapter discusses main concepts linking social representations, language, and culture.

In this chapter we explore interdependencies between social representing, language, communication, and culture. In contrast to individual representations, social representations are dynamic phenomena that are embedded in culture and formed and transformed in and through language and communication. The researchers of social representing aim to understand how citizens think, feel about, and act on phenomena that are in the center of societal, group, and individual interests and discourses, be they political, health-related, environmental, or otherwise. Such phenomena pose significant challenges for social psychology generally and social representing specifically. Their understanding cannot be fitted within narrow and static frameworks, which still dominate large parts of social sciences. Instead, the study of social phenomena requires researchers’ and practitioners’ creativity in broadening and deepening the scope of their disciplines. This involves a scholarly interest in the ways in which traditions and novel ideas enrich each other, in the ability to understand how the relatively stable and new phenomena struggle for dominance and transform one another and how these tensions and conflicts are reflected in thought and language. The Theory of Social Representations, we shall argue here, provides researchers and practitioners with the means of coping with such challenges and so ensures the credibility of social psychology as a scientific discipline.

Because the concepts of “representation” and “representing” are used in different fields of social sciences and psychology, the study of social representing must dispel confusions between social and individual representations, the problem or rationality and irrationality, and misunderstandings of meanings of concepts linking social representing with cultural anthropology. Such issues also pose challenges for social psychology as a social scientific discipline: Can we make it theoretically convincing and useful in practical interventions?

Representation and Culture

During its long history in European scholarship, the meaning of representation has undergone considerable changes and diversification. Today, there are three main meanings of representation in human and social sciences and in philosophy. They stem from diverse epistemological traditions, address different levels of analysis, and imply contrasting relations with respect to culture and language.

Mental Representation, Culture, and Language

The first meaning refers to mental representations. It has been associated, at least since the seventeenth century with philosophers René Descartes and John Locke, with glorification of the cognition of the individual and with mirroring of the objective reality. According to this tradition, the self's cognition is the only source of certain knowledge or representation of reality.

The concept of mental representation as a mirror of objective reality has nothing to do with culture. The proponents of this perspective attribute any mistaken representations to the influence of other people and, indeed, of culture. As Descartes ( 1637/1985 ) put it, true knowledge cannot be pursued by an “example and custom.” Whereas Descartes did not say much about language, the philosopher John Locke ( 1690/1975 ) argued that the perfection of knowledge could be hindered or facilitated by incorrect or correct use of words. Although views of these philosophers were highly original in the context of philosophy and science of the seventeenth century, they have become a hindrance in social sciences of the twenty-first century. Their variations with respect to representations, culture, and language still play a significant role in contemporary cognitive sciences and in philosophical traditions based on foundational epistemology (for criticism of foundational epistemology, see Rorty, 1980 ; Taylor, 1995 ). Reflecting on views of foundational philosophy, the anthropologist Gellner ( 1998 , p. 3) characterizes them by saying: “We discover truth alone, we err in groups.” In his influential book Reason and Culture , Gellner ( 1992 ) claims that human reason is innate and universal and that it exists independently of culture. On the one hand, it can be argued that this idea expresses an essential presupposition that all humans have the same potential for rationality and for the development of intelligence and so that it mitigates racism. Gellner insists that culture and common sense knowledge hinders this universal human potential: “reason is latent in us all,” but “most cultures fail to promote it” (Gellner, 1992 , p. 53). On the other hand, we shall see later, to ignore culture in the growth of human intelligence leads to a paradox: any human individual always belongs to one culture or other, and it remains questionable what it could possibly mean to claim that reason can be explored independently of culture or that culture fails to promote reason.

Collective Representation, Culture, and Language

A different meaning of representation was held by the sociologist Emile Durkheim who, despite remaining philosophically within the framework of Descartes and Kant, dramatically altered the concept of representation. First, Durkheim ( 1898 ) sharply distinguished between individual and collective representations. Individual representations are of physiological and neurological nature and do not have much to do with knowledge. In contrast, collective representations do not originate in single minds but arise directly from social structures. They are generated in social life and in social groups, institutions, and cultures. For Durkheim, representing referred to various forms of thinking—whether scientific, religious, social, or ideological—rather than to specifically defined objects. Such meaning was fully in agreement with the French use of the word representation in arts, literature, and daily discourse as well as in social sciences.

Collective representations are social facts, and as such, they form the basis of all understanding, knowledge, and logic. Durkheim's ambition was to develop the idea of collective representations as a theory of sociological knowledge. Being social facts, collective representations impose an irresistible pressure on individuals who yield to their coercion, internalize them, and so perpetuate specific forms of thinking, feeling and acting. For something to be knowledge, it must be stable. Durkheim held the position that representations change very slowly during the historical journey of mankind from religion to science and from less to more adequate representations.

In Durkheim's time, social and cultural phenomena were understood as intertwined and Durkheim's concept of collective representations formed an interface between culture and society; he used the term social both for social and cultural systems. Representations included religion, normative constraints of society, moral orders, social solidarity, as well as systems of beliefs and knowledge. Being social facts, collective representations are external to individuals who acquire them through internalization. Language, too, is a social fact. It circulates in society, forms the individual's social environment, and imposes itself on the individual. When the individual acquires language, he/she adopts the whole system of social thoughts, their classifications, and evaluations. Words fix ideas and transmit them from generation to generation. Therefore, language is a social thing (Durkheim, 1912/2001 ; Marková, 2003/2005 ).

Social Representations, Culture, and Language

Having considered relations between mental and collective representations with respect to culture and language, in the rest of this chapter we turn to social representations.

Building on the ideas of Durkheim and Piaget, Serge Moscovici has proposed an original Theory of Social Representations and developed it, both conceptually and empirically, in La Psychanalyse: Son Image et Son Public (Moscovici, 1961 /76). This book was published in English as Psychoanalysis: Its Image and Its Public (2008). This classic explores transformations of professional and scientific knowledge of psychoanalysis into everyday thinking and discourse of various social groups, and the mass media reporting, in a specific socio-political culture in the late 1950s in France. But we need to make a general point: it would be a mistake to understand the transformation of professional and scientific knowledge into everyday thinking as a naïve form of thinking and developing simplified lay theories. Instead, these transformations into common sense thinking and knowledge are accomplished and enriched through different means of communication and images; they involve arguments based on trust and distrust of others, collective memories, conscious and unconscious beliefs, myths and metaphors, fears and hopes. Following the publication of La Psychanalyse , social representing has been studied in various social, political, health-related, and other kinds of phenomena preoccupying the minds and discourses of general public (for a comprehensive review, see Wagner & Hayes, 2005 ).

The Dynamic Nature of Social Representing

Moscovici's social representations, in contrast to Durkheim's collective representations, are dynamic: they arise and are maintained and transformed through interaction and different forms of communication between the established social structures—for example, traditions, on the one hand, and the individuals’ and groups’ mental and social activities and social practices on the other. From the inception of the theory, language and communication have been vital features of representing, and this is already expressed in La Psychanalyse . As Moscovici explains, a representation is always directed at others: it speaks through pointing something to someone; it communicates through mediating meanings and symbols to someone. Representing and communicating is jointly generated by human subjects and groups that have different histories and experience. Their interaction does not follow the Durkheimian path of the progress from less adequate (e.g., religious representations) to more adequate (e.g., scientific representations). Arising in traditions, social experience, and communication, social representations are discontinuous; emotions, contents of beliefs, and images are sensitive to socio-cultural changes and to tensions and preferences of the Zeitgeist.

In contrast to collective representations that refer to various ideas and forms of thinking, social representations refer to specific objects or specific social phenomena. For example, the way citizens think, feel, and act (or represent) democracy depends on their historical and cultural experience as well as on their knowledge of, beliefs, and images about contemporary socio-political circumstances as well as of their expectations of the future. What is important to emphasize, however, is that it is not the object that is social. On the contrary, social representations arise from the fact that objects or phenomena are socially shared (Moscovici, 1988 ; Wagner, 1998 ; Wagner et al., 1999 ).

Unlike Durkheim's time, contemporary meanings of the notions “social” and “cultural” are not synonyms, although the boundaries between them are not always clear. The notion social ranges from usages in social sciences and their subdisciplines (e.g., economics, sociology, social psychology, politics, etc.) to professional fields like social security, health services, social work and social practices, among many others. Numerous attempts and failures to define culture as an entity point to inherent difficulties of this notion, and these difficulties also transpose themselves with respect to their relations to social representations (Duveen, 2007 ). These problems are raised by Jodelet ( 2002 ) in her article, “Social Representations in the Field of Culture.” The author draws attention to the changing relations between psychology, anthropology, and culture in the course of the last two centuries, arising both from diversifications within human and social sciences and from the more recent cognitive revolution, among other factors ( see also Valsiner, 2003 ).

During the five decades after the publication of La Psychanalyse , the explorations of social representations have become widely differentiated. A large volume of research has been carried out in different social and cultural conditions. Individual researchers have subscribed to divergent underlying epistemologies, and numerous studies have been performed on different topics, contents, and structures. As a result, some researchers (e.g., Wagner et al., 1999 ; Wagner & Hayes, 2005 ; Palmonari & Emiliani, 2009 ) speak about social representational approaches—or schools of social representations—rather than about a single theory. For example, these authors refer to the Aix-en-Provence school based on structuralistic approach that emphasizes central nucleus and periphery of representations (e.g., Abric, 1994a , 2001 ; Flament, 1994a , 1994b ; Guimelli, 1994 ), whereas the Genevean school of Doise specifies organizing principles of social representations (Doise, 1985 , 1986 ). Jodelet's approach is anthropological and cultural (e.g., Jodelet, 1989/1991 , 2002 , 2006a , 2008 ); Wagner, Duveen, and their collaborators (Wagner et al., 1999 , 2000 ; Duveen, 2007 ) bring to attention the role of social construction and discourse; and Valsiner draws on the role of semiotic mediation and social experience (e.g., Valsiner, 2003 ). In addition, one can hardly discuss social representations and culture without foregrounding language, communication, and, more specifically, dialogicality as a major feature of the relation between social representations and culture (Marková, 2003/2005 ; Valsiner, 2003 ).

Within these diversities in focus, we can nevertheless distinguish between two fundamental meanings of the concept of social representations that underlie all approaches (Jodelet, 1989/1991 ; Duveen, 2002 ; Marková, 2003/2003 ). First, the Theory of Social Representations is a theory of social knowledge. As such, it establishes networks of concepts and figurative schemes that are generated in and through tradition, common sense, daily knowledge, and communication and that are shared by particular groups and communities. The theory of social knowledge enables the researcher to define research problems. Second, social representations or social representing refers to concrete social phenomena and to forms of apprehending and creating social realities in and through communication, experience, social practices, and interventions (Jodelet, 2006a ; in press ) and semiotic mediation (Valsiner, 2003 ). This also enables the researcher to understand problems posed by the theory and to attempt their answers. Let us consider these two meanings in some detail.

Social Representations As a Theory of Social Knowledge

There is a fundamental difference between what is considered by knowledge in cognitive sciences and in the Theory of Social Representations. In the former, building blocks of epistemologies are knowledge and justified beliefs arising from the cognition of the individual. In parallel with this, in social sciences, epistemologies are often considered as paths from beliefs to knowledge, implying a gradual progress in intellectual development (for a historical account of these ideas since ancient times, see Lovejoy, 1936 ). Such was the position, for example, of Jean Piaget whose epistemology focused on transformations of less adequate patterns of thought to more adequate ones. In his studies of moral development, Piaget ( 1932 ) conceptualized this path as a gradual transformation of beliefs into knowledge or as a transformation of the morality of constraint to the morality of cooperation. Asymmetric relations—say, between a child and an adult—imply constraint and, therefore, only the possibility of belief or compliance resulting from the authority of the source. In contrast, symmetric relations in terms of social status and influence between individuals allow for co-operation and, therefore, for the mutual construction of knowledge (Duveen, 2002 ). As we have already seen, Durkheim's ideas concerning the transformation of less adequate to more adequate collective representations throughout human history take a similar path. The Piagetian and Durkheimian way of progress in the intellectual development relies on classical—that is, the Kantian form of—rationality. This means that the action of reason and of intellect excludes partly or totally those actions based on motives, desires, or emotions—that is, on irrational activities (Kant, 1788/1873 ). The Piagetian rationality (1970), like the Kantian rationality, is universal. All children pass through the stages of operational development, and through these stages they acquire, step by step, higher forms of intelligence.

Although informed and inspired by Durkheim and Piaget, Moscovici takes a different route:

The proper domain of our discipline is the study of cultural processes which are responsible for the organization of knowledge in a society … In parallel more attention should be paid to language which has not until now been thought of as an area of study closely related to social psychology. ( Moscovici , 1972/2000 , pp. 55–56)

But how can one link, epistemologically, culture, language, and knowledge, in and through social representations?

From Taxonomic Psychology of the Ego-Object to Representing Through the Ego–Alter–Object

Moscovici's ( 1970 , 1972/2000 ) analysis and criticism of what he called a “taxonomic” social psychology is instructive. It will lead us to overcoming problems of taxonomic psychology and to understanding the fundamentally important link between culture, language and knowledge. The study of the relation between the Ego and the Object in social psychology refers to no more than classification—or taxonomies—of stimuli or variables. For example, in taxonomic social psychology that is undertaken in numerous laboratory experiments, the Ego is treated (or classified) as undifferentiated and undefined; it is a subject without culture. The aim of such experiments is to discover how social stimuli affect classes of variables like perception, attitudes, judgment, and so on. But humans live in societies and are differentiated from one another in many ways; they live in cultures and they communicate. Therefore, “others” are not “other subjects” with whom humans compare themselves—for example, as in Festinger's ( 1954 ) social comparison theory— in order to reduce uncertainty with respect to what is right and wrong, or good or bad; neither are they subjects whose presence facilitates the Ego's activities, as in Zajonc's ( 1965 ) social facilitation theory. Instead, the Ego and the Alter communicate and jointly generate knowledge and social representations. Therefore, we must substitute the dyad Ego–Object, in which the Ego is taxonomically undifferentiated, by the triad Ego–Alter–Object. Once we introduce the Ego–Alter, we are immediately in the realm of language, communication, and culture. The Ego–Alter are not undifferentiated and undetermined subjects; they interact, communicate, and speak. As it is already clear in La Psychanalyse , representing takes place in communication. If knowledge is generated neither by the Ego nor by the Alter alone, but jointly by the Ego–Alter, then the minimum unit in the formation of knowledge cannot be expressed as a relation between the Ego–Object but as a triadic relation, the Ego–Alter–Object (Moscovici, 1970 , 1972/2000 , 1984 ; Bauer & Gaskell, 1999 ; Marková, 2003/2005 ; Jesuino, 2009 ). But who is it that stands behind these abstract notions, the “Ego” and the “Alter?” Although in this generalized model the “Ego–Alter” could mean an interaction between any kind of the self and other(s), in concrete and contextualized dialogical situations, there is always the specific Ego and the specific Alter (or the self–other[s])—for example, “I–you,” “minority–majority,” “I–group,” “group–another group,” “I–culture,” and so on. Indeed, these specific Ego and Alter are embedded in other dyadic Ego–Alter interactions. For example, a mother–child interaction (Ego–Alter) takes place in a specific culture; this means that we can conceptualize this mother–child dyad as the Ego within a particular culture (Alter), or that this same dyad can be conceived as the Ego within a specific social group (Alter), and so on. Or a conversation between two individuals is not just an exchange of words between I and you that takes place in a specific here-and-now, but it has its past, present, and future. Moreover, parents, leaders of political groups, friends, the “generalized other,” and so forth, speak through the mouth of each conversational partner. All these social and language-based interdependencies make the dyadic relations between the Ego–Alter dynamic, with implicit and explicit meanings affecting their discourses and contributing to transformation of representations in all dialogical participants. They all contribute to different dialogical perspectives and create tensions among them.

Language and communication as a point of departure in epistemology of social representations has yet another implication: to communicate means to take diverse routes, leading once to intersubjective understanding between individuals or between groups or cultures, once to conflict; to negotiation, to compromise, or to a firm self-positioning. Therefore, communication does not necessarily lead to a better understanding and “true knowledge.” In contrast to the ascent theory of knowledge toward science and true knowledge that was adopted by Durkheim and Piaget, the Theory of Social Representations does not presuppose progress toward higher forms of knowledge or toward more adequate representations. Instead, it presupposes transformation of one kind of knowledge into another one; transformation of different kinds of knowledge is pertinent to specific socio-historical and cultural conditions. This is why the triangularity of the Ego–Alter–Object forms the basis of linking language and communication, culture, and social representation.

The Dialogicality of the Ego–Alter in Mikhail Bakhtin

We can arrive at the triangularity of the Ego–Alter–Object from a different theoretical perspective, like the dialogicality of the Ego–Alter in Voloshinov's ( 1929/1973 ) and Bakhtin's ( 1981 ) approaches to language and communication. For these scholars of the early part of the twentieth century, alike, social knowledge and social reality is jointly created by the Ego–Alter. In Voloshinov's and Bakhtin's work, too, the Ego and Alter dialogically co-constitute one another in a dynamic figure-ground set-up. I am using the term dialogicality to characterize the fundamental capacity of the Ego to conceive, create, and communicate about social realities in terms of the Alter. What the human individual has become through the work of the past, and what his/her prospects are for the future, results from dialogicality (Marková, 2003/2005 ).

To my mind, these two epistemological approaches, the one stemming from Moscovici and the other arising from Bakhtin ( 1981 , 1979/1986 ), enrich one another and provide potential, in the Theory of Social Representations, for a more focused study of relations between knowing, believing, language, and speech. In both epistemologies, the Ego and the Alter transform one another's representations in and through dialogical and symbolic interactions. The concept of transformation in both approaches is characterized by tension and by multifaceted and heterogeneous relationships between the Ego and Alter. There can be no single mind without other minds: they dialogically co-constitute one another. Neither for Bakhtin nor for Moscovici can dialogue be neutral. Neutrality can be only artificially imposed but daily speech is always judgmental, evaluative, and orientated to creating new meanings.

Bakhtin expressed this idea pertinently in his analysis of Dostoyevsky's novels. Consciousness must be in interaction with another consciousness to achieve its proper existence: “justification cannot be self- justification, recognition cannot be self- recognition. I receive my name from others, and it exists for others (self-nomination is imposture)” (Bakhtin, 1984 , pp. 287–288).

Social Representations As Phenomena and As Interventions

The second meaning of social representations refers to the ways in which humans apprehend, interact with, and create their social reality. As they attempt to orientate themselves and create meanings of events in their lives, humans form representations of complex social phenomena that are in the center of social life and social disputes, whether they are political, ecological, or health- or community-related. Resources for generating social representations are phenomena that disrupt routines, turn them upside down, and call for action. Specifically, firm or irresistible beliefs ( see below) concerning, say, democracy, management of banks, social responsibility, mental illness, distrust, freedom of speech, and so forth, are sources of action, and they instigate social change. Complex phenomena obtain their specific and multileveled meanings in interdependence with culture and in relation to other representations within that culture and community. For example, the representation of freedom of speech would be related to other social representations and actions within that particular culture, like political protests against terrorism, expressions of abuse of the dominant political Party, censorship of any dissent, of the media, and the like. Thus, freedom of speech would have different meanings in relation to different semiotic networks and social phenomena. Two points should be mentioned as fundamental with respect to culture: social representations are phenomena in the making and representing can take part of action and intervention.

Social Representations Are Phenomena in the Making

In emphasizing relationships between social representations and communication, Moscovici (Moscovici & Marková, 1998 , pp. 393–394) draws attention to viewing them “in the making, not as already made.” This characteristic is essential both historically and developmentally. Social representations are not quiet things (Howarth, 2006 ); being phenomena in the making, social representations are formed and transformed in and through asymmetries, conflict, discontinuities, and tension. Representing, like communication, requires commitment. For example, one cannot study influence and innovation processes between majorities and minorities by removing tension and engagement: “Whether in conversation or in influence processes, one deals with change, with negotiation between two opposing partners—one cannot exist without the other” (Moscovici & Marková, 1998 , p. 394).

Interdependencies between communication and different social groups can be illustrated by Duveen's analysis of communication systems in Moscovici's ( 1961/1976 ) La Psychanalyse: Son Image et Son Public . Specifically, Duveen ( 2008 ) analyzes Moscovici's thoughts about social groups in relation to different communicative systems through content analysis of the French press. Focusing on different types of social groups in relation to the three genres of communication—that is, diffusion, propagation, and propaganda—Duveen identifies specific forms of affiliation corresponding to each communicative genre and consequently also to different representations of the members of the in-group and the out-group in each instance. He characterizes diffusion as the voluntary association of the members of in-group who possess a skeptical intelligence, whereas the out-group embraces forms of dogmatism. Duveen describes this kind of group in terms of sympathy. Propagation, on the other hand, refers to groups in which a central authority sets limits to creativity or intellectual curiosity. The out-group does not share the belief in the legitimacy of such authority or the relevant ideology. Duveen calls this kind of group a communion. Finally, propaganda is used by groups whose political commitment and organization defines the way of conduct of in-group. In contrast, the out-group is either committed to a different kind of ideology or simply does not share the ideology of the in-group. Duveen characterizes such group in terms of solidarity. His analysis shows that commitment to a particular kind of ideology elicits a particular kind of communicative genre. It illustrates that communicative genres of groups are part of their particular cultures and that, therefore, representing, like communication, is never a neutral exchange of information. Moreover, if we attempted to remove tension from communication, “it would become a kind of dead psychology” (Moscovici & Marková, 1998 , p. 394).

Thus we arrive at an important feature of representations as phenomena in the making: Social representations are structured semiotic mediators that are constantly in the process of innovation, created in and through conflict and tension (Valsiner, 2003 ). In experiencing tension, humans attempt to construct a predictable world out of great diversity and regulate their conduct. Referring to Moscovici's back-and-forth movement between experiencing and representing Valsiner ( 2003 , p. 73) concludes: “representing is needed for experiencing, while experiencing leads to new forms of representing.”

Representing As Action and Intervention

Another feature of representing, Valsiner ( 2003 ) maintains, is its implication for action and social change, or its function as intervention. Jodelet ( in press ) characterizes intervention as a practice involved in an “explicit and intentional project of a deliberate act of change.” Intervention encourages transformation of knowledge and behavior of individuals and groups toward better standards of living. Jodelet specifies three forms of activities interconnecting social representations and intervention: first, social representations can modify thinking of individuals or groups about a practical issue; second, they can transform practices, and these, in turn, can lead to transformation of representations; and finally, intervention of social representations is intentionally directed at producing changes in activities of individuals and groups concerned.

The relation between intervention practices and social representations is itself an object of research practice (Abric, 1994b ), in particular in health research (Jodelet, 2006a ; Jovchelovitch & Gervais, 1999 ; Morin, 2004 ) or in education (Garnier & Rouquette, 2000 ). For example, intervention should allow for exchanges between traditional and new forms of knowledge (Quintanilla, Herrera, & Veloz, 2005 ), the preservation of culture, and its negotiation with emerging alternatives in society (Jodelet, 2006b ). Doise ( 2002 ) regards social representations of human rights as interventions into social relations, whether these concern relations between individuals and groups, or individuals and institutions. Human rights must be clearly defined precisely because they are interventions of one kind or other.

Culture and Social Representations Are Relational Phenomena

Referring to two ways of studying social representations (which basically correspond to the two main meanings as discussed in this section), Jodelet ( 1989/91 ) emphasizes that when we focus on positions held by individuals and groups with respect to objects, representations are treated as structured fields. By “structured fields,” she means relations between contents contributed by subjects (or the Ego and Alter) and principles that organize contents, like cultural schemata, norms, and so forth. This perspective draws attention, again, to the relation between social representations and culture. I suggest that this does not mean to consider a social representation on the one hand, and culture as its context on the other hand, and to ask how they are related. Equally, it would be wrong to consider culture as a container within which one can identify a set of specific social representations.

Jodelet's concept of a structured field, I suggest, can be viewed as something like the concept of an electromagnetic field in physics of relativity. Electromagnetic field is a totality of forces that exists “between the two charges and not the charges themselves, which is essential for an understanding of their action” (Einstein & Infeld, 1938/1961 , p. 151). Thus “force between particles,” rather than “behavior of single entities” defines the field. Equally, we cannot understand the specificity of the Theory of Social Representations without taking on the concept of the force of interaction that binds elements to one another as complements, rather than as behavior of single entities (individuals, groups) that come to interact with one another. Taking Jodelet's concept of the structured field, individuals and groups are not undifferentiated subjects as in the taxonomic psychology ( see above), but their meanings are defined in and through concrete society or culture. Their internal interaction (in contrast to external interaction; e.g., in the analysis of variance) constitutes a new reality: the interacting components define one another as complements, whether this involves institutions vis-à-vis environment, institutions vis-à-vis groups, one group vis-à-vis another group, or social representation vis-à-vis culture ( see above, the Ego–Alter). Like an electromagnetic field, the structured field of social representations is dynamic. It is open to participants’ new experiences and to social change.

There is yet another implication of the concept of structured field. Just like when speakers communicate, they select different ways of expression with respect to one another depending on their relations, status, experience, and otherwise, so when they represent a phenomenon they are in an intimate complementary relation with culture. In other words, it is not the case that the same culture would be in relation with a set of different social representations. Such a position would be something like Piaget's mountain seen from different perspectives. In this case, the mountain remains the same, but the child's position is different and through the growth of intellectual development, the child learns to understand this. In contrast, the relation between social representation and culture is unique. Each social with culture in a specific manner; it selects different aspects of that culture because not all aspects are relevant in the same way for each social representation. Consequently, the forces of interaction between them imply that for each representation we have a slightly different meaning of culture. If we return to communication between groups and their communicative genres, propaganda and propagation view different aspects of culture. The former places emphasis on authoritarian aspects of the culture, whereas the latter focuses on more democratic features.

We need to view forces as both constraining and stimulating. In Moscovici's words, “society is an institution which inhibits what it stimulates. It both tempers and excites … increases or reduces the chances … and invents prohibitions together with the means of transgressing them” (Moscovici 1976 , p. 149).

Social Representations As Anthropology of Contemporary Culture: The Case of Rationality

Throughout his career, Serge Moscovici (e.g., 1987 , 1993a , 1988/93 ; Moscovici & Marková, 1998 , 2006 ) has persistently insisted that the Theory of Social Representations is—or should be treated—as anthropology of contemporary culture. Cultural anthropologists are concerned with the totality of life of social groups under study—that is, with beliefs and knowledge, myths, images, as well as with social practices in daily living. To understand these phenomena, anthropologists study them in relation to one another, like meaningful wholes, rather than as independent elements that, if need be, could either be joined together or disjoined. In the previous section, I touched several times on the problem of rationality, culture, and social representations. This issue is significant in contemporary social sciences, and it raises specific questions in relation to social representing; therefore, in this section, I turn attention to this issue in some detail.

Rationality and Irrationality in Social Sciences

Whatever we can say about rationality and irrationality of, and within, social sciences, it is necessary to place this issue in the context of natural sciences. Since the end of the seventeenth century, natural sciences have been based on “knowledge which eliminates mystery. In contrast to Greek science it does not end in wonder but in expansion of wonder,” as says Michael Foster ( 1957 , p. 53) in his treatise of “Myth and Philosophy.” Since the seventeenth century, natural sciences have prided themselves on being rational disciplines.

In contrast, social sciences started their scientific career as irrational disciplines. As Moscovici ( 1988/1993 ) reminds, they originated in the study of phenomena like nationalism, religion, myth, and beliefs. For example, Weber and Durkheim commenced from religion, Simmel from the relativity of values, and Marx from a kind of the Hegelian concept of historical forces. Vico, Herder, Hamann, and Humboldt were developing ideas of relativism and cultures. Other social scientists, like Le Bon, Ortega y Gasset, or McDougall, preoccupied themselves with the study of collectives and crowds in which rational individuals turned themselves into irrational beings.

Since the nineteenth century, the ideas of relativity, variability, and the evolution of species have been drawing attention to the importance of perspective-taking in the growth of knowledge. Yet perspective-taking has influenced natural sciences and social sciences differently. Natural sciences, despite the influence of theories of evolution and relativity, defined these scientific discoveries in rationalistic manner and so remained rational disciplines; in social sciences, however, we can observe a split between rationalistic and less rationalistic (or non-rationalistic) approaches.

In social sciences—specifically in anthropology and social psychology—the meaning of rationality has become a subject of keen interest. This has led to the search for universals that apply to all humans and to all cultures. Consequently, this has raised questions about the sources of relativism and irrational beliefs. Rationality as opposed to relativism even forms titles of classic volumes like those by Wilson ( 1970 ; Rationality ) and by Hollis and Lukes ( 1982 ; Rationality and Relativism ). The contributors to the latter volume suggest that the problem of understanding relativism and irrational beliefs arises from the fact that different cultures, languages, and the minds of others can be understood only within their own idiosyncratic socio-historical situations, rather than universally. Can we, therefore, identify anything transcultural among humans? Does culture challenge “the very idea of a single world” ( ibid , p. 1)? The dichotomy between the presupposition of universal rationality and questions concerning the sources of irrational beliefs as well as their rich and extensive presence in different cultures have led to the search for different forms of relativism. For example, researchers have been concerned with weak and strong forms of relativism, types of representational beliefs (convictions, persuasion, opinions), and different kinds of translation, interpretation, and explanation of beliefs.

Yet such questions can hardly be settled by academic discourses about rationality and relativism. Cultures are no longer isolated in their geographical ghettos. Therefore, Harris ( 2009 ) argues that it would be less misleading to abandon the notion of a singular rationality and speak, instead, about rationalities in the pluralistic sense. The contemporary world of societies is opened to other cultures and it set the stage for permanent situations of uncertainty moving cultures in different directions. In this situation, reason is not a private domain of the individual but it must be negotiated (Rosa & Valsiner, 2007 , p. 697). A narrow rationality of the individual defined in formal terms cannot meet the world of ambiguities of the contemporary world, and it transcends not only individual reason but also a particular cultural reason. In these circumstances, judgments of what is right and wrong and what is and is not ethical guide any kinds of preferences, control the individual and social choices, and confront different reasons for choosing something rather than something else. In these confrontations, “Reason then turns into Rationality ” ( ibid , p. 697), giving rise to Ethics and to Objectivity that emerges in and through transformations of rules and new norms. As Rosa and Valsiner ( ibid , p. 698) argue, “Rationality, Ethics and Objectivity” (all with capital letters) cannot be disentangled from one another. It is in this sense that we shall view rationality and social representations.

Reason and Cultures

The interdependence between culture, rationality, and social representations is perhaps most clearly expressed in Moscovici's ( 1993a ) lecture on Razón y Culturas (Reason and Cultures). One could say that the red thread through this lecture is an ethical concern of culture and social representations. Moscovici notes that the Cartesian approach discarding example and custom has also led to discarding culture, whether religious or profane, and substituted it by a narrow concept of rationality. However, to rationalize in this narrow way, Moscovici argues, means to ignore moral and ethical values of traditions in human histories and cultures as well as their symbolic values. He raises the question as to whether this narrow approach means that social psychology has nothing to say about arts or literature or whether this means that humans are satisfied with perceiving others, making judgments about objects, or looking for motivations of their conduct. Moscovici notes that humans have deep experiences in and through living in their cultures; they read novels, appreciate arts, listen to music, and experiment with ethical and moral values. These issues that have been neglected by social psychology are brought back to life by the Theory of Social Representations. Moscovici draws on three fundamental concepts: social representations, anthropology, and culture.

The lecture on Razón y culturas was written at a time when it became clear that the cognitive revolution failed to cope with complex human and social phenomena. In the late years of the twentieth century, cultural psychology gained importance because it was thought that it would solve questions of economic, educational, and political psychology as well as of child development and transformations of mental faculties in adulthood, migration, and nationalism, among others. Cultural psychology was seen as a plausible alternative to individualistic and mechanistic approaches (e.g., Bruner, 1985 ; Jodelet, 2002 ; Valsiner, 1987 ; 1989 , 1998 ; Valsiner & Lawrence, 1996 ) in focusing on intentionality, indigenous psychologies, language and communication, and on semiotic and symbolic practices. But, Moscovici points out that even if cognitive revolution were to succeed, these phenomena could be understood only with reference to culture. But instead, as we have seen in the previous section, contemporary social psychology and anthropology are still disputing problems of rationality and the relation between universality and cultural relativism. These problems are not new.

Three Paradoxes of the Individual and Collective Mentality

Moscovici ( 1993a ) identifies three historically established paradoxes with respect to individual and collective mentality; both Durkheim and Lévy-Bruhl struggled against them in their particular ways. Therefore, Theory of Social Representations, to fulfill its role as anthropology of contemporary culture, needs to address these paradoxes.

The first paradox concerns individual rationality and collective irrationality. As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, for Descartes and Locke, only the individual was rational whereas culture and language were sources of error. Yet no individual starts thinking and talking from nothing like the biblical Adam; each individual lives in a culture and in language. Durkheim acknowledged this paradox, and therefore, for him, all representations were rational beliefs; however, as mankind progressed from religion to science, some became closer to true knowledge than others. Collective representations are socially true, as Durkheim ( 1912/2001 ) states in “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.” They are founded in the nature of things and they hold to and express reality. Religions, too, express reality, and therefore, all are true in their own fashion: there are no religions that are false. All religions respond, although in different ways, to the given conditions of human existence, and this is why for Durkheim a collective representation is a rational belief. In contrast, and as Moscovici ( 1998a , p. 134) analyzes this question, Lévy-Bruhl showed that members of different cultures did not view rationality of social representations in the same way. He has studied throughout his life the ways of thinking of primitive cultures and tried to understand why it was not possible to explain one form of thought by another one.

The second paradox to which Moscovici refers concerns the presupposition of “the mental unity of mankind” that contradicts with the observation that local cultures are very diverse. This paradox leads to the question as to whether it is possible to find any commonalities within these diversities. It is this question that is being vehemently discussed by social scientists and particularly by social psychologists and anthropologists, as we indicated above.

The difficulty of resolving this paradox might be magnified by ancient beliefs that were clearly expressed in Darwin's assumption that all species could be placed on an upward continuum and that humans differed from animals in degree but not in kind (Lovejoy, 1936 ; Ingold, 2004 ). As Ingold explains, for Darwin, “the evolution of species in nature was also an evolution out of it” (Ingold, 2004 , p. 210, his emphasis) as the mind progressively liberated itself “from promptings of innate disposition.” This means that ancestors of humans became humans gradually, in stages, rising from primitive savages to humans, developing (in degrees) reason and language. But at what point does an animal become a human?

If no organic being excepting man had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, then we should never have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But it can be shown that there is no fundamental difference of this kind … yet this interval is filled up by numberless gradations … Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations. ( Darwin , 1859/1874 , p. 157)

Darwin stated that in The Origin of Species he aimed to show this continuous development of species toward perfection (compare this with Durkheim's and Piaget's ideas toward progress). Thus the idea of gradual perfection might have led to an implicit assumption that cultures could be at different stages of their development, and it seems that this assumption is implicit in the ideas of rationalists and relativists that we discussed above.

The third paradox concerns the difficulty of intergroup or intercultural communication. Moscovici notes that groups or cultures in general believe that others understand their point of view but, in fact, others are not always capable of understanding others. Groups are often closed to the perspective of other groups, and communication between groups is absent even if groups occupy the same public space. This incommunicability affirms mutual incompatibility between different social representations and diverse forms of communication, and it characterizes our present society, which consists of numerous groups with noticeable antagonistic representations. For example, Europeans can hardly understand exotic beliefs of primitive assumptions. Moscovici maintains that a question like, “What objects constitute the world around us?” cannot be answered otherwise than by specifying the framework of a particular representation to which it is pertinent. Loyalty to certain values makes groups insensitive to values of others (Geertz, 2000 , p. 70). The third paradox results in incompatible implicit or explicit ethnocentric beliefs. These beliefs, on the one hand, are based on assumptions of superiority of the own group, and at the same time, groups propagate multiculturalism.

How does the Theory of Social Representations respond to these three paradoxes? The first paradox, arising from treating the individual and group as independent entities is being resolved by treating the Ego–Alter as interdependent. The second paradox, arising from the narrow treatment of rationality, is substituted by fiduciary rationality (see below). The third paradox can be surmounted by the reflection of the group on the existing incommunicability and attempting to improve communication. Yet overcoming this paradox remains one of the challenges for social representing. In conclusion, all paradoxes arise from the difficulty to overcome the traditional epistemology based on reasoning capacities of the individual, the narrow concept of rationality, and the treatment of groups as independent categories.

Fiduciary Rationality

Interdependence between the social representation and culture of a group also makes the communication within a group preeminent above the communication with outsiders. I suggest that to understand the nature of this preeminence, we need to return to the epistemic question of rationality in the triad Ego–Alter–Object. The Ego–Alter dialogical relation within a group comes from the ethics of common sense pertaining to social representations of that group. Social representations captured by common sense within a group, Moscovici argues,

are analogous to paradigms, which, contrary to scientific paradigms, are made partly of beliefs based on trust and partly of elements of knowledge based on truth. In as much as they contain beliefs, validating them appears a long, uncertain process, since they can be neither confirmed nor disconfirmed. ( Moscovici & Marková , 2000 , p. 253)

Within the epistemological triad of Ego–Alter–Object, relations between these components can take on different forms and strengths. For example, if the Ego searches for knowledge of this or that, he/she might pursue the route of own discovery and autonomous thought, focusing, within this triangularity, more strongly on the Object than on the Alter. In this case, the Ego would examine, in a step-by-step strategy, dispassionately and systematically, the object of knowledge. Dispassionate knowledge can be expanded by new learning, or it can be suspended, resisted, or ignored. Moscovici ( 1993b ) calls such kinds of knowledge (or beliefs) resistible.

For example, if the knower does not care about certain facts like “The Earth is not flat,” or “AIDS is caused by a virus,” then he or she might ignore, not think about, or suspend such facts and substitute them by others that appear more convincing. In a way, in such cases we can say that we possess beliefs just like other kinds of possession; if we do not need them any longer, then we can dispose of them.

Another kind of relation within the triangularity of the Ego–Alter–Object could be based on a strong relation between the Ego and Alter, whereas the relation between the Ego and Object would be treated as secondary. In this case, knowledge/beliefs can range from those that Moscovici calls irresistible to those that would function as constraints—be it compliance, conformity, or obeisance. Let us consider the latter, irresistible beliefs. Such beliefs can hardly be changed through evidence to their contrary, by facts, or by persuasion. Irresistible beliefs can lead to self-sacrifice and other-sacrifice of individuals and groups, rather than to their change. Such strong beliefs within a group are often based on trust and trustworthiness of the other. Irresistible beliefs “are like perceptual illusions: we are not a liberty to dismiss them, to have them or correct them if need be. Like many ideas, memories, or rituals, they take possession of us and are … independent of our reasoning” (Moscovici, 1993b , p. 50).

The rationality of these forms of relations in the epistemological triad is based not only on knowledge and justified beliefs but on the totality of human experience embedded in, and accumulated through, history and culture. It includes the struggle for social recognition, desires and their symbolic transformations, ethics and morality, myths and metaphors, judgments and evaluations of the self/other relations, and objects of knowledge. It is the epistemology of living experience and of daily thinking rooted in common sense, which is being transformed into new social representations when conditions for them are obtained.

In his analysis of Razón y culturas , Moscovici ( 1993a ) argues that what makes one group distinguishable from another one is “the act of privileging a type of representation and as a result, a form of communication” with other members of that group. He calls this kind of group loyalty the fiduciary rationality . As I understand it, fiduciary rationality is a form of dependency among group members that arise from within, from trust and loyalty, rather than from an outside pressure. Fiduciary rationality functions like irresistible beliefs. It is rooted within the group and it binds groups together. Rationality of the common sense, too, is based on fiduciary rationality.

We need to view social representations of various dependencies within a group—for example, rules and norms of acting and constraints of group members and solidarity and sympathy as established in and through tradition, history, and culture. They are present already in informal organizations that develop from within the group, before any more formal organization is formed. Similarly, communication is based on an inner contract among the in-group members. A contract is an ethical requirement for communication (Rommetveit, 1974 ), and we can say with Mikhail Bakhtin that there is no alibi for communication.

Concepts Relating Social Representations, Language, and Culture in Empirical Research

The term culture permeates a great deal of empirical research on social representations—particularly the research that aims to separate itself from narrow rationalistic and cognitive perspectives. This research examines diverse topics ranging from political, ideological, and historical issues to mental health, illness, social services, and child development, among others. As one would expect, in many studies the terms social representations and culture are rather nonspecific and could be easily replaced by other terms like opinions, attitudes, stereotypes, or prejudice in the case of the former, and context, situation, or community in the case of the latter. In view of this, in this section I focus only on those studies that theoretically enrich this growing field addressing relations among culture, language and communication, and social representations. To do this, I focus on three fundamental concepts of the Theory of Social Representations that make such contributions—specifically on cognitive polyphasia; figures and metaphors; and communicative and cultural themata. These concepts, we shall see, are not mutually exclusive or exhaustive, and I can do no more than to draw attention to them.

Cognitive Polyphasia and Heterogeneity in Thinking and Dialogue

One of the basic features of the Theory of Social Representations from the beginning has been the focus on dynamic co-existence of distinct modalities of thinking and communication in common sense knowledge (Moscovici, 2008 ). These distinct and rich modalities of thinking and communicating co-exist in communicative actions, contribute to viewing the issue in question from different perspectives, and so enable formulation of diverse arguments. They originate from knowledge and beliefs shared by social groups, and they have been established through their cultural and historical experiences. Such communication-centered thinking is directional and controversial, although it checks and validates its normative coherence (Moscovici, 2008 , p. 168). It forces humans to take up their own positions in social situations and defend them; it is the thinking that judges, evaluates, criticizes, and makes proposals for action. Moscovici coined these diverse modalities of thinking and communicating as cognitive polyphasia .

It is not that humans change their ways of thinking according to their mood, temporary preferences, or personality characteristics. The concept of cognitive polyphasia is inherently dialogical. The divergent modalities of thinking are articulated as specific Ego–Alter communications. This point is important: We relate to others dialogically, which means that we express our thoughts as it is specifically pertinent with respect to this or that Alter. Whereas a Cartesian scholar would expect that the thought of the individual should be rigorous and should follow an identical logical route from one moment to the next, in the Ego–Alter dialogical communication, different cognitive and emotional goals employ heterogeneous modes of thinking. To think means to pursue diverse mental routes. These may range from scientific to religious, from literal meanings to metaphoric interpretations, from jokes to formal expressions, and so on. They are suited to and articulated in different contexts of which they are parts. Speakers create links to others’ communications, anticipating their responses, reactions, and feelings. Moreover, the speakers’ dialogues are also filled with ideas of absent others; in communication, speakers express commitment and loyalties to views of those who are not physically present in dialogue or they object to, reject, or contest opinions of absent “others.”

Probably no other work has provided a deeper insight into cognitive polyphasia than Jodelet's ( 1989/1991 ) research on social representations of madness. We can see here that cognitive polyphasia dominates different kinds of communication among villagers, and Jodelet examines in these contexts the production of social representations from communication, different modes of thinking, and knowledge. She shows that cognitive polyphasia emerges from the villagers’ necessity of coping with fear of mental illness and enabling villagers to live together with patients. At one level, most villagers do not believe in medical dangers coming from mental patients. They know that mental illness is not contagious and that the lodger with mental illness does not transmit germs or microbes as in the case of tuberculosis. At another level they believe in contamination, but these beliefs remain unspecified because they are difficult to articulate. Beliefs take form of folk-fantasies, superstition, and convictions of a magic power. Jodelet emphasizes the persistence and forms of dual appeal in speech and actions of villagers, ranging from “biological and social, to ancestral, indeed archaic, representations of insanity with their magic contents borrowed from the realms of animism and sorcery” (Jodelet, ibid , p. 300). At the same time, villagers pride themselves on living in modern ways, on using advanced technology like fast trains or television, and on being aware of new means of medical treatment. Jodelet raises the question as to how can archaic beliefs retain their power in the face of modern medical treatment. She comments:

The embedding of these beliefs in the language codes which are transmitted by communication and the everyday acts which are transmitted by tradition, both conditions of collective memory, suffice to explain their permanence, not their intensity of character or the veil of secrecy with which they are covered. ( Jodelet , ibid , p. 300)

Such diverse meanings and beliefs are usually implicit and hidden in linguistic codes and in meanings of words. One may guess that they have been unconsciously transmitted for generations and that the contradictory forms of knowledge and belief have their specific expressions in particular social situations.

Other researchers have presented many examples of cognitive polyphasia in common sense thinking, and we can find excellent reviews of these studies (for example, see Duveen, 2007 ; Jovchelovitch, 2007 ; Wagner & Hayes, 2005 ) showing diverse forms of thinking in different social and cultural settings and among different groups. Numerous studies show that different cultural communities—for example, in India (Wagner et al., 1999 ), in Chinese immigrants in the United Kingdom (Jovchelovitch & Gervais, 1999 ), or citizens in Turkey (Narter, 2006 )—think about health issues both in terms of traditional ways of thinking and modern medicine. Cognitive polyphasia also dominates new and old ways of thinking about environment and science (Castro & Lima, 2001 ). Psaltis ( 2011 ) is concerned with diverse forms of thinking between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, relating them to varying meanings, emotions, distrust, and threat. These forms of thinking about the Cyprus issue express cognitive polyphasia when groups consider solutions to the problem from the point of view of the past, the present, and the future.

Research on cognitive polyphasia directs attention to shifts and changes in societies that experience movement from traditional forms of thinking toward modern forms. Yet it shows that traditional elements of representing, for example, mental illness, are deeply embedded within the communal life and are drawn “into a more active form of reflection and change through this process of cultural contact, communication, and exchange” (Duveen, 2007 , p. 557, his emphasis).

Wagner and Hayes ( 2005 , p. 235) have argued that the concept of cognitive polyphasia highlights two research areas. Instead of treating language and thought as independent, “representations are social because of their articulation within the context of their genesis and enactment.” The other research area places attention on the processes of change and transformation in representational systems. Just as a contemporary society's culture is constantly in flux and transformation and rarely in the state of equilibrium, so are the modes of thought and representations within it. Wagner and Hayes observe that cognitive polyphasia emerges primarily when members of groups are coping with new conditions during their lifetime and that transformations in forms of thinking and communicating continuously run between different generations.

Figure, Myth, and Metaphor

From the outset, the Theory of Social Representations included the figurative dimension—or images and metaphors—as features of representing. The term figure is preferable to image because imaging could be confused with mirroring or with a passive reflection (Moscovici, 2008 , p. 20). I wish to emphasize once more that the transformation of one kind of knowledge into another one, including that from science into common sense, involves creating metaphors, figures, and myths. Scientific discoveries diffuse themselves into common sense not as simplified versions of science; transformation of scientific knowledge into common sense knowledge is accompanied by creating figurative schemes and metaphors. It is well-documented that the science of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has had a profound effect on literature, art, and public imagination (e.g., Beer, 1993 ). For example, the discovery of X-rays at the end of the nineteenth century has led to artists’ and public's images of the invisible world and to fantasies and occult ideas. More recently, metaphors of illnesses like cancer, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS in language and thought and their transformations in public representations were captured by Sontag ( 1978 , 1989 ). Political, economic, and educational changes, too, are accompanied by new images and metaphors. The collapse of the Soviet bloc was marked by creating new symbols in re-emerging states. For example, Baltic States, in designing their new banknotes, chose symbols that represented preferred values of the newly created free nations (Mathias, 2008 ). Images, Moscovici ( 2007 , p. 9) maintains, speak to the public and accelerate communication. In her chapter on “Crossing Latin America: Two French perspectives on Brasil and Mexico,” Jodelet ( 2007 ) shows that since ancient Greece, alterity or others have always played crucial roles in imagination. The discovery of the New World has created, from the beginning, rich forms of imagination of indigenous peoples in Latin America by European intellectuals, arts and literature, as well as social scientists and has contributed significantly to generating social representations filled with imaginary others.

If we turn to the research on figurative schemes, metaphors, and images in social representations, we find that it has considerable methodological implication. To access processes of thinking and communication, questionnaires and scales are substituted by other means such as drawings, analyses of the media images, posters, and by studies of semiotic contents of these.

Representing in Drawings of Maps

One of the first studies of figurative schemes was the exploration by Milgram and Jodelet ( 1976 ) of drawings representing mental maps of Paris. The study showed that subjects were not drawing maps based just on their personal experiences but that they were transmitting images of certain subcultures and ethnic groups to which they belonged. For example, certain places were drawn only by those belonging to special professions—for example, slaughter houses were drawn by butchers but scarcely by anybody else. Other places, such as the icons of the town like Notre Dame, Place de la Concord, or the Eiffel Tower, were drawn by nearly everybody. We can say that drawings express historical-cultural networks of meanings that are part of subjects’ and subgroups’ experiences, knowledge, and feelings about the place where they live (Guerrero, 2007 ). Institutions that societies create are nourished by collective memories, myths, national identities, and imagination (Banchs et al., 2007 ).

Imagining based on drawings of maps inspired extensive studies in Latin America (Arruda & de Alba, 2007 ). In her study of maps of the city of Mexico, De Alba ( 2007 ) shows that the symbolic construction of the city is an imaginary sphere in which mythical references, mystical beliefs, reveries, and urban legends have no correspondents in the real world. An interesting theoretical issue discussed in Arruda and Ulup's ( 2007 ) research of mental maps of Brazil is the presence of blank spaces in the center or center-west region. The authors maintain that void spaces coincide with the colonial occupation of these territories and that drawings sometimes reproduce the ancient images of isolated and dangerous places. The authors observe that although one might consider empty spaces on maps as signs of lack of knowledge, it is more likely that these distant places in the center of Brazil express strangeness from which subjects wish to dissociate. These empty places may also serve as reminders of the past and collective memories of occupation. Thus, emptiness does not always mean nonexistence but a choice or a defense (Arruda, Gonçalves, & Mululo, 2008 ). In contrast, seaside spaces were filled with images. They were inhabited by Europeans and civilized local people. In addition, the authors found that the participants from northern Brazil represented south as a very different region because of its temperate climate and its population of the European origin.

Figurative Schemes in Comparative Research

A considerable amount of research has been carried out to compare figurative schemes and images in different fields like health and illness (e.g., Herzlich, 1973 ; Joffe, 2003 , 2008 ; Joffe & Haarhof, 2002 ), biotechnology (e.g., Wagner et al., 2002 ), the body (Jodelet, 1984 ), the body and hygiene as culturally determined (Jodelet, 2005 ; Wagner & Hayes, 2005 ), historical and cultural events (e.g., Sen & Wagner, 2005 ; Wertsch & Batiashvili, 2011 ). Kalampalikis ( 2007 ) analyzes symbolic conflicts embedded in social representations of two interpretations of history that are embedded in the name of Macedonia.

Equally, images and metaphors in social representations have been explored across cultures or in specific groups. In the 1980s, De Rosa ( 1987 ) carried out a multimethod research on the social representation of mental illness. In this research, children and adults were asked to draw images in connection with madness; their drawings suggested the presence of ancient images of madness ( see also Schurmans & de Rosa, 1990 ).

Visual images in the press, advertisements, and campaigns are used to influence or change social representations of political or health issues (De Rosa, 2001 ; Joffe, 2008 ). Intentions of the producers of posters, on the one hand, and images of the public, on the other hand, could be quite divergent. For example, some posters produced on behalf of people with mental disabilities sometimes confirmed, rather than changed, the existing representations (Marková & Farr, 1990 ). Visual images in the press have been particularly influential in staged photographs capturing public images about genetic engineering as injecting tomatoes with genes that make them grow bigger (Wagner et al., 2002 ). Wagner and Hayes ( 2005 , p. 181) comment that images of tomatoes injected with genes remind inoculation and injecting foreign materials into bodies known from medicine and chemistry. There is also an associated belief of infection that passes from one organism to another:

Finally, the monstrosity of genetically engineered organisms is related as well. The topic of ‘ Frankenstein foods’ is not far from these ideas and in fact frequently came up in interviews. Just as tomatoes are good to eat, they are also good to think with. These images and metaphorical projections capture the ‘What is it’ and the ‘How does it work’ part of popular imagination about ‘genetic engineering. ( Wagner & Hayes , 2005 , p. 181)

These examples show how the two opposite yet complementary explanations of phenomena in the world of reason and myth, or logos and mythos, mix to generate social representations. Nevertheless, it would not be correct to say that sciences are guided by logos ( see Moscovici, 1992 , on “scientific myths”) and common sense by mythical thinking.

A recent volume on Mythical Thinking and Social Representations forms a true dialogue between anthropology and the Theory of Social Representations (Paredes & Jodelet, 2009 ). The contributions to this volume show that mythical thinking does not disappear with scientific progress, technology, and mass education but that it continues to be present in everyday reasoning and that it permeates daily practices. Jodelet ( 2009 , p. 31) observes that there are least three central aspects that relate social representations and mythical thinking. There is an instrumental aspect of common sense that utilizes certain mythical thinking in the construction of social life. Furthermore, production of common sense re-activates ancient myths with requirements of contemporary cultural identities. Finally, through functional aspect of common sense, the formation of myths facilitates interpretations of events or objects in social life and in social relations.

Communicative and Cultural Themata

In contrast to cognitive polyphasia, figurative schemes, metaphors, and myths, the concept of themata has entered into the Theory of Social Representations more recently (Moscovici, 1993c ; Moscovici & Vignaux, 1994/2000 ). It has since become one of the most important theoretical concepts in social representations with respect to culture and communication. Let us explain.

One of the fundamental features of human thinking is making distinctions and understanding phenomena as antinomies. For example, we understand freedom in contrast to what we consider to be a lack of freedom; justice is understood through what is considered to be an absence of justice; logos as contrasted with mythos, and so on. Antinomies are features of thinking, language, and communication in all cultures, but different cultures and societies employ their capacity of making distinctions and thinking in antinomies in specific ways. We find them throughout eons of human history both in scientific and in common sense thinking, although very often they are present implicitly without becoming an explicit topic of discourse. Socio-cultural changes, however, may bring implicit antinomies to the public awareness and into discourses, reflecting societal tensions and conflicts. This means that from that moment on, they turn into themata , whether in scientific thinking where they generate scientific theories (Holton, 1975 , 1978 ) or in common sense thinking where they generate social representations (Moscovici, 1993c ; Moscovici & Vignaux, 1994/2000 ).

Many antinomies are implicitly present in our common sense thinking for centuries, and they may never be brought to explicit awareness. This is so, because there may never be any reason—or at least there may not be any reason for many generations—for them to become problematized and thematized. For example, logos and mythos could be viewed throughout history as complementary antinomies until, for one reason or other, logos become a superior and rational way of explanation of phenomena, whereas mythos is degraded as irrational thought (Moscovici, 2009 ). In principle, all antinomies can become themata—that is, issues for public debates and disputes—but many of them do not rise to that status.

Themata that generate most social representations are those pertaining to the Ego–Alter, like private/public, morality/immorality, justice/injustice, and freedom/oppression, among others. Such themata are in the heart of social sciences, and they generate social representations of phenomena like democracy, citizenship, quality of life, and health and illness, to name but a few. How and in what ways themata become problematized and which meanings become foregrounded is specific to the structured field in which a social representation in engaged. A social representation is rarely generated from a single thema. If we consider, as an example, a social representation of HIV/AIDS and its vicissitudes over the last three decades in different parts of the world, we find that re-thematization of morality/immorality has been associated with re-thematization of social values related to sexuality, promiscuity in the general public, discrimination of minorities, and social recognition, among other issues (Marková et al., 1995 ). Although the antinomy morality/immorality itself has not been questioned, the content and context of morality/immorality has been differently thematized in different structured fields in which the social representation of HIV/AIDS has been engaged. For example, the question of personal and social responsibility, medical confidentiality, and human rights all became part of discourse in such specific structured fields. Communicative processes, through which these changes in meanings are usually achieved, carry symbols and images, which not only circulate in public discourses but also organize and generate discourses; they shape common thinking, language, and behavior; and provide grounds for the formation of new social representations.

Liu ( 2004 ) describes themata as “deep structures” of social representations. In his research on rapid changes of social representations of the quality of life in China, he identified two themata that, in contemporary society, compete with one another: “to be” and “to have.” Being prioritizes traditional Chinese values like the authentic relation between subject and object, a union between self and others, and their rootedness, connectedness, and mutual commitment. Having , on the other hand, gives priority to how subject instrumentalizes object as a resource to be possessed and consumed. Possession has become a new value in the rapidly changing China, whether it is the possession of money and material objects or of symbolic objects like social status and power. Neither having nor being exist in pure forms, but they are both dynamically inter-related into the meaning of the quality of life in contemporary China.

In their research on social representations of Roms, Peréz et al. ( 2007 ) identified two underlying themata. One of them highlights nature versus culture. This polarity emphasizes the superiority of cultured European majorities over natural minorities of Roms. The second thema, human versus animal, represents Roms as having deficits in human qualities. Drawing on his socio-anthropological research, Moscovici ( 2011 ) shows that in the case of Roms themata are also articulated along the extensive historical narratives artistic/criminal.

Research on social representations of genetically modified food as presented in the press shows that these are underlain by themata of health versus disease and risk versus safety (Castro & Gomes, 2005 ). The already noted research by Wagner et al. ( 2002 ) implies that social representations of genetically modified tomatoes, both in the press and in interviews with citizens, are triggered by themata like natural versus unnatural.

Morality of Human Rights As a Thema

Although Doise ( 2002 ) does not use the concept of thema, we can subsume his work on human rights as social representations under this concept. Moral universality of human rights codified itself in societies as a basic thema, although naturally, it has been thematized differently in specific cultures and societies. Doise's own empirical research shows that participants in different countries express consistent attitudes on general principles or articles of the Declaration of Human Rights. This strong coherence disappears, however, when subjects respond to specific contexts in which human rights are presented. Having examined theories and practices in relation to human rights, Doise concludes that the basis of legal thinking on human rights is not to be sought in their institutional expression, but it is profoundly anchored in normative social representations. Doise traces the origin of normative social representations of human rights in communication and human interactions. Communicative contracts carry implicitly ethical norms (Rommetveit, 1974 ; Bakhtin, 1979/1986 ) that regulate our mutual interactions, mutual commitment, and social recognition of one human by another. These contracts are then built into social norms and social representations.

In a similar manner, Mead ( 1915 ) drew attention to the error in the assumption of theorists who were convinced that individuals had originally possessed their natural rights before any formal societal organizations existed. He was critical of those who thought that formal organizations had to be established to protect those natural rights. Mead argued that, on the contrary, already in informal organizations that developed within groups, the rights, rules, norms of acting, and constraints had already existed. Mead specifically referred to philosophers like Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke who were not aware of this fact. Thus, he said that if Locke had the knowledge of the contemporary anthropologists, then he would have recognized that people had been organized in informal groups from which governmental institutions later developed. Governmental institutions arose out of communities that already had formulated their customs. In other words, rights were already in existence, and they were recognized by group members, although in a different form than in governmental institutions. No special introduction or special instruments were required to establish them in formal institutions.

Doise has maintained that although norms do not translate themselves automatically into institutional expressions, they remain to be the shared references to which victims can appeal (Doise, 2002 , p. 25). Concerning the issue of how to assess whether human rights are upheld by different countries, normative social representations are used as a tool of evaluation. Countries use their own norms and ethnocentric social representations of human rights to evaluate different countries with respect to discrimination and prejudice in others, and they commonly overvalue their own morality. Doise has analyzed contemporary trends and habits of speaking about different kinds of human rights—for example, individual rights, socio-economic rights, the self-determination rights of ethnic groups, and rights for natives to maintain special ties with the land of their forefathers. Variability in dealing with human rights is great and anchored in different kinds of beliefs that are rooted in histories, politics, and in common sense.

Conclusion: Toward Theoretical and Empirical Diversity in Social Representing

After World War II, the social sciences exerted a strong effort to establish their places in reconstructing the world and to coordinate themselves internationally. Among these efforts was the UNESCO research of the roles of social sciences in higher education. Social psychology was grouped together with cultural anthropology and sociology because it was assumed that this was its proper place (Moscovici & Marková, 2006 ). But the UNESCO research showed that the position of social psychology was split between psychology and sociology. In the years to come, social psychology leaned toward experimental psychology and its methods, and the relation to culture considerably diminished or totally disappeared. Equally, language and communication played only a minimal role in social psychology, the situation that Moscovici ( 1972 ) and Rommetveit ( 1974 ) deeply regretted.

In contrast, we have seen in this chapter that from its beginning, the Theory of Social Representations has been conceptualized within culture, language, and communication. In this chapter I have discussed three concepts: cognitive polyphasia; figurative schemes, myths and metaphors; and themata. These three concepts have made most significant contributions to the Theory of Social Representations. However, there is also substantial empirical research in social representations that covers diverse topics in education, politics, environmental problems, health, mental health, and aging. There is growing research on social representations of otherness or alterity, everyday life (Haas, 2006 ), identity (Moloney & Walker, 2007 ), and historical events. Jodelet ( 1992 ) has initiated the study of collective memories as an important aspect of social representations. Examining historical perspectives of collective memory in the work of social scientists like Halbwachs and Douglas, she has analyzed the process with the Nazi Klaus Barbie that took place in 1987 in France. Numerous studies of social representations of historical events that have followed Jodelet's research have provided accounts of groups’ representations in which history and collective memory have mixed and organized and have transformed these representations. Such accounts are never neutral cognitive narratives but dialogical evaluations and justifications of history; they are forging many ethnic, social, and national identities and pose questions about how histories could be re-interpreted and rewritten on the basis of politics and ideology (e.g., Liu et al., 2009 ; Lastrego & Licata, 2010 ; Paez, 2010 ). Raudsepp, Heidmets, and Kruusvall ( 2008 ) have explored social representations of collective memory in their study of the socio-cultural context of Estonia during the transition from a post-Soviet republic to a liberal State in the European Union. They have analyzed explicit and implicit socio-cultural regulative principles, and they have explored how these principles have transformed in the course of the transition period, focusing on the changed roles of Russian minorities and Estonian majorities during that time. Social representations of collective memories of daily life during communism in Rumania have been captured by Neculau ( 2008 ) and those of the Cyprus conflict by Psaltis ( 2011 ). Findings of these substantial empirical studies feed back to the theory.

Future Directions

The growing interest in theoretical and empirical research in social representations also highlights challenges and problems for the future. Among these I mention the following.

First, despite the fact that strong emphasis on language and communication was already part of La Psychanalyse , this remains a neglected area of studies of social representations. Language and communication are usually taken for granted as essential features of human interactions but rarely studied as phenomena that require a specific exploration. We only see beginnings of such research in dialogical studies of different kinds of discourse (e.g., conversation and dialogue, polylogue, inner speech, focus groups studies) that have been recently emerging. They include analyses of various grammatical structures like modalizations, positioning, deontic claims, and other means by which speakers take distance from or express closeness to objects of social representations (e.g., Harré, this volume; Salazar Orvig, 2007 ; Marková et al., 2007 ; Salazar Orvig & Grossen, 2008 ; Linell, 2009 ). In addition, what participants communicate to one another is not produced solely by them; they necessarily draw on their cultural resources, on perspectives of the parties that are not present in discourse (third parties), and on groups to which they belong or which they reject. For example, absent others could become, directly or indirectly, participants in talks among villagers in Jodelet's ( 1989/1991 ) research on madness, because absent others could become invisible or semi-visible judges of relations between villagers and patients. Groups do not live in a vacuum but are part of a broader community. Outsiders coming to the village are not neutral onlookers but they communicate with in-groups: they can make flattering as well as damaging comments about relations between villagers and patients. A close association with mentally ill patients could downgrade, in the eyes of others, the villagers’ social identity. These different circumstances involving numerous communicating parties reflect themselves in diverse modalities of thinking.

Participants in interactions may jointly construct utterances that may suggest that they share—or assume sharing—a social representation. Alternatively, in and through a joint construction of utterances, they may question limits of their shared knowledge (Marková, 2007 ). They may refer to beliefs, to a super-addressee (god, generalized other, consciousness), the law and its different kinds, rules and norms, morality and ethics, traditions, habits, and stereotypes. There are countless examples of the interdependence among language, communication, and social representations that have not been explored or have only just become subjects of research interest.

Another challenging issue was implied earlier in this chapter. It concerns the fact that cultures live no longer in isolated ghettos, and rather, the contemporary world of societies is open to other cultures and they “set the stage for permanent situations of uncertainty,” moving cultures in different directions (Rosa & Valsiner, 2007 ). This is also the issue that Moscovici expressed in his third paradox concerning incommunicability among different groups (see above, p. 497). The challenge for the Theory of Social Representations concerns the issue of studying ethical problems arising from the growing uncertainty in the world of increasing complexity; and with problems how to establish reflective communication in intergroup and intercultural relations. Such issues concern the future developments of relations between the Theory of Social Representations and culture (Permanadeli et al., 2012 ). Moreover, the Theory of Social Representations is only one psychological approach that focuses on culture. Cultural diversity is studied, for example, by structuralist, discourse, anthropological, phenomenological, narrative, and other approaches (Jodelet, 2012 ). Among all of these, what specific contributions can the Theory of Social Representations make that will differentiate it from other approaches? This is a challenge in the world of rapid changes that is characterized by a series of “trans-” processes (Jodelet, ibid ) What different forms will transformation of knowledge take in these changes where the local competes with the global and crossbreeding thinking produces new kinds of cognitive polyphasia?

Finally, there are theoretical challenges concerning the epistemological status of social representations. Both knowing and believing co-constitute social representations, although some social representations are based primarily on knowledge or factual beliefs and others mainly on passionate beliefs and convictions. Knowledge and beliefs are transmitted in and through culture, language, and communication, as well as through learning (tacit or explicit) by repeating and changing others’ activities. But what status can be attributed to knowledge generated from trust in authority of other individuals or institutions and of collective norms? Can these serve as preconditions of rationality and coherence of reasoning?

No doubt there are other theoretical and empirical challenges. The theory is now 50 years old, and over these long years it has undergone transformations and has become gradually enriched by different cultures all over the world as it has spread from Europe to other continents—particularly to Latin America and most recently to Asia.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Denise Jodelet for her generous help in providing ideas and references to research on social representations and culture and to Angela Arruda for references to the research in Latin America. This chapter was written during the period of my Emeritus Fellowship awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, and I wish to acknowledge the Trust's generous support for this project.

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