what is cultural representation

Why Representation Matters and Why It’s Still Not Enough

Reflections on growing up brown, queer, and asian american..

Posted December 27, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

• Positive media representation can be helpful in increasing self-esteem for people of marginalized groups (especially youth).
• Interpersonal contact and exposure through media representation can assist in reducing stereotypes of underrepresented groups.
• Representation in educational curricula and social media can provide validation and support, especially for youth of marginalized groups.

Growing up as a Brown Asian American child of immigrants, I never really saw anyone who looked like me in the media. The TV shows and movies I watched mostly concentrated on blonde-haired, white, or light-skinned protagonists. They also normalized western and heterosexist ideals and behaviors, while hardly ever depicting things that reflected my everyday life. For example, it was equally odd and fascinating that people on TV didn’t eat rice at every meal; that their parents didn’t speak with accents; or that no one seemed to navigate a world of daily microaggressions . Despite these observations, I continued to absorb this mass media—internalizing messages of what my life should be like or what I should aspire to be like.

Because there were so few media images of people who looked like me, I distinctly remember the joy and validation that emerged when I did see those representations. Filipino American actors like Ernie Reyes, Nia Peeples, Dante Basco, and Tia Carrere looked like they could be my cousins. Each time they sporadically appeared in films and television series throughout my youth, their mere presence brought a sense of pride. However, because they never played Filipino characters (e.g., Carrere was Chinese American in Wayne's World ) or their racial identities remained unaddressed (e.g., Basco as Rufio in Hook ), I did not know for certain that they were Filipino American like me. And because the internet was not readily accessible (nor fully informational) until my late adolescence , I could not easily find out.

Through my Ethnic Studies classes as an undergraduate student (and my later research on Asian American and Filipino American experiences with microaggressions), I discovered that my perspectives were not that unique. Many Asian Americans and other people of color often struggle with their racial and ethnic identity development —with many citing how a lack of media representation negatively impacts their self-esteem and overall views of their racial or cultural groups. Scholars and community leaders have declared mottos like how it's "hard to be what you can’t see," asserting that people from marginalized groups do not pursue career or academic opportunities when they are not exposed to such possibilities. For example, when women (and women of color specifically) don’t see themselves represented in STEM fields , they may internalize that such careers are not made for them. When people of color don’t see themselves in the arts or in government positions, they likely learn similar messages too.

Complicating these messages are my intersectional identities as a queer person of color. In my teens, it was heartbreakingly lonely to witness everyday homophobia (especially unnecessary homophobic language) in almost all television programming. The few visual examples I saw of anyone LGBTQ involved mostly white, gay, cisgender people. While there was some comfort in seeing them navigate their coming out processes or overcome heterosexism on screen, their storylines often appeared unrealistic—at least in comparison to the nuanced homophobia I observed in my religious, immigrant family. In some ways, not seeing LGBTQ people of color in the media kept me in the closet for years.

How representation can help

Representation can serve as opportunities for minoritized people to find community support and validation. For example, recent studies have found that social media has given LGBTQ young people the outlets to connect with others—especially when the COVID-19 pandemic has limited in-person opportunities. Given the increased suicidal ideation, depression , and other mental health issues among LGBTQ youth amidst this global pandemic, visibility via social media can possibly save lives. Relatedly, taking Ethnic Studies courses can be valuable in helping students to develop a critical consciousness that is culturally relevant to their lives. In this way, representation can allow students of color to personally connect to school, potentially making their educational pursuits more meaningful.

Further, representation can be helpful in reducing negative stereotypes about other groups. Initially discussed by psychologist Dr. Gordon Allport as Intergroup Contact Theory, researchers believed that the more exposure or contact that people had to groups who were different from them, the less likely they would maintain prejudice . Literature has supported how positive LGBTQ media representation helped transform public opinions about LGBTQ people and their rights. In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that the general US population significantly changed their views of same-sex marriage in just 15 years—with 60% of the population being opposed in 2004 to 61% in favor in 2019. While there are many other factors that likely influenced these perspective shifts, studies suggest that positive LGBTQ media depictions played a significant role.

For Asian Americans and other groups who have been historically underrepresented in the media, any visibility can feel like a win. For example, Gold House recently featured an article in Vanity Fair , highlighting the power of Asian American visibility in the media—citing blockbuster films like Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings . Asian American producers like Mindy Kaling of Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls demonstrate how influential creators of color can initiate their own projects and write their own storylines, in order to directly increase representation (and indirectly increase mental health and positive esteem for its audiences of color).

When representation is not enough

However, representation simply is not enough—especially when it is one-dimensional, superficial, or not actually representative. Some scholars describe how Asian American media depictions still tend to reinforce stereotypes, which may negatively impact identity development for Asian American youth. Asian American Studies is still needed to teach about oppression and to combat hate violence. Further, representation might also fail to reflect the true diversity of communities; historically, Brown Asian Americans have been underrepresented in Asian American media, resulting in marginalization within marginalized groups. For example, Filipino Americans—despite being the first Asian American group to settle in the US and one of the largest immigrant groups—remain underrepresented across many sectors, including academia, arts, and government.

Representation should never be the final goal; instead, it should merely be one step toward equity. Having a diverse cast on a television show is meaningless if those storylines promote harmful stereotypes or fail to address societal inequities. Being the “first” at anything is pointless if there aren’t efforts to address the systemic obstacles that prevent people from certain groups from succeeding in the first place.

Instead, representation should be intentional. People in power should aim for their content to reflect their audiences—especially if they know that doing so could assist in increasing people's self-esteem and wellness. People who have the opportunity to represent their identity groups in any sector may make conscious efforts to use their influence to teach (or remind) others that their communities exist. Finally, parents and teachers can be more intentional in ensuring that their children and students always feel seen and validated. By providing youth with visual representations of people they can relate to, they can potentially save future generations from a lifetime of feeling underrepresented or misunderstood.

Kevin Leo Yabut Nadal, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the City University of New York and the author of books including Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress .

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Representation, meaning, and language

In his interview with Eve Bearne, Gunther Kress argues that literacy is “that which is about representation” (Kress, in Bearne, 2005, p. 288).  Because “literacy” implies something that is mediated through text, in my previous post I questioned the idea of what constitutes a “text.” After further consideration, I feel that  representation  is the key; therefore, for the purposes of this post I have decided to pursue  representation  a bit further.

The following two graphics provide a visual model for the way I have come to understand  representation  through various readings (most notably, those by cultural theorist Stuart Hall). Although these models represent the culmination of my understanding, I thought it would be helpful to  begin  with these models and then proceed to deconstruct and explain them throughout the post.

Model 1: Theories of Representation

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall describes  representation  as the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture through the use of language, signs and images which stand for or represent things (Hall, 1997).  However, there are several different theories that describe how language is used to represent the world; three of which are outlined above:  reflective, intentional  and  constructionist.

With  reflective  approach to representation, language is said to function like a mirror; it reflects the true meaning of an object, person, idea or event as it already exists in the world.  The Greek word ‘ mimesis’  is used for this purpose to describe how language imitates (or “mimics”) nature.  Essentially, the  reflective  theory proposes that language works by simply reflecting or imitating a fixed “truth” that is already present in the real world (Hall, 1997).

The  intentional  approach argues the opposite, suggesting that the speaker or author of a particular work  imposes  meaning onto the world through the use of language.  Words mean only what their author intends them to mean.  This is not to say that authors can go making up their own private languages; communication – the essence of language – depends on  shared  linguistic conventions and shared codes within a culture.  The author’s intended meanings/messages have to follow these rules and conventions in order to be shared and understood (Hall, 1997).

The  constructionist  approach (sometimes referred to as the  constructivist  approach) recognizes the social character of language and acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning (Hall, 1997).  Meaning is not inherent within an object itself, rather we  construct  meaning using  systems of representation  (concepts and signs); I will elaborate upon these systems further in my second model.  According to Hall:

“Constructivists do not deny the existence of the material world. However, it is not the material world which conveys meaning: it is the language system or whatever system we are using to represent our concepts. It is social actors who use the conceptual systems of their culture and the linguistic and other representational systems to construct meaning, to make the world meaningful and to communicate about that world meaningfully to others.” (Hall, 1997, p. 25)

There are two major variants of the constructionist approach: the  semiotic  approach, which was largely influenced by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and the  discursive  approach, which is associated with French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Semiotics is the study of signs in a culture (culture  as  language), though the  semiotic  approach doesn’t consider how, when or why language is used.  Saussure believed that language was a rule-governed system that could be studied with the law-like precision of a science (deemed “structuralism”).  He called this rule-governed structure “ la langue,”  and referred to individual language  acts  as “ la parole”  (Culler, 1976).  Many found Saussure’s model appealing because they felt it offered a closed, structured, scientific approach to “the least scientific object of inquiry – culture” (Culler, 1976, p. 29).

“Saussure’s great achievement was to force us to focus on language itself, as a social fact; on the process of representation itself; on how language actually works and the role it plays in the production of meaning.  In doing so, he saved language from the status of a mere transparent medium between  things  and  meaning .  He showed, instead, that representation was a  practice .” (Hall, 1997, p. 34)

With the  semiotic  approach, in addition to words and images, objects themselves can function as signifiers in the production of meaning (Hall, 1997).  Therefore from this perspective, going back to my previous post, my little book of plant pressings may in fact be considered a  text  since each little plant was chosen as a  representative  of an entire species.  Because they were being used to  represent  certain species, it is not the actual plant clipping itself that carries the meaning, rather it is the  symbolic function  it serves in generalizing the morphology, physiology, taxonomy etc.

What Saussure failed to address, however, were questions related to  power  in language (Hall, 1997). Cultural theorists eventually rejected the idea that language could be studied with law-like precision, mainly because language doesn’t operate within a “closed” system as Saussure suggests.  In a culture, language tends to operate across larger units of analysis – narratives, statements, groups of images, and whole discourses which operate across a variety of texts and areas of knowledge (Hall, 1997).

Michel Foucault used the word “ representation ” to refer to the production of  knowledge  (rather than just meaning) through the use of  discourses  (rather than just language) (Foucault, 1980).  His conception of “discourse” was less concerned about  whether  things exist, as it was with  where  meaning comes from. Discourse is always context-dependent.

J.P. Gee uses the concept of Discourse to describe the “distinctive ways of speaking, listening, reading and writing, coupled with distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing with other people and with various object, tools, and technologies so as to enact specific socially recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities” (Gee, 2008, p. 155).  As Foucault suggests in  The Archaeology of Knowledge,  “nothing has meaning outside of discourse” (Foucault, 1972).

Additionally, for Foucault the formation of discourses had the potential to sustain a “regime of truth” in a particular context.  No form of thought could claim absolute truth, because “truth” was all relative; knowledge, linked to power, can  make itself true .

“Here I believe one’s point of reference should not be the great model of language (langue) and signs, but that of war and battle.  The history which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of power not relations of meaning”  (Foucault, 1980, p. 114-115)

Model 2: Systems of Representation

Meaning is always produced within language; it is the  practice  of representation, constructed through  signifying.   As described in the previous section, the “real world” itself does not convey meaning.  Instead, meaning-making relies two different but related systems of representation:  concepts  and  language .

Concepts  are our mental representations of real-world phenomena.  They may be constructed from physical, material objects that we can perceive through our senses (e.g. a chair, a flower, a tangerine), or they may be abstract things that we cannot directly see, feel, or touch (e.g. love, war, culture).  In our minds, we organize, cluster, arrange and classify different concepts and build complex schema to describe the relations between them (Hall, 1997).

If we have a concept for something, we can say we know its  meaning , but we cannot communicate this meaning without the second system of representation:  language .   Language  can include written or spoken words, but it can also include visual images, gestures, body language, music, or other stimuli such as traffic lights (Hall, 1997).  It is important to note that  language  is completely arbitrary, often bearing little resemblance to the things to which they refer.  As Stuart Hall describes:

“Trees would not mind if we used the word SEERT – ‘trees’ written backwards – to represent the concept of them… it is not at all clear that real trees  know  that they are trees, and even less clear that they know that the word in English which represents the concept of themselves is written TREE whereas in French it is written ARBRE! As far as they are concerned, it could just as well be written COW or VACHE or indeed XYZ” (Hall, 1997, p. 21)

Codes  govern the translation between  concepts  and  language .  These codes are culturally constructed and stabilize meanings within different languages and cultures.  (Note: although meanings can be  stabilized  within a culture, they are never finally  fixed.   Social and linguistic conventions change over time as cultures evolve).

Saussure referred to  the   form , or the  language  used to refer to a concept,   as “ the signifier,”  and the corresponding  idea  it triggered in your head (the  concept ) as “ the signified .”  Together, these constituted “ the sign,”  which he argued “are members of a system and are defined in relation to the other members of that system” (Culler, 1976, p. 19).

In order to produce meaning, signifiers have to be organized into a system of  differences  (Hall, 1997).  For example, it is not the particular colours used in a traffic light that carries meaning – red, yellow, green, blue, pink, violet or vermillion are all arbitrary.  What matters instead is that they are  different  and can be distinguished from one another.  It is the  difference  between Red and Green which signifies – not the colours themselves, or even the words used to describe them (Hall, 1997).

Therefore, going back to my plant pressings dilemma, I am now inclined to argue that my book of plant clippings  is  in fact a text.  My  wild rose  clipping, for example, serves as a material “ signifier ” to represent the  concept  of “ wild rose-ness ” (the  idea ) through its physiological  differences  to the other plants contained in the book.  Meaning is made through the fact that it  represents  wild roses – even though I could have chosen any other wild rose plant from which to take my representative sample.  The book itself is transportable and no longer tied to its immediate context of production, which was an important criterion for Lankshear and Knobel’s definition.

However, after compiling this research on  representation , I have also come to understand that the  definition  of “text” is less important than its  interpretation:

“There is a necessary and inevitable imprecision about language… There is a constant  sliding of meaning  in all interpretation, a margin – something in excess of what we intend to say – in which other meanings overshadow the statement or the text; where other associations are awakened to life, giving what we say a different twist.  So interpretation becomes an essential aspect of the process by which meaning is given and taken” (Hall, 1997, p. 32-33).

___________________________

References:

Bearne, E.  (2005).  Interview with Gunther Kress.  Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education.  26(3):287-299

Culler, J.  (1976).  Saussure.  London: Fontana.

Foucault, M.  (1972).  The Archaeology of Knowledge.  London: Tavistock.

Foucault, M.  (1980).  Power/Knowledge.  Brighton: Harvester.

Gee, J.P.  (2008).  Chapter 8: Discourses and literacies.    in Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses, 3rd edition.  London: Routledge.

Hall, S. (Ed.)  (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Chapter 1: Representation, meaning and language.  London Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage in association with the Open University. pp. 15-64

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HUM2020: Introduction to the Humanities

sharing what is means to be human

Representation

The process of representation is shaped by social and cultural forces and systems of power.  This lesson will examine the different types of representation used in the humanities, address the role of the humanities in creating representations, and explore the socio-cultural politics of representing and being represented in the humanities.

Lesson Objectives

• identify the role of symbols and representation in the humanities
• interpret symbolic meanings through different mediums in the humanities
• analyze the relationship between symbols,  representation and power in the humanities

Symbols and Representation

Humans have a unique capacity to communicate meanings through representation , the process of producing symbols to represent ideas. Symbolic representation allows people to communicate about the past, present and future, and it also provides a means of conceptualizing abstract and intangible mediums such as feelings and emotions as well as philosophy, math, physics, and more.

Humans create symbols by assigning meanings to arbitrary signifiers. This means that the symbol itself does not possess an inherent quality or trait associated with the meaning it represents; the meaning has been assigned to the symbol by the creator. Consider language as an example. Language is a complex system of arbitrary symbols and their associated meanings (Saussure 1911) . Right now, you are looking at a collection of arbitrary symbols called ‘letters’ which are arranged together to form ‘words’ that are associated with meanings. There is nothing inherent to these letters that indicate their meanings. At some point in our lives, we both learned to associate these symbols with the same meanings, and through practice, we can now effortlessly translate the symbols into meanings without realizing we are doing it. It is through our shared knowledge of this collection of symbols and meanings, called ‘English,’ that we are able to communicate ideas about the past, present and future.

Can you understand the symbols and meanings below?

مع نفس المعاني، ومن خلال الممارسة العملية، يمكننا الآن ترجمة جهد الرموز والمعاني دون أن يدركوا أننا نفعل ذلك. ومن خلال معرفتنا المشتركة لهذه المجموعة من الرموز والمعاني، وتسمى باللغة الانجليزية، ونحن قادرون على توصيل الأفكار عن الماضي والحاضر والمستقبل

Δεν υπάρχει τίποτα που είναι συνυφασμένοι με αυτά τα σύμβολα που δείχνουν νοήματα. Σε κάποιο σημείο στη ζωή μας, εμείς οι δύο μάθει να συνδέσει αυτά τα σύμβολα με τα ίδια νοήματα, και μέσα από την πράξη, μπορούμε τώρα να μεταφράσει αβίαστα τα σύμβολα και τις έννοιες, χωρίς να συνειδητοποιούν το κάνουμε.

If you do not understand the system of symbols depicted in the above paragraphs, it is because you never learned to associate the system of arbitrary symbols with their assigned concepts or meanings.  This shows how associations between symbols and meaning vary cross-culturally according to the unique experiences shared within a community.

Symbolism and representation take many different forms.  Writers use symbolism to strengthen their writing, making it more interesting and adding a layer of deeper meaning. Symbolic interpretation of religious scripture has a very long history. In the case of Christianity, for example, Bruno Barnhart (1989) points out that symbolic interpretation was the dominant mode of religious study for the first thousand years of Christian history. He argues that symbolism in the biblical narrative gives z deeper level of significance beyond the literal meaning.

Since ancient times, symbolism has been pervasive throughout all forms of art and literature as objects, colors, and scenarios have been used to represent meanings intended to establish an aura or mood that is not captured through simple literal translation. Plants, animals, weather, shapes and colors are common sources for symbol-making that have been used to convey complex meanings, ideas or a set of ideas.

The poem ‘Harlem,’ by Langston Hughes about the African-American experience during the first half of the 20th century, uses objects like ‘a raisin in the sun’ and a ‘festering sore’ to communicate what happens when dreams are put off or deferred. Hughes’s poem moves beyond simply describing the details of a scenario; through symbols he communicates complex emotions and feelings. This provides the reader an opportunity to connect with Hughes through the shared experience of what it feels like to have a dream deferred, or it also helps a reader empathize with the experience of another human being.

It is important to note, however, that symbols and meanings not only vary cross-culturally, the same symbol can also be used differently to communicate contradictory meanings. The color red, for example, may be used to communicate emotions such as anger, power, or anxiety while at the same time it can also represent love or embarrassment in different creative scenarios. In his short fictional story, The Red Room , Paul Bowles describes a red room within a villa that has a particularly odd feeling. Once the reader learns of the significance of the room, the color red, lends a creepy sinisterness. After reading the story, it seems unlikely that the colors mauve, beige, or blue would provide the same effect for Bowles.  This is why it is important to not only learn about and identify the many different uses and modes for symbol-making, it is just as significant to situate symbology within its specific context.

It is impossible to thoroughly explore symbolism within a single lesson, or even a single semester. For now, however, we will take a brief look at a few of the most common types symbolic practices in the humanities and then move on to interrogate the ways that symbolism and representation can be situated within systems of power relations.

Symbolic Practices

A metaphor is a  figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. A metaphor may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared with other types of figurative language, such as antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy and simile.

‘My love is like a red, red rose’ by Robert Burns (1759-1796) is one type of symbolism used in literature to represent romantic love, and more than 200 years later it continues to represent love in the primetime TV series, The Bachelor .  Both metaphor and simile use comparisons between two objects or ideas,

A simile makes a comparison of similarities between two different things. Unlike a metaphor, a simile draws on resemblance and relies on words such as “like” or “as” to make a direct comparison.  Simile adds beauty and effect to literature. Simile can add appeal and attention to the senses by encouraging the imagination to envision what is being communicated. It also infuses a life-like quality by compelling readers to relate feelings and personal experiences. This makes it easier for the readers to understand the moods and meaning of a literary text. In Lord Jim , Joseph Conrad used simile to compare the helplessness of a soul to a small bird in a cage.

“I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage.”

Allegory is another type of symbolism found in literature where the use of story elements such as the plot, setting, characters or objects are used to symbolize something else. George Orwell’s 1945 novel  Animal Farm , uses allegorical meanings to make a commentary on oppressive institutions, and this type of symbolism remains throughout the entire literary work. In the plot of  Animal Farm , the farm animals rise up against their human masters, and this mirrors and critiques the political events in Russia in the early 1900s. The animal characters symbolizing real-life political figures such as pig named Napolean, who takes charge.

A parable is a short story that typically ends with a moral lesson. Common parables include The Boy Who Cried Wolf , The Turtle and the Rabbit , and  The Good Samaritan.   Parables rely on symbolism, similie, and metaphor to communicate a complex lesson in a succinct narrative. Parables are often used in religious texts such as the Upanishad, the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran.

In the second chapter of the Quran, ( Al Baqra  2: 259) for example, there is a story of a man who begins to doubt the ability of God to resurrect as he passes through a place where people died. Subsequently, God caused him to die, and then resurrected him after a hundred years. When God asked the man how long he slept, he replied only a day because the food he brought with him was still fresh. The man’s donkey, on the other hand, became a skeleton. God joined the bones, muscles, flesh and blood of the donkey and brought it back to life. This Islamic parable aims to teach a moral lesson in three ways: 1. God has control over all things and time; 2. God has power over life, death, resurrection and no other can have this power; and 3. Humans have no power, and they should put their faith only in God. Parables are great teaching tools to convey complicated moral and philosophical lessons in a way that is relatable and understandable to the reader’s personal experiences. Parables take common scenarios in day-to-day lives and use them to represent deeper meanings and messages. They are effective because the reader is guided to draw a conclusion and then apply the lesson’s principles in life.

There are a wide range of other forms of symbolic representation in the humanities, and we will take a closer look in future lessons. Now, we will examine the meanings and effects of symbolic representation of the body, particularly in terms if gender and race, within different mediums such as music videos, television, media and art.

Representing Bodies

The human body has been a central focus within the humanities since prehistory. Depictions of the human body are included in ancient cave paintings, paleolithic sculptures such as the Venus of Willendorf, classical Greek and Roman statues such as the David, the Terracotta Soldiers of China, and modern television series such as Sex in the City . Throughout history the human body has been represented in an infinite number of ways. Yet the body is more than just a biological object, bodies are socialized through the meanings we assign to bodies. This is evident in the ideas and values that we assign to sex, gender, race, nationality and other categories that not only assign meanings to bodies, they also influence the way the bodies are treated as well as the right, roles and responsibilities that are assigned to people according to the ways the body is classified and categories. This makes it possible to interpret cultures and sociel systems by the ways that bodies are represented.

Watch the video below to get a sense of the multiplicity of ways the body has been represented in painting. Considr the wide variety of techniques and considerations artist takes through realism, depth, dimension, arrangement, proportion and more to assign meanings to the human symbolic form.

The video above describes how an artist’s decisions are oftentimes influenced by cultural values, ideas and motivations. In many cases, the artist nor the viewer may be aware of the values and ideas influencing the work. This complicates the manner in which bodies are represented in the humanities, because the representation of a body is a representation of the people, class and culture to which the body belongs. This makes it critical to examine who is creating the representation, who is being represented, and for whom is the representation created.

Gender, Race and Representation in the Humanities

The humanities provides a lens through which people view themselves and their own culture as well as the way people view groups and cultures they are not a part of. Movies, stories, news reports, photographs and art deliver information about peoples and cultures to an audience that may have little or no prior experience engaging with the peoples and cultures being represented. This is why it is important to think critically about the ways people are portrayed in the humanities.

Critical Theory is an analytical approach to assess and evaluate how power informs social interactions. Studying representations of race and gender in the humanities allows us to learn about race and gender relationships throughout history and across cultures. By studying gendered and racialized representations in the humanities (such as in language, literature, art, music, and popular media), we can interpret how meanings and ideas are assigned to gender and race by certain members of a particular society. This is why it is important to identify the producer of the imagery and the individual or group being produced.

In his documentary, Dream Worlds , Media Studies professor Sut Jhally, examines how representations of women, gender and heterosexual relationships in popular music videos reflects a culture of male entitlement and the hyper-sexualization of women as objects for men’s pleasure. He also reflects on the ways that these representations can influence social and sexual relationships in the real lives of the audience.

Sut Jhally critically examines representation of gender, sex and sexuality in specific music videos by investigating the relationship between those who created the representation (men) and who is being represented (women.) By doing this, he is able to address how status and power relationships between men and women inform and are informed by gendered relationships in the society where the videos are produced.

Along the same lines, Byron Hurt’s documentary film, Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes, critically examines how race and gender is represented in hip hop music and videos. Hurt’s investigation into the hip hop record industry reveals that the industry is controlled by white record label executives producing music and imagery for a predominantly young white male consumer base.

Although Hurt and Jhally rely on music videos from the 90s, music and media produced by current viral sensation, Takashi 69, shows that the same pejorative representations of race and gender are pervasive today.

Like music videos, a critical and comparative examination of visual art, literature and storytelling can reveal information about gender and race throughout history.

In her book, The Serpent and the Goddess , Mary Condren analyzes how the declining status of women in ancient Ireland during Christianization parallels changes in the mythology of Brigid. The pre-eminent Goddess in early Irish religious traditions was initially considered a powerful female diety and served as the patroness of poetry, smithing, medicine, arts and crafts, cattle and other livestock, sacred wells, and serpents. During the Christianization of Ireland, however, stories and myths about Brigid changed over time. Pre-Christian folklore initially presented her as a woman of immense power and a triple diety. After the arrival of the Christian Saxons, new stories protrayed her as a weak goddess. In time, the goddess Brigid was transformed into a Christian saint of the same name. According to medievalist Pamela Berger, Christian “monks took the ancient figure of the mother goddess and grafted her name and functions onto her Christian counterpart.” Today, St. Brigid is associated with perpetual, sacred flames, such as the one maintained by 19 nuns at her sanctuary in Kildare, Ireland. Both the goddess and saint are associated with holy wells, at Kildare and many other sites in the Celtic lands. Saint Brigid shares many of the goddess’s attributes and her feast day on 1 February was originally a pagan festival (Imbolc) marking the beginning of spring.

Cultural ideas about men and masculinity are also reproduced within the humanities. Ancient mythology of the Greeks and Romans reflects classical ideas about men, power and authority as well as gender relationships between men and men with women. Religious texts codify roles and expectations for men, relations with women, and men’s role in marriage and families.

Representations of superheroes in popular American comics have traditionally presented a narrow focus on men, heroism, and masculinity. Representations of ‘superheroes’ provided hyper-masculinized representations for men and boys while at the same time challenging normative ideas. In the article, ‘ Superhero Masculinity ,’ Steven Jones points out that superheroes can represent new models for men and boys beyond power and authority by revealing binary or dual relationships such as superman and Clark Kent, Batman and Robin, and by presenting the first gay superhero, Northstar, in 1979 with an official coming out (‘I am gay’) in 1992. Changing representations of male superheroes reflects changing cultural norms and values about men, gender and sexuality.

Visit the MOMA learning module and read the brief lessons, The Body in Art and Constructing Gender.

The Politics of Power in Representing Races and Cultures

Critical theory in the late twentieth century identified how relationships of power and representation lend to distinctive patterns in the humanities. In most cases, representations are produced by those who have power, and the powerless are usually the ones being represented. This creates a bias in representative forms. In his book, Orientalism (1978), Edward Said points out the social and political implications associated with power and representation as he described the inconsistencies between representations of Arab men in media and film and his own experiences as an Arab man.

According to Said, representations of the Middle East and Arab cultures had nothing to do with the realities of life in the region and had everything to do with the unequal relationship of power in colonial domination. He defined Orientalism as a prejudiced outsider representation shaped by the attitudes of imperialists in order to justify the occupation of foreign territories and the exploitation of indigenous people who live in those territories.   In essence, Said argues that those in power represent the people they oppress in ways that justify their oppression. (fo rmore on this, watch the documentary “ Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people on Vimeo.)

Said’s analysis primarily targets artistic representations of the Middle East by European artists and writers, yet his critique on representation and power has been expanded to address pejorative representations of colonized and oppressed people throughout the world; Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the indigenous populations of North America. It has informed more critical analysis of race and representation within a cultural group by scholars such as Stuart Hall. The video below gives a synopsis of the underlying thesis in Hall’s work.

The work of Said, Hall and other scholars of critical theory reveals patterns of Othering, a process of creating a representation of a person or group that appears foreign, alien and strange to the viewer. The ‘Other’ is created through Binary Opposition , a key concept in structuralism (a theory of sociology, anthropology and linguistics) that states that all elements of human culture can only be understood in relation to one another and how they function within a larger system or the overall environment. Light is defined in relationship to dark, good needs evil, etc. Binary oppositions are prevalent in the humanities where relationships between different groups of people (rich and poor, white and black, men and women, gay and straight, etc.) are represented. A key aspect of Othering is that the producer and the receiver of what is produced (audience, viewer, listener) are of the same group, but the person or people represented is excluded.  These representations create or reinforce boundaries between groups of people and promote prejudice and discrimination of those who are othered in the representation due to fear induced by the representation.

As the identity lesson pointed out, the humanities also provides a platform for people to deconstruct pejorative representations from the past and reconstruct self-representations that present a new interpretation of life and culture from all perspectives. As artists, writers, film makers, philosophers and the like contribute to humanities as a practice, humanities as a field can benefit from the addition of diverse perspectives, unique experiences, and different ways of viewing the world.  Literary works such as the novella, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid , provides a window into the lived experiences of post-colonialism in the Caribbean. Zora Neale Hurston  ( Their Eyes were Watching God ) and Alice Walker  ( The Color Purple ) are part of an elite league of African-American female writers who take the experiences of African American women from the margins and into the mainstream. Films produced by Spike Lee’s production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks , aims to redefine representations of blackness in Hollywood while the film, The Joy Luck Club , based on Amy Tan’ s first best-selling book, countered popular stereotypes about Asian women. African artists such as El Anatusi and Nnenna Okore are rocking the art world with a unique style that integrates ancient African techniques with cutting edge technologies.

As Thelma Golden points out in her Ted Talk below, the humanities not only reflects a culture, it can also provide a means to change it.

Symbols and Representation in the Humanities

When we enter into the next module which begins the analysis component in this course, it is important to contemplate the power of symbol-making and the socio-cultural politics of representation in the humanities as we dig deeper into various mediums such as literature, poetry, art, film, and other types of expression.

Questions to Consider

• What are symbols and how are they created?
• How can the human body be symbolic?
• How is critical theory applied in the humanities?
• Why is it important to identify the producer and the produced while engaging representations of people?

References and Readings

To learn more about symbols and representation in the humanities, explore the links below.

• Hall, S. (Ed.). (1997).  Culture, media and identities. Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices.   Sage Publications, Inc; Open University Press.
• Hall, Stuart. ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’ in Permutations of Difference.
• Living Arts Originals website.
• ‘Symbols in Art: Who’s who?’ Smithsonian education.
• ‘Symbols in Art’ Britannica online .
• ‘Electronic Empires: Orientalism Revisted in the Military Shooter’ Hoglund
• Orientalism, Khan Academy
• Students Against Othering
• Byron Hurt. Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes (documentary)

What did you learn about symbols and representation in this lesson? Take the ungraded quiz below to find out.

[slickquiz id=5]

For Discussion in Canvas

In his article, Electronic Empires , Hoglund applied Edward Said’s theoretical perspective on Orientalism to show how the representations of Arab men in American video games contribute to a pattern of negative representations of Arab people created by people who are not members of the Arab community. Search the internet for another example of Orientalism / Othering in the humanities (film, art, song, games, etc.) and conduct your own analysis using Said’s and or Hall’s theoretical framework by answering the following questions:

• Who is represented and who is doing the representing?
• What types of meanings are assigned to the representation of the person or group?
• What type of bias or prejudice is communicated by the representation?
• In what ways does the representation serve to promote or justify the oppression, exploitation or inequality of the person or people being represented? 
• Be sure to embed or include a weblink to the image or representation in your post.

For Your Creative Journal

Create an ‘alternative representation’ that goes against the grain of popular cultural representations, or stereotypes, that are pervasive in media such as art, film, and literature. Use a representation that is taken for granted and reverse it. You can express your alternative representation as a character, short story, image, song, or any medium you prefer. Provide a brief explanation of your representation.

When you complete this lesson, study your notes for this module and prepare to take the quiz before moving on to the next module, Analysis I .

Encyclopedia of Tourism pp 788–790 Cite as

Representation, cultural

• 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.

Google Scholar  

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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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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