The Making of the Theory of Social Representations

This paper presents the theory of social representations as a model of social scientific theory. In doing so, it attempts to reconstruct the foundations of the theory of social representations by focusing on intellectual resources that were available to Serge Moscovici during the time he was developing the theory. These resources shaped his epistemology, and firmly distinguished the theory of social representations from other social psychological approaches. The focus on these intellectual resources draws attention to two issues. First, in contrast to what Moscovici often called ‘one or two sentence theories’ in social psychology based on the manipulation of variables, the theory of social representations is built on a rich set of presuppositions. Second, an explicit recognition of presuppositions of social representations in their application in professional practices like education, politics and health, among others, enables a unique contribution to social sciences and humanities. THEORY OF SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS • SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH • EPISTEMOLOGY 3 5 8 T H E M A K IN G O F T H E T H E O R Y O F S O C IA L R E P R E S E N T A T IO N S 3 6 0 C a d e r n o s d e P e s q u is a v .4 7 n .1 6 3 p .3 5 8 -3 74 j a n ./ m a r. 2 0 17 I n ThiS TRiBuTe To SeRge MoSCoviCi i ShAll pReSenT The TheoRy of SoCiAl representations as a model of social scientific theory that shows the originality and creativity of his thought. In doing so, I shall attempt to reconstruct the foundations of the theory of social representations by focusing on intellectual resources that were available to Moscovici during the time he was developing the theory. These resources shaped his epistemology, and firmly distinguished the theory of social representations from other social psychological approaches. The focus on these intellectual resources will draw attention to two issues. First, in contrast to what Moscovici often called “one or two sentence theories” in social psychology based on the manipulation of variables, the theory of social representations is built on a rich set of presuppositions. Unless one understands the nature of intellectual resources that underlie these presuppositions, one cannot answer questions about similarities and differences between our theory and those of other theories, e.g. “social cognition” or “discourse analysis”, and so on. Due to the fact that the theory of social representations deals with interdisciplinary issues of high complexity, its “translation” into other approaches is unfortunately often trivialized. Second, an explicit recognition of presuppositions of social representations in their application in professional practices like education, politics and health, among others, enables a unique contribution to social sciences and humanities (MARKOVÁ, 2016).