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\"Western or Eastern, ancient or modern, religious or scientific, myths are strikingly underestimated forces in contemporary society. In our rational, enlightened and supposedly civilized society myths have come to be perceived as the exclusive attribute of so-called pre-modern societies. In Social Myths and Collective Imaginaries, Gérard Bouchard conceptualizes myths as vessels of sacred values that transcend the division between primitive and modern. These vessels become so influential as to make an indelible impression on people's minds. We may no longer speak of Aphrodite or Gilgamesh but freedom, equality, social justice, environmentalism, democracy and nationalism are sacred values in our world. Nobody would deny that equality for all citizens in France, the right to property in the United States, or racial equality in South Africa are sacrosanct. Bouchard's refreshing and startling analysis reveals that as a sociological mechanism, myths have the power to bring societies together as well as tear themapart. In his own way, Bouchard awakens us to the transcendent power of myth that affects our daily lives, frequently unbeknownst to us.\"-- Provided by publisher.

Fifty years ago, Serge Moscovici first outlined a theory of social representations. In this article, we attempt to discuss and to contextualize research that has been inspired by this original impetus from the particular angle of its relevance to political psychology. We argue that four defining components of social representations need to be taken into account, and that these elements need to be articulated with insights from the social identity tradition about the centrality of self and group constructions in order to develop original insights into political psychological phenomena. First, social representations are shared knowledge, and the way interpretations of the world are collectively elaborated is critical to the way people are able to act within the world. Second, social representations are meta-knowledge, which implies that what people assume relevant others know, think, or value is part of their own interpretative grid, and that collective behavior can often be influenced more powerfully at the level of meta-representations than of intimate beliefs. Third, social representations are enacted communication, which means that social influence is exerted by the factors that constrain social practices as much as by the discourse that interprets these practices.Fourth, social representations are world-making assumptions: collective understandings do not only reflect existing realities but often bring social reality into being. Put together, these four components provide a distinctive theoretical perspective on power, resistance and conflict. The added conceptual value of this perspective is illustrated by showing how it allows revisiting ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia. We conclude with implications for research practices and discuss how the proposed model of social representations invites us to define new priorities and challenges for the methods used to study political psychological phenomena.

This handbook provides the theoretical and methodological tools for adopting a social representations approach in field research. Scholars, researchers and students in the social sciences will find it an invaluable resource for understanding contemporary social psychological concerns such as the development of identities, communities and narratives.

Social media can be valuable tools for art organizations, as the posts uploaded to their accounts can manifest their perspectives on organizational goals and activities. In particular, visual materials are playing a crucial role in organizational social media communication. They can manifest the social representations (SRs), which are systems of opinions, knowledge, and/or beliefs shared by a group of people. Based on the social representations theory, this study was conducted to identify the key elements and structures of visual SRs in art organizations’ Instagram photos via computational analyses. Specifically, the major content of the photos was determined through photo classification and content tagging, and words embedded in the photos were detected using an optical character recognition technique. Clustering analysis was used to compare content, embedded words, and pixel-level features between the resulting groups. Correspondence analyses were performed at the account level to establish the representational fields. The results showed that text and people were the major types of objects represented in art organizations’ Instagram photos. The texts presented in the photos were mainly about organization names, information about events, and calling for actions of the public. Moreover, representation of texts and people emerged as key factors structuring the fields of visual SRs at the account level. The results suggest that organizational facets were more emphasized than artistic facets in art organizations’ strategic use of visual social media. The implications of these findings were discussed, along with the limitations and suggestions for future research. Examining The Social Representations On Art Organizations’ Visual Social Media by Clustering and Correspondence Analyses Like any organizations, art organizations can use social media to achieve their organizational goals effectively. Particularly, visual social media can express the organizational activities that textual social media cannot. The expressions on social media by organizations in a domain can be understood from the perspective of social representations theory. This study aimed to identify what are the key elements represented in the Instagram photos of art organizations and how the representational field generated by art organizations are shaped. Computational analyses were performed for these aims. Specifically, the major content of the photos was determined through photo classification and content tagging, and words embedded in the photos were detected using an optical character recognition technique. Clustering analysis was used to compare content, embedded words, and pixel-level features between the resulting groups. Correspondence analyses were performed at the account level to establish the representational fields. The results showed that text and people were the major types of objects represented in art organizations™ Instagram photos. The texts presented in the photos were mainly about organization names, information about events, and calling for actions of the public. Moreover, representation of texts and people emerged as key factors structuring the fields of visual social media at the account level.

\"Common Sense and Ethics Dialogue has become a central theoretical concept in human and social sciences as well as in professions such as education, health, and psychotherapy. This 'dialogical turn' emphasizes the importance of social relations and interaction to our behaviour and how we make sense of the world; hence the Dialogical Mind is the mind in interaction with others - with individuals, groups, institutions, and cultures in historical perspectives. Through a combination of rigorous theoretical work and empirical investigation, Markova presents an ethics of dialogicality as an alternative to the narrow perspective of individualism and cognitivism that has traditionally dominated the field of social psychology\"-- Provided by publisher.

In a related project, the social representation of public order among legal professionals has been explored by means of semi-structured interviews (Smejkalová et al. 2022). The participants of this research represent public order, , as a stable safeguard of fundamental social values while recognizing its vagueness and inherent propensity for change. This contradiction between its purpose to provide stability while being subject to social or temporal contexts seems akin to the structural approach to social representations. The social representations approach (Moscovici 1961, 2001) is an approach used in social psychology, rooted in the idea that social objects or phenomena must be represented by a social group in order to perform any kind of social function. Within this approach, a structural (Abric 1993) differentiation between a stable, normative central core of a social representation, and flexible periphery has been developed. The contradictions between the stability and dynamics of public order the participants talk about are not dissimilar from the theoretical considerations of the structural approach to social representation. Moreover, Moscovici’s (2001) and Wachelke’s (2012) framing of social representations especially resonates when applied to public order, pointing towards its role as a system facilitating communication and orientation within a social group. The present study utilizes the data available from the transcripts of these interviews with a single focus on the themes of dynamics and stability. It aims to discuss these themes across various disciplines, offering links that might have been overlooked. This study further underscores the usefulness of the social representation approach in legal conceptualization, advocating for the necessity of more synthetic approaches merging philosophy, linguistics (semiotics), social psychology, and law to enrich further understanding in this domain.

This commentary outlines an approach to social representations which emphasizes the normative and dynamic nature of shared knowledge. Social representations both connect and divide people, for example through shared ingroup and outgroup stereotypes derived from antagonistic social representations. Through asymmetrical intergroup communication and influence, in turn, social representations are formed, maintained, and contested. In this dynamic process, powerful majorities attempt to define the meaning of new or otherwise important information as a function of their group norms, while subordinate minorities employ propaganda techniques of social influence to resist majority influence and propose alternative positions.

This volume discusses the interface between human development and socio-cultural processes by exploring the writings of Gerard Duveen, an internationally renowned figure, whose untimely death left a void in the fields of socio-developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and research into social representations. Duveen's original and comprehensive approach continues to offer fresh insight into core theoretical, methodological and empirical problems in contemporary psychology. In this collection the editors have carefully selected Duveen’s most significant papers to demonstrate the innovative nature of his contribution to developmental, social and cultural psychology. Divided into three sections, the book includes: Duveen's engagement with Jean Piaget the role of social life in human development and the making of cognition social representations and social identities Introduced with chapters from Serge Moscovici, Sandra Jovchelovitch and Brady Wagoner, this book presents previously unpublished papers, as well as chapters available here in English for the first time. It will be essential reading for those studying high level developmental psychology, educational psychology, social psychology, and cultural psychology. Series Editor's Introduction Jaan Valsiner Preface Serge Moscovici Introduction: The Context and Development of Ideas Sandra Jovchelovitch and Brady Wagoner Part 1: Piaget: A View from Afar 1. Children's Understanding of Friendship 2. The Child's Reconstruction of Economic Life 3. Piaget Ethnographer 4. Genesis and Structure: Piaget and Moscovici Part 2: Development as Decentration 5. Social Life and the Epistemic Subject 6. Psychological Development as a Social Process 7. Construction, Belief, Doubt 8. On Interviews: A Conversation with Carol Gilligan 9. The Constructive Role of Asymmetries in Social Interaction Part 3: Thinking through Social Representations 10. The Significance of Social Identities 11. Social Representations as a Genetic Theory 12. Representations, Identities, Resistance 13. Culture and Social Representations 14. Social Actors and Social Groups: A Return to Heterogeneity in Social Psychology ‘Through a carefully selected set of essays, the editors have created a marvelous Symposium, conducted by the late Gerald Duveen, where he, Piaget, Moscovici, Vygotsky and Bartlett explore the need for a synthetic approach to the nature of human development. A challenging and rewarding reading experience that taught me a lot’ - Professor Michael Cole, Director of Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition, University of California San Diego ‘Gerard Duveen was a remarkable scholar who developed an original conceptual approach linking together developmental, cultural and social psychology. In this volume the editors present Duveen's critical engagement with Piaget's and Moscovici's theories and his original thought in advancing difficult concepts like decentration, social representations, identities, beliefs and doubts, among many others. The volume, building on intellectual scholarship of the highest standard, will be inspirational for researchers in human and social sciences’ - Ivana Markova, Emeritus Professor in Psychology, University of Stirling Serge Moscovici is Professor of Social Psychology at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris, and founder of the European Laboratory of Social Psychology at the Maison de Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, France. Sandra Jovchelovitch is Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics, UK, where she directs the Masters programme in Social and Cultural Psychology. Brady Wagoner is Associate Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has received a number of prestigious academic awards, including the Sigmund Koch Award, Gates Cambridge Scholarship and the Jefferson Prize.

This study aimed to analyze characteristics, representations, and practices of intimacies and violence in Portuguese university students. Data collection involved 10 focus groups with a total of 35 university students aged 18–23. The findings reveal that students conceptualize healthy relationships based on respect, trust, and individuality, reflecting egalitarian ideals. However, participants acknowledge persistent gendered expectations and asymmetries. Contributing factors to dating violence (DV) include gender stereotyping, social media, substance use, and specific social settings. While social media can foster connection, it also enables control and online abuse. Substance use, although not a direct cause, may exacerbate pre-existing tensions. DV predominantly occurs in private settings, though emotional abuse also surfaces in public spaces like social gatherings. Participants condemned DV but noted the societal normalization of less visible forms of violence. They highlighted the role of peers as primary support networks for victims but also pointed to passive attitudes when abuse involves acquaintances. These insights underscore the need for targeted interventions addressing social norms and enhancing informal support networks in university settings. This study enriches the limited qualitative research on DV among Portuguese youth and emphasizes the importance of aligning prevention strategies with the nuanced realities of young people’s relationships.

Abstract In his Theory of Needs, Maslow argues that in the self- actualization stage the individual would have more developed B- values, which would involve, among other characteristics, the tendency to be mostly dedicated to causes of collective interest to the detriment of individual interests. It would also be in the self- actualization stage that the environment would have an intrinsic value, an important aspect if we consider the need for developing solutions to socio-environmental problems. Would the Social Representation of the environment have a relationship with the different stages of needs proposed by Maslow in his theory? Could the self-actualization stage reveal an individual with a globalizing representation of the environment? To answer these questions, an study was conducted with 134 participants adapting and using the Environmental Motivation Profile Test instrument and the results showed a significant correlation between the stage of self- actualization and a globalizing representation of the Environment. Resumen En su Teoría de las Necesidades, Maslow sostiene que en la etapa de autorrealización el individuo tendría valores B más desarrollados, lo que implicaría, entre otras características, la tendencia a dedicarse principalmente a causas de interés colectivo en detrimento de los intereses individuales. Sería también en la fase de autorrealización que el medio ambiente tendría un valor intrínseco, aspecto importante si consideramos la necesidad de desarrollar soluciones a los problemas socioambientales. En este sentido, estaría relacionada la Representación Social del entorno con los diferentes estadios de necesidades propuestos por Maslow en su teoría? Podría la etapa de autorrealización revelar un individuo con una representación globalizadora del entorno? Para responder a estas preguntas se realizó un estudio con 134 participantes adaptando y utilizando el instrumento Prueba de Perfil de Motivación Ambiental y los resultados mostraron una correlación significativa entre la etapa de autorrealización y una representación global del Medio Ambiente. Resumo Em sua Teoria das Necessidades, Maslow argumenta que no estágio de autorrealização o indivíduo teria valores B mais desenvolvidos, o que envolveria, entre outras características, a tendência a se dedicar principalmente a causas de interesse coletivo em detrimento de interesses individuais. Seria também na fase de autorrealização que o meio ambiente teria um valor intrínseco, aspecto importante se considerarmos a necessidade de desenvolver soluções para os problemas socioambientais. Nesse sentido, a Representação Social do meio ambiente teria relação com os diferentes estágios de necessidades propostos por Maslow em sua teoria? O estágio de autorrealização poderia revelar um indivíduo com uma representação globalizante do ambiente? Para responder a essas questões, foi realizado um estudo com 134 participantes adaptando e utilizando o instrumento Teste de Perfil de Motivação Ambiental e os resultados mostraram uma correlação significativa entre o estágio de autorrealização e uma representação globalizante do Meio Ambiente.