Access to reproductive technologies by single women and lesbians: Social representations and public debate

A landmark decision in 2000 by the Federal Court of Australia (FCA) allowed access to medically assisted reproductive technologies (MART) regardless of marital status, i.e. by single women and lesbians. This decision sparked much debate, including comments by the Prime Minister of Australia and hundreds of letters to newspapers around the country. In this study, 180 letters to the editor in two newspapers were analyzed to identify themes and processes relevant to conceptualizing who should have access to MART. Representations of family were particularly evident and themes supported the traditional family structure of a mother, father and children, arguing that access to MART should be restricted to this family form. However, emerging representations of family, based on themes of positive parenting values, independent of gender and number of parents, were also observed, suggesting that political agendas restricting MART to heterosexual family structures are not supported by public consensus, or by the emerging acceptance of alternative family forms. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social representations of health and illness: the case of the Chinese community in England

This paper reports results from a qualitative study on social representations of health and illness among the Chinese community in England. It is assumed that representations of health and illness are grounded in cultural frameworks and are constructed through communication, social interaction and the practices of daily life. Our findings show that in spite of differences related to age and degrees of acculturation, Chinese people in England share a common representational system with respect to health and illness. This system is based on the traditional notions of “balance” and “harmony” between the interdependent forces of Yin and Yang. Health results from balance, whereas illness is brought about by disequilibrium. It is through these traditional Chinese concepts that Western biomedical knowledge is incorporated, producing a mixed representational field where Chinese and Western knowledge co‐exist. This representational field is transmitted through the most fundamental dimensions of culture: food, language and kinship relations. We conclude by showing that social representations of health and illness are inseparable from the struggles over identity experienced by the Chinese people in England. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Human and peoples' rights: social representations among Cameroonian students

Social representations of human and peoples' rights were studied among Cameroonian university students (N = 666) with a questionnaire based on the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and Duties. The respondents were asked how important and how well realized they regarded the 39 human and peoples' rights to be. A 13-factor model provided the best fit with Cameroonian students' perceptions of human and peoples' rights. Taken as a whole, our results are in line with previous quantitative studies on human rights, confirming structural similarity but also country-specific variation in the aggregation of specific rights. Moreover, our data showed that Cameroonian students value human and peoples' rights highly (M = 6.18), whereas their fulfillment is not regarded as highly (M = 5.09). Same law for all, equality and freedom, and right to work and living were highly appreciated but lowly realized rights. Higher than average in importance and realization were right to education and self-fulfillment, right to marriage and property, peoples' social and political basic rights and right to life and safety. Low in importance and realization were peoples' right to their country's natural resources and independence, right to meetings, and right to express opinion. Women appreciated the rights more than men and thought of their rights as better realized compared to men. We suggest that when women say that their rights are better fulfilled than men do, it is in comparison with the older generation, who are still very dependent on men. Nowadays, thanks to education and urbanization, young women have wider choices or opportunities for marriage and jobs. Men may feel frustrated in the context of political liberalization because the freedoms are more theoretical than fulfilled; the economic crises and cultural changes have hindered their economic domination and their prerogatives.     

Social representations of smoking and attitudes towards smoking restrictions in the Norwigian Navy

The present study investigated the relationship bewteen social representations about smokers and smoking, and attitudes towards smoking restrictions. Data were collected by means of questionnaires among a sample of employees ( n =4224)in the Norwegian Navy. Based on the results from first- and second-order principal components analyses, three dimensions of social representations were identified. The dimensions were labeled "negative representations", "positive representations" and "social influence". The three dimensions clearly differentiated between daliy, occasional and non-smokers. Further, structural equation modeling of the relation between social representations and attitudes towards smoking restrictions, indicated that social representations function as intermediating factors of the effect from smoking states upon attitudes towards smoking restrictions.
The findings indicate the need to focus upon social psyshological processes taking place in the ineraction between groups of smokers and non-smokers, as understanding of such processes may be relevant in preventing the development of group conflict.     

Redefining the Meaning of Negative History in Times of Sociopolitical Change: A Social Creativity Approach

This article explores the role negative history plays in political discourse on crisis management and how times of sociopolitical change in turn influence the strategies that can be employed to write a positive historical charter. Choosing Germany as a case study, we analyzed how political leaders negotiate Germany's narrative and political role during the European “refugee crisis” in speeches (n = 332) held between 2015 and 2018. Applying a combination of corpus-based and qualitative narrative analysis, we found that the context of a crisis is used to attach new meaning to Germany's role in World War II. By focusing on the lessons learned from history and pointing out the parallels between the current crisis and sociopolitical developments that took place 80 years ago, Germany is presented as the ideal advocate for a free and united Europe, a narrative that legitimizes its advancingly dominant role within the EU and beyond. The analysis demonstrates how times of change can facilitate social creativity strategies for nations whose past is dominated by negative history, with implications for the theory of identity management.     

Social representations of organ donors and non‐donors

This paper illustrates the empirical investigation of social representations by means of photographs as stimulus material and the technique of correspondence analysis to study the resulting data. The research was part of a campaign carried out to promote organ donation in Malta. The study tries to find out whether a public communication campaign could change perceptions. Five focus groups were held before the campaign and another five, two months after the campaign. Part of the data collected through these focus groups was analysed using correspondence analysis. The results showed that before the campaign, donors were generally perceived to be either young or important people or public personalities. After the campaign, donors were perceived more to be ordinary family people, educated, generous and religious. On the other hand, before the campaign, non‐donors were seen as conservative, uncouth and uncaring, whereas after the campaign non‐donors were generally perceived to be older, uninformed and uneducated people. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Community as practice: social representations of community and their implications for health promotion

Health promotion researchers and practitioners have increasingly turned to community-based approaches. Although there has been much work around the diverse understandings of the term in areas such as community psychology and sociology, I am concerned with how such understandings relate directly to community health research and practice. From a discursive perspective ‘community’ is seen as a socially constructed representation that is used variously and pragmatically. However, from a wider view, community can be seen as a matter of embodied practice. This paper draws on social representations theory to examine the shifting constructions of ‘community’, the functional use of those understandings in social life, and the practices that suggest that it is important to attend to their use in particular contexts. Accordingly, the paper argues that meanings of community in the health promotion or public health context must be seen as representations used for specific purposes in particular situations. Furthermore, the broader notion of embodied practice in social life has implications for community participation in health promotion. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social representations of history,cultural values,and willingness to fight in a war: A collective‐level analysis in 40 nations

This study explores at the national level beliefs about world history and their relationship with cultural values and attitudes towards a national war. A country‐level analysis of university samples from 40 nations involving 7279 students showed that beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and lawful processes were positively associated with lower human development, and materialistic and power distance values, as well as with willingness to fight in a future national war. Further, beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and as lawful process were positively related with a stronger disposition to fight, even after controlling for cultural values and human development. Results are discussed in the framework of conceptualizing social representations of history as part of national political cultures.     

Understanding spirit possession in the Philippines: a social representations approach

ABSTRACT

Where there are diverse professionals and curers dealing with possession, differences in representations exist. This study uses social representations theory as a frame to examine both the representational overlaps and differences in possession among various Filipino health professionals and the lay distinctly socialised in Western biomedical and psychological lenses and in local religious and traditional folk beliefs. Themes were extracted from 12 individual interviews. Results showed five representational themes, namely: possession as sinakluban, as a vulnerability, as a disease, as kulam, and as being chosen. Findings were discussed in relation to the interface among religion, indigenous beliefs, psychopathological frame, and the Western biomedical model.     

Rhetorical representations of masculinities in South Africa: moving towards a material‐discursive understanding of men

A material‐discursive perspective holds advantage in understanding male realities. It seeks to integrate dominant approaches that appear anaemic in their failure to capture the interplay between the material and discursive realms of human existence. Three dominant metaphorical themes in the rhetorical representation of South African masculinities are described in an attempt to illustrate the complexity of embodied masculine experience. In this sense the discussion seeks to reveal the dynamic nature of masculine debate and lived experience across differing contexts. It serves to underline the importance of adopting a material‐discursive perspective in understanding men, which recognizes that they do not exist as a homogeneous social group, and as such experience their masculinities in a variable and changing fashion. The theoretical amalgamation of social representations and rhetoric is argued to provide a useful analytical tool in an endeavour of this nature. It is suggested that the rhetorical approach problematizes an overly consensual view of social reality that social representations theory typically promotes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An organizational scandal in psychology: social representations of Hoffman Report in Europe

This paper features the European perspective on the Hoffman Report, primarily a North American issue which has had an impact on European professionals, given the position of APA as a source of ethical guidelines and publication standards. Applying the theory of social representations of Serge Moscovici, the processes of anchoring and objectification serve as interpretative tools in the case study of the perception of the Hoffman Report in Europe. The semiotic triangle guides the exploration of communicative and instrumental functions of social representations. Comprehensive methodology includes interviews with European psychologists, textual analysis of online press articles from six different countries (with classification of images) and examination of official statements issued by various European psychological associations. The research findings consist of identifying diverse rhetorical devices (including silence) as ways of dealing with organizational trauma suffered by a sister/rival organization overseas, conditioned by ideological and professional positioning.     

Social epistemology as a rhetoric of inquiry

Fuller's program of social epistemology engages a rhetoric of inquiry that can be usefully compared and contrasted with other discursive theories of knowledge, such as that of Richard Rorty. Resisting the model of conversation, Fuller strikes an activist posture and lays the groundwork for normative knowledge policy, in which persuasion and credibility play key roles. The image of investigation is one that overtly rejects the storehouse conception of knowledge and invokes the metaphors of distributive economics. Productive questions arise as to how notions of creation and distribution might guide this rhetoric.     

On the Knowledge of Politics and the Politics of Knowledge: How a Social Representations Approach Helps Us Rethink the Subject of Political Psychology

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.     

Peasants' Social Representation of Politicians in a Clientelist Rural Context

In Latin America, political clientelism is one of the main obstacles to the process of sustaining truly democratic practices. Thus, this article proposes to study peasants from the Province of Formosa, Argentina's social representation of politicians, in hopes of shedding light on the relationship between said representations and clientelist practices, with the objective of making a contribution to the development of alternative means towards democratization in the area. The results of this case study show that, at the center of the peasants' social representation of politicians, there lies a tendency to place their expectations for receiving assistance within a context of a personalized and hierarchical relationship framework. Nevertheless, the majority of these farmers consider the assistance received to be insufficient and inadequate, stating that politicians actually look to satisfy their own interests and not those of the general public. In conclusion, the peasants' social representation of politicians favors clientelist practices, even though these small farmers do not identify, via their culture or their expectations, with these practices. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of Political Positioning on Explanations of Delinquency: An Experimental Study of Social Differentiation and Representation

Why and under what conditions do subjects from diverse political orientations tend to offer different explanations of a social problem? Past studies have found evidence of a connection between political orientations and explanations of delinquency, for example. However, observing such differences among subjects with diverse political orientations is not enough to prove the existence of an organic link between social differentiation and the representations of delinquency. The aim of this paper is to provide an experimental proof of such a link. The results show that: (a) right‐wing and left‐wing subjects tend to offer different types of explanations of delinquency, but they refer to several common organizing principles; (b) divergence increases when social comparison between groups is activated; (c) differences are bigger if this comparison induces a discrimination; (d) the bigger the differences the more likely are the groups to resort to their ideological principles. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical, methodological, deontological, and practical implications.     

Visualized Collective Memories: Social Representations of History in Images Found in Finnish History Textbooks

This study focuses on visual collective memory, a topic that has long been neglected in the social sciences and particularly in social psychological research on social representations of history. It explores the contents and meanings of images in the construction of Finnish national history. Through examination of official history writing, a better understanding is sought of how collective memory is constructed as part of history politics. The data for the present study consist of images (N = 541) included in recent textbooks on Finnish history. Barthes' three‐meaning approach is used in combination with qualitative content analysis to examine a large corpus of images. The visualized collective memory is approached from five perspectives: (i) the years of memory; (ii) the places of memory; (iii) the themes of memory; (iv) the main actors and (v) the silence of memory. The investigation shows that, in official discourse, politics, culture and war are the main contents of Finnish visual collective memory. The key actors in the narrative are politicians, especially the eighth president of Finland, Urho Kekkonen. The most important moments in time are situated in the war years 1918 and 1939, while the geographical focus is the central square in the capital, Helsinki. The result is a national history that is positive, homogeneous and exclusive. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Priming as a way of understanding children’s mental representations of the social world

Priming is a well established tool for experimental examination of how mental representations drive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that has been widely used in adult research. Priming is also a well established technique in cognitive development research. Social development research, however, has rarely used priming as a research method despite evidence that this technique is promising for helping researchers untangle causal connections between children’s mental representations and children’s social development outcomes. This paper discusses how priming methods may yield important insights into the role that children’s mental representations of the social world play in children’s social functioning. We begin by discussing the theoretical conceptualization underlying priming and priming methods. We next review evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of priming techniques in child development research. We conclude by suggesting ways in which priming can inform future research in social development using research examining attachment, social-information-processing, gender development, and mood and mental health as examples.