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Social Representations

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Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology

Introduction

In the last 50 years, social representation (SR) has become an established field within social, cultural, and political psychology and has attracted extensive numbers of students and scholars from around the world (with particular clusters in Europe, South America, and Australasia). Developing Durkheim’s collective and individual representations, the concept of social representations was presented by Serge Moscovici in 1961 in his study of the different understandings of psychoanalysis in different social groups in France. Research has gone on to examine the ways in which knowledge and social practices develop from any socially significant issues (see the list of applications below) in different public spheres (Jovchelovitch, 2007). As a whole, this research demonstrates that social representations are systems of communication and social influence that constitute the social realities of different groups in society. They serve as the principal means for establishing and...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Malta, Msida, MSD, Malta

    Gordon Sammut

  2. Institute of Social Psychology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, UK

    Caroline Howarth

Authors
  1. Gordon Sammut
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  2. Caroline Howarth
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Correspondence to Gordon Sammut .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Thomas Teo

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Sammut, G., Howarth, C. (2014). Social Representations. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_292

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_292

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5582-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5583-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Sciences

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