Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
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in search for
heterogeneity in social
developmental
psychology
Charis Psaltis
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Abstract
In this commentary on Jahoda (2012) and Moghaddam (2012), I discuss the problem of
the reification of culture from a social representations perspective and argue that social
representations as a notion overcomes many of the shortcomings of the notion of
culture, the main being reification. Whilst building this argument I show, by making
reference to recent developments in the field of social representations and social devel-
opmental psychology, how weaknesses in social representations theory identified by
Jahoda (1988) were addressed and how insights from this approach can be used for
diversity management policies in education.
Keywords
Culture, Habermas, Piaget, reification, social representations
The issue of the relation between culture and social representations was raised
by Jahoda (1988) himself in a critical paper written almost a quarter of a century
ago, on social representations followed by an extended response by Moscovici
(1988). In that paper, Jahoda criticized social representations as somehow resusci-
tating the group mind and for a lack of clarity on the relations between social
representations and social groups. He also claimed that the theory was not tested,
Corresponding author:
Charis Psaltis, Univeristy of Cyprus, Kallipoleos 65, Nicosia, 2064, Cyprus
Email: cpsaltis@ucy.ac.cy
376 Culture & Psychology 18(3)
and that it could not actually be tested since it was so loosely formulated that no
part of it could be readily falsied (Jahoda, 1988, p. 204). Social representations
theory was also criticized by Jahoda for lack of sensitivity to the issues of power
and lack of clarity about the relation between social representations and allied
concepts like ideology and culture. In his nal judgment on the usefulness of the
concept of social representations, Jahoda then took a similar stance to the one he
took for the the notion of culture here (Jahoda, 2012) since he had claried that he
did not wish that social representation be abandoned and that it was hoped that his
critical as well as constructive comments would serve to enhance the approach
Moscovici has pioneered (Jahoda, 1988, p. 207).
Since 1988 when this commentary was published, almost 1800 journal articles
with the keyword social representations in the title were published from all
around the globe with the number of publications following an increasing trend.1
Considering that the theory was rst proposed in the early 1960s, it would seem
that the notion of social representations, just like culture, is capturing something
essential for our social theorizing. It would also seem that the criticisms levelled at
the theory were probably indeed constructive and researchers have indeed claried
aspects of the theory.
For example, the question of the relations between culture and social represen-
tations has been a focus for a number of important contributions (cf. Jodelet, 2002;
Jovchelovitch, 2007; Valsiner, 2003; Valsiner and Van der Veer, 2000) and was
recently taken up by the late Gerard Duveen (2007). The absence of a denition
of culture from the social representations perspective in Jahodas (2012) article was
somewhat unexpected given Jahodas previous engagement with social representa-
tions and his specic comment that . . . it is hard to see how culture can be
separate from social representations, on the contrary the latter would constitute
one of the central aspects of culture(Jahoda, 1988, p. 200).
For Duveen (2007), the crucial dierence between culture and social represen-
tations remains one of scale and scope. He argues that culture and social rep-
resentations appear to refer to dierent levels of analysis, nevertheless whatever it
is that we take to be connoted by the term culture only becomes accessible through
the observation and analysis of specic representations. Duveen (2007) also pro-
vides a denition of culture:
Duveen (2007), as Jahoda (2012), identies problematic uses of the term culture
implying that an analysis of social representations is essential for the understanding
of culture in a way that avoids the reication of culture. The denition of social
representations given by Moscovici is characteristic of the ways that social repre-
sentations can be described as a process and outcome, satisfying certain functions
of the groups and relating to issues of identity and orientation in time that are
usually absent from denitions of culture:
. . . a system of values, ideas and practices with a twofold function; rst to establish an
order which will enable individuals to orient themselves in their material and social
world and to master it; and secondly to enable communication to take place among
the members of a community by providing them with a code for social exchange and a
code for naming and classifying unambiguously the various aspects of their world and
their individual and group history. (Moscovici, 1973, p. xiii)
As Piaget convincingly argued, a capacity for logical thinking emerges from the
lived experience of everyday life (Duveen, 2007). But the everyday experience is not
a homogeneous entity itself. In terms of the social relations that subjects entertain
Piaget (1932) makes a basic distinction between relations of co-operation and rela-
tions of constraint. Thus, despite his distance from Marxs writings, Piaget was not
insensitive to social inequalities and asymmetrical social relations. A relation of
constraint supports a morality of heteronomy and respect for authority and a
relation of co-operation supports a morality of autonomy and is based on mutual
respect and a norm of reciprocity. He argued that the relation of constraint hinders
moral and cognitive development, whilst relation of co-operation on the contrary
promotes both moral and cognitive development as it tends to equilibrium. Despite
the fact that, in each stage of development dierent proportions of both can be
found, it was claimed by Piaget that from around the age of 37 years children are
in the egocentric stage, where the basic characteristic in terms of morality is the
almost divine obedience to the rules, as constraint coming from adults that he
called moral realism which is a form of reied thinking, since the children at this
stage have the illusion of unchanging and xed norms.
The prototype of relations of co-operation for Piaget, was relations between peers
and for relations of constraint those of adult and child and in this respect it could
be argued that it is a universal distinction. However, this view does not imply that
any relation between adult and child will be constraining, and every relation
between peers will be co-operative. For Piaget, when the adult is able to respect
the child as a person with a right to exercise his or her will, one can speak about a
certain psychological equality in the relationship.
The Piagetian distinction of relations of co-operation and relations of constraint
can be clearly seen in Jurgen Habermas discussion of the discourse ethics and the
idea of the colonisation of the lifeworld. Lifeworld agents coordinate their actions
through validity claims. The constraints on their actions that are generated by this
process are self-imposed and internal in as much as they arise from the reciprocal
recognition of validity claims. By contrast, systems of money and power impose
external constraints on actions that are in no way up to the agents. The system thus
takes on the appearance of what Habermas calls a block of quasi- natural reality as
a reied and independent reality with an autonomous internal logic that escapes
human control, and for which human beings cannot and need not take responsi-
bility (Habermas, 1981, 1983).
The discussion of reication in Piagetian and Habermasian theorizing is of
crucial importance for theorizing the impact of power asymmetries on the forma-
tion and change of social representations. Here we nd a crucial link between a
particular asymmetrical form of social relating, manifested in communication with
other people that is constraining the negotiation of de-centred and more advanced
knowledge due to an asymmetry of status or power leading only to the transmis-
sion of beliefs. Such beliefs take up the appearance of reied reality as they are the
result of supercial forms of compliance, imitation or conformity to the truth of
the authority. From this perspective, when we talk about reication of a category
380 Culture & Psychology 18(3)
distinction between collective and social representations, then there is the distinc-
tion between the consensual and the reied universes, but these were not Duveens
favourite because they do not address questions about how dierent types of
social representation might dier in their structure and functioning (Duveen,
2007, p. 547; Duveen, 2002). A step forward in this direction for Duveen is
Moscovicis (2000) distinction between a) social representations whose kernel
consists of beliefs which are generally more homogenous, aective, impermeable
to experience or contradiction, and leave little scope for individual variations and
b) social representations founded on knowledge which are more uid, pragmatic,
amenable to the proof of success or failure, and leave a certain latitude to language,
experience, and even to the critical faculties of individuals (Moscovici, 2000,
p. 136). Yet this distinction, too, is also limited, Duveen argues
primarily because it does not yet include any clear discussion of the functional aspects
of these representations, of the modalities through which they circulate or are com-
municated, or the ways in which they serve to structure dierent types of social
groups, or may be structured by dierent types of social relations. (Duveen,
2007, p. 547)
experimental ethnography (Duveen & Psaltis, 2007; Psaltis, Duveen & Perret-
Clermont, 2009) an asymmetry of gender status was crossed with an asymmetry
of knowledge on cognitive tasks and the eects of such criss-crossing of asymme-
tries on conversation types and on the change of the representation of the conser-
vation of liquids was explored. In this line of work, another theoretical tool can be
found for introducing in culture and social representations theorizing power and
status asymmetries relating with varying categorizations and their role in the gen-
esis of social representations. The by now well-established Fm eect (Duveen &
Psaltis, 2007; Psaltis, 2005-a, 2005-b, 2011-a; Psaltis & Duveen, 2006, 2007; Psaltis,
Duveen & Perret-Clermont, 2009; Zapiti & Psaltis, in press) for 67-year-olds,
shows that the conicting nature of gender status and knowledge asymmetries in
dyadic interaction creates a more balanced communication. Such communication
is linked with more exible forms of knowledge, interiorization of operations and
in depth understanding of the object under discussion often through the establish-
ment of a communication coined as Explicit Recognition. This kind of research
allows for a clearer understanding of the communicative forms that facilitate the
transition from representations of belief to representations of knowledge and an
understanding of how power and status asymmetries of varying nature by their
alignment or conict can aect the formation of communication types and subse-
quent change of social representations.
This work also provides insights about dealing with diversity in the school con-
text at dierent ages (Mogghadam, 2012) since we see that the categorization of
gender for children, even at the age of 67 years, is important in dierentiating the
dynamics of interaction and consequential for the change of their representations
of objects although the argument could be extended to ethnic (see Leman & Lam,
2008) and other forms of identication and other categories that imply power
asymmetries. One potential avenue of exploration of the multiplicity of social cat-
egorizations and power asymmetries is to criss-cross varying sources of asymmetry
in a way that they balance the opportunities for exchange of views (Duveen &
Psaltis, 2008; Psaltis, 2011-b). Such a view goes beyond the classic cognitive-struc-
tural model of cross-categorization (Doise, 1978) and more recent approaches on
multiple categorization (Crisp & Hewstone, 2006) in that it takes into account the
social interactive and communicative eects of the criss-crossing of categories as
sources of asymmetry recognizing the detrimental eects of compounted asymme-
tries on the autonomy, participation and agency of a single interlocutor and chal-
lenging the eects of such categorization of asymmetries when varying asymmetries
conict in a single interlocutor. From this perspective, Moghaddams (2012) prop-
osition of not dealing with dierences before the age of 14 seems rather unrealistic
in that such categorizations based on visible dierences between people would be
unlikely to change irrespective of the policy used. Not only that, but one might
argue that if they are left unrecognized by the teachers and not tackled in a critical
spirit until the age of 14 then it would be too late to undo any harm done from the
workings of exclusion dynamics in the learning process due to the multiplicity of
sources of asymmetry (expertise, gender, race, social class) in society that penetrate
Psaltis 385
the educational praxis. Such social marking of the school life from peer culture
itself and the diversied dynamics of fragmented societies expressed through the
media or family certainly nd their ways in peer life and constrain social relations
between same age children, often in unreective ways (Zittoun, Duveen, Gillespie,
Ivinson, & Psaltis, 2003).
Author Note
This paper received no specic grant from any funding agency in the public, com-
mercial, or not-for-prot sectors. I would like to thank Alex Gillespie and Irini
Kadianaki for making comments on an earlier draft of this paper
Note
1. A search in Google Scholar with the specific phrase social representations in the title of
the article for the periods 19881993 returned 168 results, 19941999 returned 286 results,
20002005 returned 527 results, 20062011 returned 800 results. A more detailed analysis
of publication trends on social representations year by year on PsychLIT can be found in
Eicher, Emery, Maridor, Gilles, & Bangerter (2011). In this analysis a stabilization of
publication on Social Representations appears after 2006, but it also reveals that one of
the strengths of the theory is its global outreach.
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Author Biography
Charis Psaltis is an Assistant Professor of Social and Developmental Psychology at
the Department of Psychology of the University of Cyprus. He holds a degree in
Educational Sciences and a degree in Psychology. He received his MPhil and PhD
in Social and Developmental Psychology from the Department of Social and
Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the
University of Cambridge. He did post-doctoral research at the Oxford Centre
for the Study of Intergroup Conflict, at the Department of Experimental
Psychology of Oxford University, studying contact between Greek Cypriots and
Turkish Cypriots. His main research interests are intergroup contact and inter-
group relations, social interaction and learning and development, social represen-
tations of gender, the development of national identities, history teaching and
collective memory. At the Univeristy of Cyprus he is co-director of the Genetic
Social Psychology Lab.