Locality and social representation: Space, discourse and alternative definitions of the rural

Qualitative study, whose subject is the practice of care taking in nursing of the hospitalized child in a pediatric hospital. The objectives are: to characterize the social representations of the nursing staff about care taking in nursing of hospitalized children in a pediatric hospital and to describe the practice of care taking in nursing of hospitalized children in a pediatric hospital, based on social memory. The adopted theoretical approach was the Theory of Social Representations, Social Memory and conceptions from care taking in nursing. For data collection, interviews were performed with nine nurses and nine nursing auxiliaries. The collective memory was investigated, in order to portray, through construction/reconstruction, the speeches and collective practices concerning care taking in nursing of the hospitalized child. The results indicate five great thematic areas: The Child and Pediatric Nursing Image; The Past Moment Nursing Practice; The Determination of the Changes in the Nursing Practice; The Present Moment Nursing Practice; The Nursing Relationship with Other Groups. The social representation concerning the child denotes in the past, as well as in the present, his/her suffering condition, mistreatment, neglect and sadness, but with modification of the social class of the clientele. The image of Past and Present Moment nursing practices is related to three elements: the humanization, the responsibility and the "pattern". Past and Present Moment nursing practices indicate changes. The presence of the mother/companion and the nurse approximation towards the hospitalized child are factors of modification of the nursing practice representation. As decisive for the changes in the nursing practice, the following factors arise: the mother's presence as the child's companion; the increase in the staff quantitative, propitiating a modification in the profile of the nurse performance, and professional improvement of the staff; the appearance of new equipments and techniques. As an indicative of these changes, an improvement in the quality of the nursing practice is observed. The interpersonal relationship is marked by representations that indicate dualities. The relationship in nursing is represented as a team work, with good coexistence, as well as an uncoordinated work. The relationship of the nursing with the child shows either a closer contact or a distant involvement. The relationship of the nursing with the mother/companion is represented by conflicts and aggressiveness from both parts and a proximity relationship as well. Finally, the process of taking care can be expressed differently, depending on the clientele it is intended to. The particularities of each group, connected to biological, psychological, social and other characteristics, define and determine patterns of care taking. The social representation and the social memory allowed the reconstruction of the practice of care taking in nursing of the hospitalized child, once the reconstructed activity inside a group finds support in the processes of construction of the social memory and in the processes through which the own social representations are forged. In the representation, as well as in the memory, the relevance of the elements of the past is determined by: interests, needs, cognitive schemes, beliefs, effective values in a group.

Introduction A person (re)constructs his or her environmental mentality in a particular sociocultural context. This context is manifested in public discourses, cultural models and meaning complexes that all provide explicit and implicit suggestions (Valsiner 1998) for an individual. Environmental beliefs are subjective theories about the human-nature relationship that form a conceptual basis for more specific attitudes, beliefs and behaviors towards the environment. On the one hand, environmental beliefs are embedded in various cultural messages (which are heterogeneous and rapidly changing in our times). On the other hand, these beliefs are a component of or group level environmental mentality. Our analysis will proceed in the framework of social representations theory, which encompasses both of these aspects. The aim of the article is to analyze the organizing principles and empirical types of environmental beliefs in an Estonian subpopulation. Theory of social representations The theory of social representations (Moscovici 2000, Flick 1998) deals with belief systems that are tied to certain social identities. Social representations are forms of knowledge (operationalized as attitudes, beliefs and practices) that are produced and sustained by certain groups or populations. Social representations (SR) are differentiated from similar concepts like individual or shared diffuse ideas. The following aspects have been highlighted: 1) SR are related to a specific group identity (Wagner, 1995) and therefore define not only the object but are also used for social self-definition of a subject; 2) SR are a structured set of ideas, systemic organization of thought content (not a loose aggregate of ideas); 3) SR are dynamic, variable and negotiable, they are the product of interaction and communication (vs. static and unquestionable character of collective representations and cultural beliefs); 4) differently from attitudes, SR are exteriorized and institutionalized, and can be studied also in the media, cultural artifacts, etc. In relation to an individual, social representations function as social resources and limitations, mediating social regulation and enabling self-positioning in the social space. In relation to a group, social representations function as means of communication and tools for constructing social objects. A social representation has often a simple and vivid form (e.g. metaphorical) in order to be easily communicable and easy to think with. We can differentiate between two general approaches in analyzing a SR: A widespread approach deals with SR as explicit content of thought. This approach focuses on within-group similarities in the content or structure of beliefs, emphasizing concrete and consensual aspects of SR. In this framework SR are surface phenomena, easily accessible tools for meaning-making and prediction in social interactions. Within such systems of knowledge it is possible to differentiate central elements (primary ideas, core beliefs, axioms, etc.), which generate and organize all the other elements of social representations. These primary beliefs are organized as a synthesis of oppositions (Moscovici & Vignaux 1994:68) which are anchored in pairs of opposing and interdependent notions. An alternative approach deals with SR as implicit organizing principles (structuring structure). These abstract underlying principles (categories, dimensions, reference points) reflect the regulative influence of the social metasystem on cognitive functioning and they organize symbolic relations between social agents (Doise 1994). According to these principles individuals or groups identify and differentiate themselves, choosing their relative positions within the representational field. Doise et al (1993:4) note that: More than consensual beliefs SR are (--) organizing principles, varied in nature, which do not necessarily consist of beliefs, as they may result in different or even opposed positions taken by individuals in relation to common reference points. …

This article aims to bring a reflection on the theory of Social Representations from the perspective of Social Psychology. From the bibliographic review, an analogy is made between the theories of social representations, to a concrete society, in this case, the Mozambican society. Social representations have been a topic widely discussed by several and categorized authors, many of them addressing the relationship between cognition-knowledge, individual and society. For this purpose, three Mozambican ethnicities were analyzed, namely, Macuas-Lomués, Ndaus and Tsongas, in which, based on the bibliographic verification of their cultures, beliefs and values, a real analogy can be drawn between the theories on social and cultural representations. the behaviors of these ethnic groups, which make clear the different social representations in the different regions that form the country called Mozambique.The basis of the research was the bibliographic review, both to address the theoretical supports, as well as to address the Mozambican reality.

We share the view that people are guided in their everyday decisions by common sense, the trustworthiness of which has been confirmed by its usefulness in the past; its nature is thoroughly explained by the theory of social representations. A social representation is a system of values, ideas and practices with a twofold function: first, to enable individuals to orient themselves in the everyday world and to master it; and second, to provide codes for social exchange or naming and classifying unambiguously the various aspects of their world and their individual group history. This article focuses on the values and identity of young people in Narva. We compare the results of a survey of 284 Narva high school students and University of Tartu Narva College students with the values of their peers who participated in the Baltic Youth Values Survey, the European Social Survey, the European Values Survey, Estonian School-leavers Survey and the Eurobarometer Values and Identity Survey. We rely on qualitative interviews to interpret the value judgements elucidated in the Narva survey. To detect contextual interpretations of informants’ beliefs from 15 individual in-depth interviews and two focus group interviews we employed thematic content analysis. Among youngsters of Narva, a regional identity has developed and, like their Russian-speaking peers in previous surveys, most people consider themselves as Estonian Russians. Like the rest of Estonians, most youngsters studied see themselves as Northern Europeans, but they tend more than the aforementioned to identify as Eastern Europeans. Their identity is moulded by society, social media and close relationships with family and friends. The youngsters studied identify themselves primarily through gender, but family, age and life period, sexual orientation and acquired education level are also important referents. Both in the survey and in the interviews, identity insecurity resulting from living in two cultural spaces emerged, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Like their peers in Estonia, youngsters studied in Narva retrieve information about events in society mostly from social media. They prefer to follow Russian-language media, as their Estonian language skills are insufficient, and some news channels are paid. Values as manifestations of common sense are prescriptive, and they are not questioned, so long as they are considered useful guides. The values of youngsters in Narva reflect a weak sense of physical and material security and desires to strengthen them. Achievement is highly valued, and self-expression values are seen to be less important than for Estonian-speaking young people. Like the rest of Russophone Estonians, youngsters in Narva value security, achievement and power-oriented basic values more highly than their Estonian-speaking peers. The most desired goals for the youngsters studied in Narva include the pursuits of social recognition, independence and education. Among them are aspirations towards a successful career, independence from parents and good looks. The next important goals for them are material security, taking responsibility and graduating from university. Marriage and having children are valued much lower. Participation in civic activities is seen as the least important. The level of generalized trust in other people – an important precondition for participation in civil society activities – is significantly lower among youngsters in Narva than among their Estonian peers. Job security and a good salary are seen as the most important work values. However, opportunities to work in an enjoyable field, to use their abilities, to see the results of their work and to continuously improve themselves are also considered noteworthy desires. Opportunities for career advancement, job prestige, the ease of work and flexible working hours are seen as less desired goals. The prospect of unemployment is a major concern for the youngsters studied in Narva, more so than for other young people in Estonia. Many of them also fear that social injustice will worsen. On the other hand, they are less concerned than other Estonian youngsters about environmental pollution. Their fear of falling victim to physical violence is also greater than that of other young people in Estonia. The youngsters studied in Narva consider encouragement of the sense of responsibility in children as the most important educational value. The acquisition of determination, perseverance and independence is also highly valued. Cultivation of traditional values such as obedience and religiosity in children is considered the least important. Of the self-expression values, instilling tolerance towards others is the most highly valued. Narva youngsters tend to share the dominant view among young people in Estonia that the lives of today’s children will be more difficult than those of their own generation.

Currently, smoking is no longer considered a habit and was seen as a disease, an epidemic that can be completely preventable. Knowing the profile of users, such as the prevalence and tobacco consumption levels and the social representation, economic and smoking culture is fundamental to plan more effective prevention actions in certain populations, such as the sex professionals (SP). Objective: To analyze the social representation of smoking for female sex workers and their prevalence. Method: This is a descriptive study of qualitative and quantitative developed in two stages (step I - quantitative study; step II - study qualitative). The study included the SP women who work in Botucatu, Brazil. There were applied forms related to step I of study in 83 omen an PS on the step II, were semi structures only conduct interviews with women smokers, corresponding to 59 women. The dates were systematized by the Collective Subject Discourse and theoretical framework utilize was the Theory of Social Representations. Results: The mean age was 26.8% years, 94% live alone, among the participants 71.1% are smokers and 6% ex-smokers, 89.2% use of alcohol and 51.8% use some kind of drug. Of interviews, four categories emerged; 1) Representation Chemistry and Psychological tobacco; 2) Social smoking representation; 3) Contradictions between smoking and the profession; 4) Contradictions between smoking and the profession; 4) Contradiction of tobacco use. Conclusions: The prevalence of tobacco was increase in SP and the social representations of tobacco proved favored by aspects inherent to the lifestyle of sex workers.

People and societies are guided by what they imagine to lie beyond the present, by what can and should be the case in the future. Yet people do not always agree about the form, content or path to realisation of a given imagined future. As a result, conflicts can arise over something that does not exist yet. In this paper, I propose to integrate theories of social and alternative representations with a sociocultural psychological interpretation of imagination, in order to explore the addressivity of futures and to call for more studies that explicitly take into account the future’s role in the present. I draw on a dialogical case study that was carried out on the Faroe Islands, more precisely on the island of Suðuroy. Whereas the Faroe Islands are experiencing a rapid acceleration in growth, Suðuroy has failed to keep pace and has witnessed decades of emigration and a worsening of its population’s relative socio-economic situation. Islanders liken the current situation to standing at a crossroads, while being unable to agree on which path must be taken in order to reinvigorate a shrinking future. By analysing how one of the two major social representations constructs the other – its alternative representation – I suggest that the absence of transformative dialogue results from incompatible futures. Furthermore, in line with a sociocultural psychological perspective, I also attempt to move beyond the homogenising force inherent in social representation theory by introducing Ingolf and Karin, whose stories illustrate how social and alternative representations are not uniformly shared and enacted, but take different forms in light of unique life experiences.

Représentations sociales de la maladie : comparaison entre savoirs « experts » et savoirs « profanes »

The theory of social representations developed by S. Moskovichi is not in demand in Russian studies of media communication, while abroad, on the contrary, it is productively used by media researchers. Taking into account one of the main provisions of the theory about the formation of social representations in the communication process, as well as the growing role of media in modern society, it seems relevant to describe the opportunities of applying the theory in media communication studies. Media communication is realized by media as institutions, infrastructure and content, where each aspect contributes to the construction of social reality, part of which are social representations. Social representations of media "users" - mediated social representations - are units of the cognitive space of an individual and a group that are materialized in the media space in the form of a media text. Studies of media texts are developed in the field of linguistics and semiotics. The theory of social representations refers to the means of language and signs of other semiotic modes, as well as the context from the positions of sociocultural and cognitive-discursive approaches. The processes of assigning meanings, both denotative and connotative, as a result of semiosis are also explained from the standpoint of social representation theory. As a result, it can be concluded that social representation theory is a productive theoretical construct as well as a methodological approach in media communication research

Introduction: Why We Are Often Blinded to "Obvious" Facts

While acknowledging that Serge Moscovici's theory of social representations has impinged positively upon contemporary social psychology, a critical analysis is developed using the basic assumptions of this theory to make salient its shortcomings. The ontological status of `social representations' is discussed and the conclusion is that there is nothing in our societies which can be described as being a social representation. From a social constructionist viewpoint, inspired by Kenneth Gergen, it is argued that we neither construct representations nor do we represent constructions. People do not live in a world of representations but in a world of discursive productions. After examining the implications of the `constructive loop' conveyed by the theory of social representations, a critical look is directed towards the `ideology of representation' as one of the most pervading ideologies of our time. Finally, it is alleged that the split between `person as a thinker' and `person as a doer' is deeply embedded in contemporary social psychology.

Discussions on the body frequently foreground in empirical studies of social representations. However, there is scarce theoretical literature within social representations theory focusing on embodied social representation. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of embodied, sensory experiences as part of social representation. More precisely, it attempts to elaborate how individual, social, bodily, and material layers work together in embodied social representation. This paper approaches the topic from four viewpoints: (1) social representation as action, (2) phenomenology, (3) embodied and socially situated cognition, and (4) sensory epistemologies and sensescapes. These approaches are used to provide insight into the conscious and unconscious processes of social representation and the multimodality of social representation. The paper contributes to the understanding of the role of sensory experiences and embodiment in the theory of social representations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of billions of people worldwide. Individuals and groups were compelled to construct theories of common sense about the disease to communicate and guide practices. The theory of social representations provides powerful concepts to analyse the psychosocial construction of COVID-19. This study aimed to understand the social representations of COVID-19 constructed by middle-class Brazilian adults and their ideological implications, providing a social-psychological analysis of these phenomena while the pandemic is still ongoing. We adopted a qualitative approach based on semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted online in April-May 2020. Participants were 13 middle-class Brazilians living in urban areas. We analysed the interviews with thematic analysis and a phenomenological approach. The social representations were organised around three themes: 1) a virus originated in human actions and with anthropocentric meanings (e.g., a punishment for the human-led destruction of the environment); 2) a dramatic disease that attacks the lungs and kills people perceived to have “low immunity”; and 3) a disturbing pandemic that was also conceived as a correction event with positive consequences. The social representations included beliefs about the individualistic determination of immunity, the attribution of divine causes to the pandemic, and the need for the moral reformation of humankind. The discussion highlights the ideological implications of these theories of common sense. Socially underprivileged groups are at greater COVID-19-related risk, which the investigated social representations may contribute to conceal and naturalise.

The history of societies is marked by ruptures such as wars, pandemics, new technologies and natural disasters. In response to such ruptures, societies generate social knowledge that enables the population to master the given rupture. The concept of social representations theorizes this production of social knowledge (Moscovici 1984). Social representations make the unfamiliar or uninvited rupture, familiar. For instance, social representations enable people to interact with intangible illnesses such as AIDS (Joffe 1995), they enable people to imagine a distant or unintelligible other (Jodelet 1989), they enable people to imagine what happens in the psychoanalyst’s office (Moscovici 1973), and they provide people with concrete images to guide thought and action in regard to genetically modified foods (Wagner et al. 2002). Emerging out of “the crisis in social psychology” and the critique of the individualization of social psychology (Moscovici 1973), the theory of social representations has provided a means for theorizing collective phenomena in their own right (Farr 1998). Hence, Moscovici’s well-known statement that social representations “lead a life of their own, circulate, merge, attract and repel each other and give birth to new representations, while old ones die out” (Moscovici 1984, p. 13). In this statement, the unit of social psychological analysis is the social representation, which appears as an autonomous, almost intentional, unit. Social psychological phenomena appear, in this statement, to happen between social representations rather than between people.

To understand social issues and practices such as those related to climate change and technological change that are clearly future‐oriented – collectively experienced events that are “not yet” – and co‐constructed by different actors, we need nuanced conceptualizations of how people think about, negotiate and co‐create futures that allow us to understand not only what people (can) think and do about future‐related issues but also how that happens, what for and with which implications. However, so far, one of the key theoretical approaches that has conceptualised how people make meaning in situations of change and uncertainty – the socio‐psychological social representations theory (SRT) – has not often engaged with the future or with different forms of temporality. By contrast, the French pragmatic sociology of engagements and critique (PS) has engaged with these notions, conceptualising them in relation to materiality and a plurality of moral orientations – two dimensions often seen as key to how collective futures are made and imagined. To offer a more nuanced and systematic conceptualization of how people represent the future and with what consequences, this paper will present, compare and synthesise SRT and PS, as a first step towards an interdisciplinary research agenda on social change and representations of the future.

Esta pesquisa social discursiva crítica tem como propósito a investigação do modo como a presidenta da República do Brasil, Dilma Rousseff, construiu sua representação social de resistência no ano de 2015. O corpus é composto de discursos oficiais da chefe de governo. A análise é alicerçada nos pressupostos principais da Análise de Discurso Crítica (ADC), sobretudo na concepção proposta por Norman Fairclough (2001; 2003) e Pedro (1998); na Teoria da Representação Social (TRS), nas bases de Guareschi e Jovchelovitch (2013), de Minayo (2013); em conexão com a Representação de Atores Sociais, segundo van Leeuwen (1998). A metodologia é qualitativa e as categorias analíticas são adotadas de van Leeuwen (1998). Os resultados revelaram que a presidenta da República, no ano de 2015, representou-se com dupla face: de um lado, como membro ativo e principal do corpo social formado por todos os brasileiros; por outro lado, mostrou-se como agente, atuando como protagonista da cena sociopolítica do Brasil.