Studying the thinking society: social representations, rhetoric, and attitudes

Abstract

Abstract The notion of ‘social representation’ has been one of the most controversial concepts to have been formulated in social psychology in recent years. Large claims have been made for Serge Moscovici’s vision of a social psychology based around the study of social representations. According to one sup porter, this vision offers the chance of creating ‘a unified approach for a whole series of problems situated at the crossing point between psychology and the other social sciences’ (Jodelet 1984, p. 378). Inevitably, such an ambitious perspective has provoked strong criticism. There are those who claim that there is little novel about the concept of social representations (Eiser 1986; McGuire 1986) or that the novelty is spoilt by hopeless obscurity (McKinlay and Potter 1987; Potter and Litton 1985), or that the whole project is theoretically misconceived (Parker 1987).