Why social representations?

1. Why social representations? Anja Koski-Jännes Department of Sociology and Social Psychology University of Tampere IMAGES AND CONCEPTS OF ADDICTION 2nd Consortium Meeting Helsinki, 12-14 November 2007

2. Social representations • introduced by Serge Moscovici • refer to lay theories of phenomena that are important to us • concerns systems of values, ideas and practices that • serve two kinds of functions: • by removing the mysterious edge from new phenomenona they bring order and manageability to our world • they facilitate communication A K-J 12.11.2007

3. Who is Serge Moscovici? • born 1928 in a Jewish family in Romania • lived in France since 1948 • a French social psychologist • Thesis La psychanalyse, son image, et son public (1961) • currently the director of the Laboratoire Européen de Psychologie Sociale ("European Laboratory of Social Psychology") • which he co-founded in 1975 at the Maison des Science de l’homme A K-J 12.11.2007

4. How psychoanalysis was appropriated by the French society? • Initially a disturbing and confusing new phenomenon – a medical treatment without medication? • Focus of the thesis: how catholic, communist and urban liberals related to psychoanalysis • In a catholic context it was connected with confessing and father confessors, but its sexual aspects were rejected • commmunists saw it as a tool of the imperialist forces and therefore rejected it • urban liberals were the only group that approached it with curiosity and accepted its basic tenets because it fit with their previous knowledge base • A more general interest in how ideas of science are appropriated by common people and the nonspecialists A K-J 12.11.2007

5. Collective and social representations • Emile Durkheim: collective representations • myths, traditions, legends, science, religion etc. • static • independent of unique individuals • were used to explain the life of a society • Moscovici: Social reepresentations • those concepts, images, and theories that we create of our changing world • folk beliefs or systems of belief about common objects • dynamic, interest in the evolving nature of representations • that require explanation as themselves A K-J 12.11.2007

6. Social representations vs. information processing or social constructionist approaches • SR are not only cognitive or linguistic phenomena • they highlight also the symbolic, emotive and social aspects of how people make sense of their world • interest in socially shared rather than individual ways of understanding • SR approach appreciates also the importance non-verbal material in the study of human psyche (Joffe 2002) A K-J 12.11.2007

7. Main processes in forming social representations • anchoring - naming and classifying a new object in one’s previous body of knowledge • e.g. psychoanalysis was anchored to confession in a catholic context • objectification – a process of filling a new phenomenon with familiar images by giving it an iconic form • personification as one form of objectification • e.g. theory of relativity is personified by Albert Einstein • naturalisation – hownew concepts turn to a part of the natural order and start to live a life of their own A K-J 12.11.2007

8. Methods of study in SR studies • highly variable • focus groups, surveys, interviews, drawings, free associations, media analysis, etc. • methodological triangulation • historical & developmental approaches • cultural and subcultural comparisons A K-J 12.11.2007

9. Study of cultural variation in social representations • different cultures and subcultural groups have different resources of ideas and imagery to draw upon when forming a social representation of something • therefore they also create somewhat different objectifications of the same concepts • they may also anchor them to different conceptual frameworks A K-J 12.11.2007

10. Examples of related applications • representations of health (Flick et al. 2002) • how everyday or professional knowledge is informed by stocks of knowledge from science or a specific theory • identified cultures of knowledge among physicians and nursers • representations of AIDS (Crawford 1994) • represesentations of mental illness (Foster 2001) • central aspects of unified ’mental illness’: unpredictability, permanency, violence and Otherness • some differentiation to mental ilnesses A K-J 12.11.2007

11. Preliminary trial with Finnish interviewees (SINR; Koski-Jännes et al. 2005) • the core of addiction was typically anchored in the physical effects of hard drugs and • objectified with such concepts as “hooks”, “heavenly effects”, which made them very difficult to change. • the psychological aspects of addiction were not seen to be linked to any neural basis at all • thus non-chemical addictions were regarded as enormously easy to change • representatives of different professional groups perceived the possibilities of recovery in widely differing ways • there were large crosscultural differences in views concerning possibilities of self-change A K-J 12.11.2007

12. Images and/or social representations? • Images form a part of social representations • they are displayed in the objectified iconic aspects SR • particularly in professional contexts anchoring in the form of classification of addiction is of more importance • therefore we prefer to use SR in the survey and interview studies A K-J 12.11.2007

13. References • Foster, J. (2001) Unification and differentation: A study of the social reporesentations of mental illness. In Papers on Social Representations 10,3, 1-18. • Joffe, H. (2002) Social representations and health psychology. In Social Science Infromation 41, 559-580. • Koski-Jännes, A., Vainionpää, J. & Haapamäki, L. (2005) Paving the way for change-related optimism in addictions. Dependence as a “social representation” and how to make more permeable for self-change processes. Paper presented at the First International Working Group Meeting of the Collaborative SINR Project, St. Peter’s Island, Erlach, Switzerland, September 18-21, 2005. • Moscovici, S. (1961/1976) La psychanalyse, son image, son public, University Presses of France. • Moscovici, S. (1981) On Social representations. In J. Forgas (Ed.) Social Cognition. European monographs in Social Psychology, 26. Academic press, London. • Pirttilä-Backman A-M ja Helkama K (2001) Serge Moscovici: Sosiaaliset representaatiot. Teoksessa V. Hänninen, O-H. Ylijoki ja J. Partanen (toim.) Sosiaalipsykologian suunnannäyttäjät. Vastapaino, Tampere, 253-274.. A K-J 12.11.2007