Everyday discourse and common sense : the theory of social representations / Wolfgang Wagner and Nicky Hayes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wagner, Wolfgang, 1949-

Contributor:

Hayes, Nicky

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social perception.

Social psychology.

Sociolinguistics.

Physical Description:

xxi, 450 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Summary:

Thinking and talking in everyday life differs from thinking and talking in more formal contexts, and that difference is not always taken into account in social psychology. What is needed is an approach that sets the man and woman in the street as competent actors in their own right, rather than just pinpointing their alleged cognitive shortcomings. This book proposes the theory of social representations, which allows us to articulate collective and individual psychological processes, as a solution.

The text begins with a general analysis of everyday thinking in psychology, discussing research into sociopolitical, popular scientific and cultural systems of common sense. The theory is presented through both classic and contemporary research into the construction of the social world, from the individual level of representations as metaphors, images and cognitive structures, to collective phenomena such as dialogue, discourse and shared understandings. The concluding chapters cover epistemological and methodological developments in the field.

Everyday Discourse and Common Sense is the first comprehensive, integrative and book-length treatment of Moscovici's theory of social representations in the English language.

Contents:

1.1 History, memory and psychology 1

2 Everyday life, knowledge and rationality 18

2.1 The concept of 'everyday' 18

2.2 Excursus: content and process in theory and cognition 30

2.3 One or two forms of thinking? 50

2.4 Excursus: using the rational model 65

3 Universes of everday knowledge 78

3.1 The pragmatic imperative 78

3.2 Pragmatic orientations 86

3.3 Content rationality, irrationality and evidence 101

4 Introducing social representations 115

4.1 On the concept of 'social representations' 115

4.2 Research fields 130

5 The topography of modern mentality 135

5.1 Popularised science 135

5.2 Social structures and political events 148

5.3 Imagination and cultural knowledge 158

6 The organisation and structure of social representations 169

6.1 Iconic form and metaphorical organisation 169

6.2 The structural features of representations 182

7 Dynamics of social representations 194

7.1 System and metasystem 194

7.2 Categorisation and anchoring 198

7.3 Objectification and the socialised mind 207

8 Discourse, transmission and the shared universe 218

8.1 Dialogue, discourse and doxa 218

8.2 Sharedness, situatedness and functional consensus 221

8.3 Epidemiology, culture change and cognitive polyphasia 228

8.4 Transmission and media 236

9 Action, objectification and social reality 244

9.1 Action and objectification 244

9.2 Habitus and collective rationalisation 266

9.3 The group and the public 274

10 Epistemological aspects of social representation theory 283

10.1 Explanation and description in social psychology 283

10.2 Levels of analysis and macro-reduction 296

10.3 A circular theory? 310

10.4 A note on reference populations and the concept of the 'individual' 312

11 Methods in social representation research 322

11.1 Defining and diagnosing social representations 322

11.2 Methods in research 326

11.3 Developing appropriate methodologies 349.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 368-428) and indexes.

ISBN:

1403933049

OCLC:

59148346

Publisher Number:

9781403933041