Historical Origin of the Concept

There is a link between the concept of social representations and Durkheim’s concept “collective representations” which refers to common ways of conceiving, thinking about and evaluate social reality.

According to Moscovici (2000) this concept by Durkheim is, however, too static in relation to how we should understand contemporary society. It does neither catch the dynamics of and changeable character, nor the variability and plurality of social cognitions of the age in which we now live, he claims. To include all this he therefore suggests the new concept “social representation”. As noted by Markova (2003: 121) social representations may even be considered as “thoughts in movement” developing through communication.

Moscovici studied the spread of psychoanalytic thinking by the media in the French society and the transformation into common sensical social representations (Moscovici 2007/1961). Such representations of health and unhealthy are typical areas in which scientific knowledge has an important role. A contemporary issue of great significant is climate change in which we can observe how science, politics, mass media and everyday knowledge meet and new social representations emerge.

According to Moscovici (2000) also individuals contribute to the formation of social representations in the interplay between social structure and individual. In modern so­cieties the individual has some autonomy and assimilating social representations may simultaneously modify them. Individuals are “set free” from traditional binding social structures such as family, social class, and religion, which earlier guided thinking and behaviour (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2001; Giddens 1994). There is a greater degree of choice concerning alternative ways of living and of strategies for how to get there. As put by Moscovici:

[…] individuals are confronted with a great variety of specialized knowledge on the part of groups to which they belong. Each individual must make his selection at a veritable open market of representations. (Moscovici 1984a: 963)

By giving the individual some room the theory of social representations avoids social determinism and opens for processes of transformation. But still the individual is mainly embedded in and formed by social structures.

With the epithet “social” Moscovici wants to emphasize how representations arise through social interaction and communication between individuals and groups. “Social” also marks that the contents of representations are social. They reflect, in different ways, historical, cultural and economic contexts, circumstances and practices.

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