Representations and social knowledge: An integrative effort through a normative structural perspective

The structural approach on social representations is known for the development of central core theory and its similarity with cognition-oriented sociopsychological perspectives, which has been a target of criticism. The approach has difficulty in dealing with the social dimension of knowledge and adopts a static notion of structure. Acknowledging those shortcomings, we present a revised structural conceptual model of social knowledge and social representations based on the consideration of normative and social identity processes, compatible with contributions of authors external to the classical structural approach, such as Wagner (holomorphy) and Lahlou (propagation model). After redefining the concepts of cognem and structure, we tackle thinking processes and the differences between personal and social representations, conceiving the latter as conventional codes linked to groups. Limitations of the perspective are discussed and research directions are indicated based on an understanding of structure that is broader than the one adopted by the classical approach. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.