Social Representations and beyond: Brute Facts, Symbolic Coping and Domesticated Worlds

Abstract

Social representation theory is scrutinized for its capacity to ask new questions and to give new answers to social psychological problems. Its social constructionist implications and relationship to brute facts are investigated. It is shown that social representations result from collective symbolic coping with 'brute' facts. Consequently representations create the domesticated world of social objects which implies considering activity as part of a representation. Culture change in modern societies is shown to produce 'cognitive polyphasia' by adding alternative representations to existing ones instead of replacing them.