Abstract
The purpose of this article is to examine the potential contribution that the study of representations - an approach developed in the field of social psychology - can bring to the social sciences. At the outset, the discussion is based on the observation of the social sciences' emerging interest in the relation between ordinary and scholarly knowledge, the social inscription of cognitive processes, the importance of the notion of "common", the need to reconfigure the relationship among disciplines, and that of considering the complexity of phenomena when addressing them. The examination of the notion of social and/or collective representation within the history of the social sciences, notably in Anthropology, History and Sociology, falls on the recognized properties of representative phenomena and on their roles in social life. The lines of problematization of this study are presented in a table summarizing the research space that concerns them. After discussing the scientific and political critiques of 'representationalism', a scheme that places representative phenomena at the intersection of three spheres: subjective, intersubjective, and transsubjective allows us to show the pertinence of the study of social representations in a globalized space. This pertinence is illustrated by works dealing with the effects of globalization vectors on local social identities, and by the positions adopted by Latin American researchers regarding the importation of models borrowed from the dominant circles of the first world.
Keywords:
Collective Representations; Ordinary Knowledge; Representative Phenomena; Social processes
