The dialogicality of cleanliness ‘thematizing’ the clean/dirty antinomy in the background of the theory of social representations

Abstract

Speltini and Passini manuscript points to a theoretical framework for exploring the psychosocial dimensions of the issue of cleanliness addressing the clean/dirty and pure/impure antinomies. In particular, the authors discuss the symbolic and normative valence of the issue of cleanliness and demonstrate its social and cultural rootedness feeding negative attitudes and adverse emotions towards persons and groups. Elaborating on the arguments of Speltini and Passini, I endorse the conceptual overlapping between the issue of cleanliness and the dialogical notion of basic themata. In the background of social representation theory, the process of anchoring serves as context for addressing this conceptual overlapping and for challenging the profound interrelationship between the issue of cleanliness and the theme of intergroup dynamics and inter-ethnic encounters.

Keywords

Dialogical antinomy themata anchorage social representations clean/dirty

Speltini and Passini discuss a fecund theoretical framework about the issue of cleanliness, specifically about its symbolic and normative valence, examining the multifaceted and prismatic antinomies – clean/dirty and pure/impure. Specifically, the authors demonstrate how a physical and bodily condition of human beings – such as personal hygiene – can be understood as a regulator of social encounters so as it grades interpersonal and intergroup spaces. Exactly, they show how cleanliness is seen as a token of subjective traits as well as a stable mark of social groups and of the social environment they inhabit.

Along with the Speltini and Passini idea, private hygienic behaviours originate from cultural practices and initiate from social context. Cleanliness is presented as a cross-cultural topic, providing that hygienic concerns and cleaning routines are common to almost every culture and every society. At the same time, this theme undergoes variations as demonstrated by several examples drawn from anthropology and history indicating that it is repository of multiple and consolidated meanings and that these have a pivotal role in the way individuals and groups interchange with their social ambience, nurturing symbolic social orders.

For example, the authors emphasize how in contemporary and modern ages odours were a token of social stratification and how cleanliness meanings, such as for example the purity of blood, bolstered discrimination in the background of religious clashes. In particular, cleanliness denoted differentiation, separation and even oppositions between elements, namely the sacred and the profane, the pure and the impure, the soul and the body. In the same vein, in the ancient Christian tradition, the religious concern for the health of the soul determined suspicion towards washing practices regarded as immoral due to the intimate contact with body.

To account for the complexity of the cleaning issue, Speltini and Passini offer intriguing insights into the cultural rootedness of the psychopathology of washing practices (italics added). Precisely, the authors reviewed literature to demonstrate that distinguishable feelings of dirtiness can be provoked not only by physical but also by mental contact with immaterial contaminants, subjectively perceived as threatening (e.g. insults, thoughts and ideas). More important, subjective emotions and feelings attached to cleanliness – such as disgust by certain persons and groups – are both personally experienced and culturally determined by common and reified systems of beliefs in turn legitimating social exclusion, rejection and isolation of persons and groups stigmatized as contaminating.

In the background of the social constructionism of psychopathology, a recent work (Gelo, Vilei, Maddux, & Gennaro, in press) discusses the case of anorexia nervosa asserting that psychopathology stems from ‘socially negotiated processes of meaning-making’, historically and culturally embedded. The analysis centres on the cultural and social rootedness of scientific theories and clinical practices and fully articulates the interdependence between the subjective and personal component and the social and cultural component of psychic suffering. Psychopathology rests not only on scientific advances but also on group agreement upon social definitions, varying from place to place as well as from time to time.

According to Gelo et al., psychic problems can be manifestations of disturbances in the social structure other than expressions of subjective pains. In the same vein, Speltini and Passini claim that stigmatization and discrimination of dirty people are not just symptoms of individual psychopathology but rather they designate ordinary and socially shared reactions emphasizing not only a psychic but also a social suffering. Individuals and groups can be perceived as sources of contamination and cleanliness and can generate disapproval towards persons and groups on the basis of a ‘complex intersection’ and a ‘meaning-making’ intermingling cultural values, collective norms, shared representations and emotional feedback.

In conclusion, the authors advocate the public valence of intimate habits, such as hygienic practices, and their link to collective customs and common actions, showing how these legitimize forms of public control and social ordering. In this view, cleanliness is not only a private issue nurturing hygienic everyday practice and personal care but it is also a collective issue connected to social norms and social constraints. The arguments from Speltini and Passini convincingly demonstrate that the personal sense of cleanliness is culturally rooted and it legitimizes collective and negative stereotypical representations. Specifically, they shed light on the complex psychosocial process underlying the issue of cleanliness and on its deep symbolic and normative valence that regulates intergroup relationships within social milieu validating outgroup derogation, prejudice, discrimination and social exclusion.

Elaborating on the distinction between cleanliness and dirtiness and on their symbolic valence thorough historical and cultural transformations suffices to ascertain the overlapping between the topic discussed by Speltini and Passini and the notion of themata (Holton, 1978, 1996), a key feature of the theory of social representations (Moscovici, 1961/1976, 1984; Moscovici & Markovà, 1998). After all, words from Markovà (2003) still all doubts on this synchronism when the author affirms that ‘although probably all cultures have an antinomy clean/dirty, the content of what is and what is not considered “dirty” differs from one culture to another’ (p. 185).

The meeting points between the idea of themata and the issue of cleanliness are at least three. First, the universality of antinomies and the reciprocal relations of mutual cultivation between them, such as for example the antinomic chain between clean/dirty, pure/impure and moral/immoral; second, the long-time integration of antinomies into common sense and their unreflecting transmission as communication and practices; third, the cultural variability/specificity of the contents of themata mainly rooted in their symbolic nature (Markovà, 2000). In the following pages, I will briefly account for these three aspects.

Clean/dirty as a basic thema

The concept of themata (Moscovici & Vignaux, 1994, 2000) captures a basic tenet of human thinking, precisely that the mental activities and the formation of meanings progress through antinomies and that antithetical dyads reside all along in human thought. The notion of canonic themata has been introduced into the theory of social representations to capture the genesis of social knowledge (Moscovici, 1993). Canonic themata are paramount concepts of knowledge enduring in the collective memory of a society. In Moscovici's view (1992), everyday experience demonstrates that social objects – meant in a very broad sense – join daily conversation and social exchanges as they hook up ‘imprints of postulates of long duration which are anchored in our beliefs [and] emerge in our discourses in the form of the dynamics of recurrent openings and closures’ (Moscovici & Vignaux, 1994, p. 68). The comprehension of the real and social world is developed as ‘initial strings of a few themata’ (Moscovici, 2001) having a generative valence in the formation of social representations.

In the background of theory of social representations, Markovà (2000) conceptualized themata as dialogical antinomies. ‘Antinomies must be conceptualized as mutually interdependent. Taking the form of themata in the theory of social representations, this force is achieved’ (p. 444). Individuals adopt dialogical antinomies in daily communication and embrace themata without being fully aware of their symbolic valence as these are part of routinized discourse and practices. Thinking through themata is common to individuals nearly as attending everyday cleaning habits. In the author's view, phenomena are embedded with their respective antinomies in social thinking, and mutual tension and interdependence exist among each other. Specifically, thinking in antinomies is characteristic of cultural socialization consistently with the argument of Speltini and Passini according to which thinking in clean/dirty and pure/impure antinomies results a characteristic of the process of cultural socialization.

Accordingly, the thema cleanliness/dirtiness presupposes a mutual and circular cultivation and irreducible tension between the two poles; personal presentation (Valsiner, in press) of cleanliness establishes the acceptable level of dirtiness as well as the acceptable level of dirtiness delimits the personal presentation of cleanliness, according to a circular envision, with both of them being deeply socio-culturally entrenched. In line with Speltini and Passini argument about the ordinariness of dirty and clean, dialogical antinomies can be ‘dormant’ and transmitted as cultural communication without reflection over time.

However, themata are far from being static entities. On the one side, ‘they are historically embedded, deep-seated and taken-for-granted ideas’ (Liu, 2004, p. 255) and, on the other side, they are dynamic and can be dialogically transformed due to their irreducible tension ‘that create the possibility of polyphasia’ (Moloney, Williams, & Blair, 2012). In the light of dialogicality, historical events and cultural clashes can determine changes in themata boundaries that therefore are “maintained and transformed through communicative genres” (Liu, 2004). Arguments, discourses, and discussion are pivotal to themata transformation as they bring dialogical antinomies to social attention and explicit reflection.

Discussing dialogical antinomies, Markovà (2003) presents the notion of basic themata that ‘play a more important role in social life than others’ (p. 188), namely foreground themata that directly stems from dialogicality, ‘social drives’ that are always vivid and ceaselessly debated and discussed in relation with other themata. Basic themata – such as for example social recognition/denial, justice/injustice, morality/immorality – are interconnected between each other and intertwine in an essential texture ‘with their contents transforming from one period to one another’ (p. 190). The arguments developed by Speltini and Passini about the issue of cleanliness and its link to the concept of purity and morality call upon the notion of basic themata and precisely summon the thematic architecture that sustain ‘physical distancing from disgusting people and … protection and preservation of the social order’ (p. 213).

Two points emerged from these few deliberations. First, themata are intricately interlaced with common sense knowledge due to their existence in the collective memory of any society (Moloney, Hall, & Walker, 2005). Second, themata can operate in different forms, as their contents are particular to social and cultural contexts as well as to historical periods. Speltini and Passini have clearly demonstrated that the thematic chain interweaving cleanliness/dirtiness, purity/impurity and morality/immorality inevitably determine a social categorization aiming at maintaining the social order as strategies of social exclusion. With concern to this, the social categorization process whereby the social environment is classified and hierarchized induces reflection on the process of anchoring thereby enriching the observations on themata.

An insight into the process of anchorage: Thematic and actual levels

In the lecture presented during the first international congress on social representations in 1992, Moscovici focused on the interdependence between the contents and the genesis of social representations. The author explained that, once the link between an object and a thema is established, the representation of such an object acquires a potential content, precisely a content that is about to be enacted into the concrete sphere of daily social exchanges and human actions. The potential content turns into effective content as soon as the representation anchors an actual context and a given network of – diffuse and reiterating (my addition) – meanings (Moscovici, 1992). Therefore, the structured contents of the social representation of a particular subject rest on ‘a few themata’ (Liu, 2004) and undergo variations depending on the specific actual anchorage.

The multiplication of the fundamental process of anchoring has been a point of development within the theory of social representations (Doise, 2002, 2003, 2010) denoting the complexity of such a notion, intermingling both psychological and social dynamics. From this point of view, I suggest that the process of anchoring encompasses two interconnecting levels, endorsing a circular and mutual relationship between each other. A thematic level where the object, in a broad sense, hooks up a thema thus acquiring potential contents and generating social representations; an actual level whereby the potential contents find effective and communicable forms undergoing variations across societies and cultures. Precisely, thematic level of anchorage enables persons to cope with the unfamiliar ‘by giving it … value (assessment)’ (Kalampalikis & Haas, 2008, p. 454). It provides social representations for a central core (Abric, 1996) of potential contents and oversees their whole architecture. Actual level realizes the potential contents giving to the thematized object ‘priority (time)… hierarchy (classification), and a name (denomination)’ (Kalampalikis & Haas, 2008) so it can enter daily communication. Effective contents acquire communicable forms – e.g. semantic value according to Moscovici view (1992) – as they clasp network of consolidated meanings, culturally and historically determined, and in case generate new meanings, ‘that undergo variations from one culture to another’ (Markovà, 2003) and from one society to another.

Thematic and actual levels somehow render anchorage a symbolic and generative process of internal (Rizkallah, in press) and external coping that account simultaneously for the personal, social, relational and contextual nature of the social representations. In this vein, familiarizing with something unknown somehow approximates the act of giving birth to it, first of all thematizing the unfamiliar assigning it a potential content and then anchoring the thematized object providing it with practical existence.

Practices of sexual engagement for payment are socially represented as they are hooked up to the clean/dirty thema and secondarily acquire an effective content once they are anchored to given context or network of diffuse and conventional meanings, such as religion. In this vein, the same object can be inserted into another network of reified meanings, precisely the legal system, acquiring a different effective content while the underlying thematic chain interconnecting clean/dirty and moral/immoral holds steady; this may account for the common and cross-cultural usage of the expression ‘cleaning up one's criminal record’. Moreover, in Speltini and Passini examples, cleaning practices, such as washing, can be anchored to economic field of meanings hence the effective content of representation can pertain to the access to water resources. Another example can be drawn from the history of race-related practices in United States, precisely the separate but equal legal doctrine that legitimized a system of segregation officially overturned in 1954. As known, separate facilities, services and public accommodations were prepared on the condition that the quality of suppliers remained equal for both the races hence physical contacts between the ethnic groups were excluded.

In conclusion, the thematic and actual levels of anchoring make the issue of cleanliness a deep structure and demonstrate its constructive role in forming the social representations of strange and unfamiliar matters.

Speltini and Passini capture the profound interrelationship between the issue of cleanliness and the theme of intergroup dynamics in the background of multiculturalism, suggesting that cleanliness and dirtiness are vehicles of forms of prejudice and subtle disgust. Individuals make full use of the notion of dirtiness and cleanliness to distance the unwanted and preserve their social world demonstrating that ‘cleanliness is first of all a problem of order since it categorizes what is normative and what is instead foreign and potentially dangerous’ (p. 215).

The psychological need for coping with uncertainty led individuals to incorporate foreignness, into existing familiar and diffuse network of meanings: people classify, confront, distinguish and ultimately include or exclude others. The thematic chain that interconnects the clean/dirty, pure/impure and moral/immoral antinomies serves as anchorage for the social categorization of newness and strangeness that are comprehended precisely by means of reassuring ordinariness.

Kalampalikis and Haas (2008) proposed that anchoring can be stigmatic and that it can work ‘guaranteeing the non-familiar and ascertain that the non-familiar remain strange’ (p. 455). Notwithstanding, it can be argued that the strangeness represents itself a context or a network of consolidated and familiarized meanings (e.g. stigma and stereotypes) into which potential contents can be actualized (Markovà, 2009). Following such a view, the strange does not remain unfamiliar but rather it is accustomed to notable and taken-for-granted actual anchorages once it is labelled as dirty, impure, contaminated and dangerous. Accordingly, foreigners are stigmatized as familiar and long-time social categories and contact is avoided.

In Speltini and Passini's view, people tend somehow to neglect the symbolic valence of dirtiness and cleanliness, above all in western societies, and to objectify particular views with the ultimate goal of mastering and hierarchizing intergroup dynamics – as in the cases of inter-ethnic exchanges – thus preserving the social order. The ordinary and apparently quiet usage of the clean/dirty antinomy in daily exchanges (Speltini & Passini, 2014, pp. 203--219) calls upon the unreflecting and dormant transmission of themata and shed lights on the counterproductive effects of the negative actual level of anchoring and stigmatic thinking (Kalampalikis & Haas, 2008).

Hence, attention should be focused on the issue of the change of the boundaries of basic themata as well as of their transformation.

Thematic and actual levels of anchorage: Suggestions for further developments

Crises – namely social and historical events, such as religious, political and economic clashes – stimulate the process whereby the contents of what becomes categorized as clean or dirty can change (Markovà, 2003). Precisely, whenever the thematic anchoring results, problematic individuals engage themselves in public discourses and debates. Thus, themata are brought to explicit awareness and ultimately change (Markovà, 2003).

This topic is particular relevant to the intercultural field of studies, as noticed by the Speltini and Passini themselves. Indeed, decades of empirical research on social categorization and group identification process (Abrams, 2010) as well as on realistic group conflict theory and prejudice (Stephan, Ybarra, Martinez, Schwarzwald, & Tur-Kaspa, 1998; Zarate, Garcia, Garza, & Hitlan, 2004) suggests that the fear of change – encompassing both realistic threat and cultural or symbolic threat – may reinforce social distancing from foreigners thus inhibiting changes.

In this sense, I argue that the two levels of anchoring underpin the theoretical proposal of Speltini and Passini.

In particular, the thematic level of anchorage assesses the object and gives value to it. The object of knowledge is represented (e.g. acquires its contents) but it cannot yet be fully verbalized, as it has not yet acquired its semantic value (Moscovici, 1992). The tenet that a thema, namely a thematic chain of basic themata, exerts a generative function of potential contents and that these remain unspoken until they are actualized into concrete forms may advance some opening hints concerning the role of emotions in the genesis of social representations (Ruggieri & Rochira, in press). This argument gives cause for reflection on the affective reaction of disgust that is recognized by Speltini and Passini to influence exclusion and derogation of outgroup.

According to Speltini and Passini, disgust is an emotional marker of moral ordering and social hierarchy that in turn fosters physical distancing and ethnic divisions. It facilitates mechanism of outgroup derogation and marginalization through a process of moral exclusion providing that the marginalized others are located beyond the limits of accepted values and rules of justice. The authors note that disgust echoes cultural and social forces and is ‘considered a basic, cross-culturally recognizable emotion’.

In the light of the universality of disgust, I speculatively suggest that emotions may relate to the thematic level of the anchoring process, mostly connected to the valuation and assessment of the object of knowledge, and that emotions have a role in the generation and transformation of social representations. This is not completely new (Joffe, 2002) as it has been already pointed out that emotions can exert an inhibiting and promoting force over the change of social representations (Zittoun, in press) and that emotional experience plays an important role in ‘the construction of meaning attributed to the object’ (Guimelli & Rimé, 2009).

Like and together with themata, emotions may serve as anchorage for the understanding of objects, such as for example ethno-cultural groups of foreigners. They give rise to potential contents as the themata do, and similarly to themata they are characterized by irreducible tension. In this vein, I concentrate attention on the relations between themata and emotions that is socio-culturally and historical embedded as magisterially suggested by Speltini and Passini. Following the authors, I suggest that emotions may have a significant role in encouraging, or conversely, impeding the change of themata and that this topic has been underdeveloped and needs further attention (Zittoun, in press).

Following Speltini and Passini, variability exists in ‘the degree to which they [cultures] call upon disgust to back their moral ordering’ (p. 16) just like ‘although probably all cultures have an antinomy clean/dirty, the content of what is and what is not considered “dirty”, differs from one culture to another’ (Markovà, 2003).

The actual level of anchoring accounts for the diversity of forms that can be generated by antinomic thinking once themata enter daily conversation through thematized objects. At the same time, the theoretical framework outlined by Speltini and Passini (2014, pp. 220--231) clarifies that the actual anchorage can produce routinized and stereotypical forms that in turn reduce and do not increase the contextual and cultural variability of effective contents ‘to objectify particular views with the ultimate goal of mastering and hierarchizing intergroup dynamics’ (p. 226). The notion of themata enlarges such a framework suggesting that actual contents of social representations can be problematized, publically disputed and ultimately dis-anchored from a given network of routinized and objectified meanings. In this, contents turn back to their condition of potential contents until they are anchored in a different context thus producing original forms (e.g. meanings).

To illustrate such an argument, an example can be speculatively drawn from a culinary dimension following Speltini and Passini's example – and also Markovà's view precisely with concern to the dirty/clean dialogical antinomy – who stress that ‘cultural tradition, purification habits, past experiences certainly have a bearing in determining food accessibility or the inaccessibility and fears of intoxication and contamination’ (p. 215). Recently, in the background of Italian gastronomy, the term contaminazione, together with the term fusion, acquired a positive and valued meaning and indicates the blending of the culinary traditions of two or more nations to create innovative and refined dishes. This is not a merely redundant argument considering that the variability with which inter-ethnic encounters and acculturation processes can take place (Berry, 2005, 2006, 2008) has recently captured the interest of scholars (Navas et al., 2005) who have argued that
the adaptation strategies in them may not be uniform either. On the contrary, in some cases a person will follow the patterns of their heritage culture and in others will open up to the novelties and contributions of the host society culture. (p. 28)

Conclusion

Speltini and Passini pointed out that cleanliness/purity and dirtiness/impurity are symbolic categories deeply rooted in collective imagination as well as they give rise to intense emotional reactions of either attraction or repulsion towards impure and dirty groups and persons, thus ultimately legitimizing prejudice, discrimination and social exclusions. In this paper, I concisely highlighted a few points that mainly revolved around the theoretical match between the issue of cleanliness and the notion of dialogical thema. In particular, I contended that the manuscript from Speltini and Passini, although it does not address directly the issue of themata, may afford a stimulating contribution to this topic as the issue of cleanliness presented by the authors matches the notion of basic thema. Such a contribution resides on the full explanation of the intersection between cognitive and emotional components and of their socio-cultural embeddedness, at the very core of the psychosocial functioning of the clean/dirty antinomy, with an ultimate direct influence on the social regulation of interpersonal and intergroup encounters.

Additionally, the paper from Speltini and Passini opens up with some fundamental questions. In particular, in the introduction of their paper the authors wonder, ‘what is the link between the concepts of dirtiness and impurity and that between the concepts of cleanliness and purity?’ In the light of these considerations, I endorse the concept of basic themata to fruitfully expand the theoretical answer outlined by the authors, providing for intriguing hints and ideas about the issue of contact that is central to the study of inter-ethnic encounters and acculturation processes inboard multicultural societies (Berry, 2008).

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biography

Alessia Rochira has done PhD in Community Psychology (University of Salento, Lecce – Italy) and is currently enrolled in the ‘European Doctorate on Social Representations & Communication’ coordinated by the University ‘La Sapienza’ (Rome, Italy). Her research interests cover social and community psychology. In particular, she has been focusing on the study of justice, as a social and psychological issue, and on the investigation of the issue of compliance with the law. Furthermore, she is interested in the field of the theory of social representations in its strict interconnection with Culture Psychology. More recently, she has been investigating the theme of inter-ethnic exchanges and intergroup dynamics in the background of acculturation field of studies.

References

Abrams

(2010) Processes of prejudice: Theory, evidence and intervention, Manchester, UK: Equality and Human Right Commission.Retrieved from http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/research/56_processes_of_prejudice.pdf.

Abric, J. C. (1996). Specific processes of social representations. Papers on Social Representations, 5(1), 77–80.

Berry

J. W.

(2005) Acculturation: Living successful in two cultures. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 29(6): 697–712.

Berry

J. W.

(2006) Mutual attitudes among immigrants and ethnocultural groups in Canada. International Journal of Intercultural Research 30: 719–734.

Berry

J. W.

(2008) Globalization and acculturation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32: 328–336.

Doise

(2002) La forza delle idee. Rappresentazioni Sociali e diritti umani [The power of ideas. Social Representations and Human Rights], Bologna: Il Mulino.

Doise

(2003) Human rights: Common meaning and differences in positioning. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa 19(3): 201–210.

Doise

(2010) Confini ed Identità. La costruzione sociale dei diritti umani [Boundaries and identity. The social construction of human rights], Bologna: Il Mulino.

Gelo

O. C. G.

Vilei

Maddux

J. E.

Gennaro

Psychopathology as social construction: The case of anorexia nervosa. Journal of Constructivist Psychology. (in press. Retrieved from https://www-tandfonline-com.web.bisu.edu.cn/toc/upcy20/current#.UzMh1_khBgg.

10.

Guimelli

Rimé

(2009) Émotions et représentations sociales [Emotions and social representations]. In: P. Rateau

P. Moliner (ed) Représentations sociales et processus sociocognitifs [Social representations and socio-cognitive processes], Rennes: PUR, pp. 165–180.

11.

Holton

(1978) The scientific imagination: Case studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12.

Holton

(1996) The role of themata in science. Foundations of Physics 26(4): 453–465.

13.

Joffe

(2002) Social representations and health psychology. Social Science Information 41(4): 559–580.

14.

Kalampalikis, N., & Haas, V. (2008). More than a theory: A new map of social thought. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 38(4), 449–459.

15.

Liu

(2004) Sensitising concept, themata and shareness: A dialogical perspective of social representations. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 34(3): 249–264.

16.

Markovà

(2000) Amédée or how to get rid of it: Social representations from a dialogical perspective. Culture & Psychology 6(4): 419–460.

17.

Markovà

(2003) Dialogicality and social representations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

18.

Markovà

(2009) Dialogicità e conoscenza [Dialogicality and knowledge]. In: Palmonari

Emiliani

(eds) Paradigmi delle rappresentazioni sociali [Paradigms of social representations], Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 211–252.

19.

Moloney

Hall

Walker, I. (2005) Social representations and themata: The construction and functioning of social knowledge about donation and transplantation. British Journal of Social Psychology 44: 415–444.

20.

Moloney

Williams

Blair, D. (2012) Cognitive polyphasia, themata and blood donation: Between or within representation. Papers on Social Representations 21: 4.1–4.12.

21.

Moscovici

(1961/1976) La psychanalyse: Son image et son public [Psychoanalysis: Its image and its public], Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

22.

Moscovici

(1984) The phenomena of social representations. In: Farr

R.M.

Moscovici

(eds) Social representations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–69.

23.

Moscovici

(1992, October) Discorso presentato alla prima Conferenza Internazionale sulle Rappresentazioni Sociali [Lecture presented at the International Conference on Social Representations] , Ravello, Italy.. Retrieved from http://www.serge-moscovici.fr/documents/Themata.pdf.

24.

Moscovici

(1993) Introductory address. Papers on Social Representations 2(3): 160–170.

25.

Moscovici

(2001) Why a theory of social representations? In: Deaux

Philogéne

(eds) Representations of the social, Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 8–35.

26.

Moscovici

Markovà

(1998) Presenting social representations: A conversation. Culture and Psychology 4(3): 371–410.

27.

Moscovici

Vignaux, G. (1994) Le concept de themata [The concept of themata ]. In: Guimelli

(ed) Structures et transformations des representations sociales [Structures and transformations of social representations], Neuchatel: Delachaux et Niestle University Press, pp. 25–72.

28.

Moscovici

Vignaux, G. (2000) The concept of themata. In: Moscovici

(ed) Social representations: Explorations in social psychology, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 156–183.

29.

Navas

Garcìa

M. C.

Sánchez

Rojas

A. J.

Pumares

P., &

Fernández

J. S.

(2005) Relative acculturation extended model (RAEM): New contributions with regard to the study of acculturation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 29: 21–37.

30.

Rizkallah

È.

“The possible and the actual”. Endeavour(s) through dynamic and semiotic model of meaning. Semiotics and Social Representation: A Mutual Cultivation. Special Issue of Papers on Social Representations. (in press. Retrieved from http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/psr/.

31.

Ruggieri

Rochira

Semiotics and social representations: A figure-and-ground relationship of mutual cultivation. Semiotics and Social Representation: A Mutual Cultivation. Special Issue of Papers on Social Representations. (in press. Retrieved from http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/psr/.

32.

Speltini

Passini

Cleanliness/dirtiness, purity/impurity as social and psychological issues. Culture & Psychology 20(2): 203–219.

33.

Stephan

W. G.

Ybarra

Martinez

C. M.

Schwarzwald

Tur-Kaspa

(1998) Prejudice towards immigrant to Spain and Israel: An integrated threat theory analysis. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 29: 559–576.

34.

Valsiner, J. Creating sign hierarchies: Social representation in its dynamic context Semiotics and Social Representation: A Mutual Cultivation. Special Issue of Papers on Social Representations (in press). Retrieved from http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/psr/.

35.

Zarate

A. M.

Garcia

Garza

A. A.

Hitlanc

R. T.

(2004) Cultural threat and perceived realistic group conflict as dual predictors of prejudice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40: 99–105.

36.

Zittoun

Valences, traces and new synthesis in social representing. Commentary of J. Valsiner's creating sign hierarchies. Semiotics and Social Representation: a Mutual Cultivation. Special Issue of Papers on Social Representations. (in press. Retrieved from http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/psr/.