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Social Representation, Change and Resistance: On the Difficulties of Generalizing New Norms

ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal, Paula.Castro{at}iscte.pt

Susana Batel

ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal

This article addresses the difficulties of generalizing new norms and practices, focusing on the role of the legal system for proposing change and innovation to society. It first presents some contributions offered by the social representational approach for understanding these issues, based on the assumptions of the interdependence both of change and stability, and of the social and the individual. Afterwards it is argued that for advancing the study of change the approach needs to offer more attention to: (1) the role of expert mediating systems regarding the translation of new norms to concrete contexts and their articulation with practices; (2) the arguments and discursive strategies employed in everyday communication to resist change with normative force; and (3) the consequences for the relations between representations and practices of the distinction between 'transcendent' and 'immanent' representations. In the empirical part of the paper, and with the goal of better understanding the difficulties linked to the generalization of new norms and practices, these notions are used for analysing a controversy which, in a context of changed norms regarding public participation, involved the expert and lay spheres in a debate about the built heritage of a community.

Key Words: discursive strategies • practices • public participation • resistance • social and cultural change • social representations

Culture & Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 4, 475-497 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1354067X08096512


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