ABSTRACT
For present purposes, two essential features of representations are key. One is that they simplify the reality they represent; the other is that any meaning imputed to them will be socially constructed. This said, we should note that representations are of many kinds. One social psychologist emphasises a distinction between collective representations, which ‘assume a homogeneous and closed group and [the] degree of group coercion…intrinsic to Durkheim’s theory’, from social representations, which are ‘interactive processes’ which come ‘closer to the idea of exchange’ (Moscovici 1987:516). A similar distinction is implicit in anthropological concern with the fixity or flexibility of the representations that we borrow from our respondents and (or?) visualise at our desks. How far is this interpretation consistent across situation and interest group? Will it hold through time? In each case, what is the scope for negotiating meaning; for concealing or revealing the fact that changes of the context which decides that meaning have occurred; and for communicating it undistorted across cultural or professional divides?
