ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the theoretical foundations on representation, the diversity of knowledge and communities and public spheres. It discusses the main issues involved in the social psychology of representations and exploring in detail the representational form, its relation to the symbolic function and the production of knowledge. The book focuses on the theory of social representations and its relations to debates, which at the beginning of the twentieth century addressed the problem of knowledge and context, an issue frequently missed in the Anglo-Saxon reception of social representations. It explains the discussion about knowledge and context by introducing a social psychology of community and by theorising the relationship between knowledge, community and public spheres. The book explores the variation of the representational form and how this variation shapes the form and the function of knowledge.
