A qualitative approach to the study of Social Representations : the epistemological and ontological basis

Fernando Luis González Rey

Pontifical University of Campinas

Brazil

Moscovici (2000) pointed out that:

"The peculiar power and clarity of representations - that is, of social representations - is derived from the success with which they control the reality of today through that of yesterday, and the continuity with which it presupposes. Even Jahoda himself has recognized that social representations are autonomous properties not necessarily identifiable in the thoughts of particular individuals” (Jahoda, 1970,

p.42) (p 24-25).

Dewey (1986) wrote:

" ... human experience becomes human because of the existence of associations and memories which are filtered through the network of the imagination in a way

that answers to emotional exigencies " .. " The things more emphasized by our

imagination, when it is remodeling the experience, are those things that were

never real " ( p.125-126).

Moscovici (1973) pointed out that: 

"Not recognizing the power of our capacity for representations to

create objects and events is like believing that there is no connection between our "reservoir" of images

and our capacity for imagination" (p xi).

The consideration of the social representation as a subjective production results in overcoming the following three

problems that are very closely inter-related to each other:  

1. The need to integrate the individual and the social facts into the study of

social representations not as two different systems, one external to the other, but rather as a complex system within which the individual and social facts are reciprocally made up of one another in their subjective condition.

 2.   The need to integrate the affective and symbolic processes into one unit

within the same definition of the social representation. Symbolic processes do

not exist without emotions in the practices which define and perpetuate the

social scenarios in a given society.

 3.   The need to transcend the association

between social representations and objects. Social representations are

culturally and socially subjective productions of practices, knowledge and relationships, which integrate people in shared social practices. Despite of the

fact that social representations are symbolic instruments of these practices,

they are not transparent and it is not possible for them to be cognitively

represented by people who share these social spaces.

(González Rey, 2006)

In his paper " On the problem of a psychology of the creative artist "

Vygotsky wrote:  

"In the process of societal life .... the emotions come into a new relationship with the other elements of psychical life,

new systems appear, new blending of psychical functions, units of higher order

emerge, governed by special laws, mutual dependencies , and special forms of

connection and motion " ( 1984, p.328)

SUBJECTIVE SENSE  

It is a kind of psychological unity characterized by de inseparable relation

between emotions and symbolic processes, in which one evoke the other without becoming its cause. Subjective

senses represent the result of subjectivation of those cultural

delimitation on which human psyche is organized. ( GONZALEZ REY, 2003)

 -Subjective senses cannot be understood as isolated moments of human activity.

They are always implicated in subjectivity in its entirety. At the same time they

simultaneously represent a process and an organization, resulting from the

constant tension between subjective configurations and the new subjective

senses that emerges from the subject's ongoing experience.

- Subjective senses do not directly appear in the explicit contents of words. They

represent a complex network of emotions and a symbolic process, which appear in a distorted and fragmented form in human

action. ( GONZALEZ REY ,2006)

 Subjectivity is not something " crystallized " inside the

psyche. In this historical - cultural approach, subjectivity is understood as permanently involved in human action and activities. This is one of the reasons for the emphasis on the consideration of subjectivity as an active progressive moment of the subject. The subject is a living expression of individual subjectivity, who is permanently acting within

concrete social scenarios subjectively organized within social subjectivity. He is always in process, in a dialogical involvement with others through different social practices,

but at the same time he is subjectively configured, becoming part of his different relationships through his

own subjectivity. This dialogical action can be considered to be a continuous source of subjective sense. ( González

Rey, 2006)

 CARACTERISTICS OF THE QUALITATIVE

EPISTEMOLOGY 

1.   The constructive - interpretative character of knowledge production

2.   The comprehension of social inquiry as a communicative and participative process.

3.   The consideration of the singular as a legitimate path to scientific knowledge. ( González Rey, 1997)

 The constructive - interpretative methodology that

I have developed on the basis of Qualitative Epistemology claims to transform an answer - centered methodology, which reproduces a

stimulus - response principle, into a methodology of construction, in which the conversation becomes

a central methodological tool. What does this change really mean? It means the motivation of the research participants to openly participate through their reflections and positions in the

research process. This inquiry assumes a dialogical course within which people talk about

their experiences and take up their own positions in relation to other opinions within a process that leads to a real dialogical network. (GONZALEZ REY ,

2002)

The dialogical approach to research permits the emergence of "living"

fragments of information that appear as the result of people’s emotional

involvement in episodes and narratives which are significant for them and part of their own experiences. The expressions and confrontations of points of view that are authentically being produced through participants´ reflexive and compromised

positions represent the only way to access the subjective senses involved in

the studied phenomenon.

The subjective senses never directly appear in the intentional speech of people

yet they can be constructed through many different indicators, based more in the way in which information is organized and produced than in the subject's direct

and explicit information. Thus, social representations as socially subjectively

constructed "fields" of practices and subjective senses, convert the natural and

familiar beliefs, expectancies and practices characterizing daily life, into

"real life".

How do instruments function within this methodological perspective, and what

are their functions? After being submerged for a long time in an

objective and instrumental perspective, psychology should validate the psychological

techniques being used as standardized instruments in the different populations in which they claim to be used. This way of

really understanding the techniques used, is constructed with the pretension of

representing an objective way of directly producing valid results based on the

"scientific construction" of such techniques.

In Moscovici’s foreword to Herzlich 's book he pointed out that (1973) :

" A subject who answers a question in the course of an inquiry is not simply selecting a response

category, he is giving us a message. He is aware that if faced with another investigator or in different circumstances, the message would be coded

differently. Such variation does not imply that the response is less genuine, or that there is any kind of Machiavellian attempt to hide a "true" opinion. It is simply a matter of the interaction situation which emphasizes this or that aspect of the problem and

requires the use of a language adapted to the transitory but symbolic relationship associated with

this particular occasion " (pp xii ).

Traditional research has centered on the techniques and forgotten the subjects who answer them and the subjective contexts in which these answers are produced, as was previously recognized by Moscovici. The construction of the "social scenario" of research is about the way in which the participant’s social involvement in the

research is produced. Research, like all social activities, needs a certain social climate that facilitates the participants’ interests and dispositions to take part.

People have to become an active subject in the research. ( González Rey, 2006)

One of our lines of inquiry in the study of the relationship between individual subjective processes and social

representations is the study of the subjective processes in cancer and hypertension. These illnesses are socially

constructed on the basis of quite different social representations. The social representation of cancer is

organized around the subjective sense of death, evoking subjective senses of mutilation, emptiness, incapacity, the

end of social life, among others. Death exists in our society as a meaning, but as a distant meaning, something that has a little to do with us. When the person becomes

ill, in the case of cancer, death becomes a subjective sense, appearing as an emotional reality that is related to us. It threatens not only the affected person, but all of the

other people who keep in contact with him. One interesting fact in our work is that most women, who

psychologically recovered after breast cancer surgery, did not want to feel that other people were hiding the use of the word “cancer” during conservations and feeling pity

for them.

 E.S (38 years old) had breast cancer six year ago and recovered well after surgery. She told me that her own

mother did not mention the illness when she received the diagnosis: She referred

to it as "that thing".

MT, 50 years old, who also had breast surgery said: " In my case the

phenomenon did not exist, that frequently does, of having people not wanting to talk

naturally about the illness. In my case people would ask me: how is the breast

reconstruction doing? What are you doing to recuperate yourself? This experience was very good for me" ... " I liked people talking directly and naturally about the illness with me, because it is true that

cancer is a very ugly illness and people are curious about it ".

Another patient MG, 30 years old, with brain cancer that could not be treated by

surgery pointed out:

" Society constantly shows the people who died of cancer, it does not show those who

survived it. People have a representation that I also shared when I began with my cancer

which is that people with cancer will die immediately. Today I no longer have this idea.

Cancer kills people? Yes, it kills people like many other things that if you don't take care

of, you can also die, like, for example, a simple pneumonia ".

In a very similar way, M (34 years old) who also suffered breast surgery stated:

" I did not sleep with the fear of not seeing the next day. Today, I left "the ship to move on". The funny thing is that when one gets an illness like cancer one begins the slow wait for the end, and meanwhile, in this

period, many people die without any signal. Thus, I changed my uncertainty of before for

the pleasure of being here today together with my family".

The place of death in the social representation of cancer is evident, but

the most interesting thing is not the description of this, but the way in which

the subjective sense of death is articulated within other subjective senses, configuring a powerful subjective system

responsible for the way in which the illness is subjectively perceived by people.

The new subjective sense associated to the present also involves a new capacity to appreciate the new aspects of daily life.

These new aspects are rarely appreciated by the people who view life as a competition, as a race against time to acquire power, social

recognition and status. The subjective impact of cancer is so great, that it facilitates a radical subjective change in some people,

those who are usually the ones who psychologically get over it. Paradoxically, this impact has a decisive role in changing the way of life of people facilitating a new

approach to life.

M’s expressions in the completing phrases activity wrote:

-   I like: to enter the sea

-   I consider that I can: live well everyday

-   If I could: I would like to submerge into the sea under moonlight with my husband

-   I want: to live each moment of my life meaningfully

-   Competition: is very disappointing for me

-   I cannot: quit living each day of my life intensively

 MT (50 years old), referred to before, said:

"Today, I perceive myself to be a person who gives less importance to money and much more importance to the quality of life. I greatly appreciate being surrounded by

people that I like, having good experiences, producing and working, because when you have cancer you have the

impression of seeing death very near. This greatly inspires life, you learn to appreciate things that were completely

irrelevant to you before... I remember one day that I went to work to leave some documents and when I was going back to my house after, I was imprisoned by the midday

traffic, which is like rush hour here in Brasilia. It was a hot day and I was sweating, yet I really appreciated the

temperature and everything that was happening around me. In other moments of my life I would have considered that situation very uncomfortable, but now it is completely

different ".

 LM, 45 years old, female, divorced and

suffered from a severe hypertension crisis pointed out that:

" Now I only perceive the headache, because I have suffered with it for more than ten years, it does not make a big difference. Days when my blood pressure is so high, I feel queasy, but it rarely happens " ...... " I really do not feel anything, it is as if I don't have hypertension" ... " Of course , I know

that with time one has to take care, because hypertension can produce a brain

hemorrhage. But, this only happens when you have had hypertension for a long time ".

Following up on this issue she said: " What makes me feel stressed is having a lot of work and at the end being penniless. I will continue working hard but I will never cover my needs

with my salary. What can I do to change it? It cannot be changed" ..." From all the things that the cardiologist recommended me to do I can only do the physical exercise, but I don't like to ... I also never have time to do it. The little time that remains free in each day I prefer to

rest, to read a good book or to watch television and this is the only time in which I could do

exercise, therefore, to do exercise I would have to sacrifice the short moments of pleasure in

my daily life ".

 Subjectively, she cannot develop new

subjective senses in the situation that she lives. This is very clear in the following

passage of our conversation referring to a period when she was hospitalized. She said:

" It was a marvelous time. I miss this time in the hospital so much, I did not

receive telephone calls, and I did not have visitors, only my daughters that I chose. I

did not have anything to do, only make my bed and talk with the people

there" ...” I slept very well after lunch… really it was like a holiday !!”

FINAL REMARKS 

- Social representations are a true blend of subjective senses permanently

involved in the tension of symbolic and emotional processes, taking many

different courses in socially shared spaces of social practices. It is somewhat

impossible to define social representations by their objects,

fragmenting them into the different isolated entities, as has been done up to now in many inquiries related to them.

-  The theoretical approach to the study of social representations, mentioned above,

implies some epistemological considerations that should direct the empirical research. Among them the

following considerations are emphasized: research as a dialogical endless process,

the constructive - interpretative character of the inquiry process and the rescue of

the singular as a path to knowledge production.

-   The study of the social representations of cancer and hypertension define a good

focus for studying the intrinsic tension between social representations and

individual subjective alternatives as a way to develop social and individual

subjectivities.