Social Representations Theory and Everyday Knowledge
A methodological criticism from Philosophy of Language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4181/RNC.2005.13.145Keywords:
Social Sciences, Knowledge, Social Psychology, Language, Qualitative ResearchAbstract
On this article I discuss a modality of knowledge constructed inside social groups: the social representations. As a well-known approach to Public Health problems, especially on Brazilian reality, Social Representations Theory (SRT) has been taken many times just as an analytic tool, what conducts to the naturalization of groups and group’s discourses. Such approach denies the acute criticism present on Serge Moscovici’s intent of studying a modality of knowledge submitted to social context and history. The article’s aim is indicating, as usually SRT and its methodological approach are located inside a special modality of language, a language as calculus, on the tradition of a Husserlian philosophy of language. I conclude that, from another conception of language, language as a universal medium, SRT must be understood as a social and qualitative enterprise, which supports a kind of relationship among scientist and knowledge, with the researcher as a better social constructor than an explorer.
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