Culture and social representations: A continuing dialogue in search for heterogeneity in social developmental psychology

Abstract

In this commentary on Jahoda (2012) and Moghaddam (2012), I discuss the problem of the reification of culture from a social representations perspective and argue that social representations as a notion overcomes many of the shortcomings of the notion of culture, the main being reification. Whilst building this argument I show, by making reference to recent developments in the field of social representations and social developmental psychology, how weaknesses in social representations theory identified by Jahoda (1988) were addressed and how insights from this approach can be used for diversity management policies in education. © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.