50 years of research on social representations : central debates and challenging questions

Abstract

International audience ; To mark 50 years of research on social representations (SR), we planned both a special issue and a conference to bring together some of the most significant papers from the last 50 years. We are delighted to present the main trends of this special issue in this editorial, and are also extremely happy with the level of thought and debate it has produced. In launching the call for the special issue, rather than reduce this celebration of the 50 years of SR to an obsessive trend towards bibliometrics and impact factors, we felt it would be more informative and thought-provoking to have a collection of papers nominated by those who use them-researchers, teachers, peers, students-as the most debated, insightful, illustrative or valuable for them in their research and teaching. This issue brings together the best of these commentaries, together with the original papers chosen in those commentaries as the most significant and, in some cases, further commentary from the original authors. Hence a defining feature of this special issue was dialogue-dialogue not only between older and newer texts and protagonists in SR, but also between teachers and students, and between researchers with different perspectives, working in different contexts with different methods and politics of research and with different intervention needs and different goals for the future