Reference: Castro, P. (2014). The approach of social representations to sustainability: Researching time, institution, conflict and communication. In G. Sammut, E. Andreouli, G. Gaskell, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Handbook of Social Representations.

Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

The approach of social representations to sustainability: researching time, institution,

conflict and communication

Paula Castro

Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE-IUL) & CIS-IUL

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to present and discuss some of the contributions that the

Theory of Social Representations can offer for a better understanding of the socio-

psychological dimensions involved in environmental and ecological protection and

sustainability and for advancing research in these areas. The chapter does not aim to be

an exhaustive review of existing knowledge about the human dimensions of

environmental and sustainability problems and solutions. Instead, its main goal is to

formulate some of the substantive contributions the approach of social representations

has recently made and can continue to make to the field of social studies of

sustainability, broadly defined as a multi-disciplinary field researching the social and

psychological dimensions of sustainability and related topics, like environmental

concern, environmental protection and climate change. It will illustrate these

contributions by presenting studies explicitly drawing on the approach of social

representations and whose findings clearly express what can be gained by resorting to it.

The chapter is structured in 3 sections. The first part briefly describes the emergence

of the concern with environmental protection and the naissance of the field of social

studies of sustainability. The second part outlines the theoretical contributions that the

Theory of Social Representations (henceforth TSR) – as a social-psychological

approach - has to offer for advancing research in this field. I propose that drawing on

TSR incites researchers to take into account four main dimensions: time, institution,

conflict and communication. Finally, the empirical illustrations follow.

1. The emergence of modern environmental concern

The emergence phase of modern concerns with environmental and ecological

protection dates from the post war years; at the time “green” concerns, and the social

movements and minority groups battling for them, were very much associated to

"counter-culture" values, criticizing consumerism and over-reliance on technology

(Castro, 2006; Douglas & Wildavski, 1982; Wynne, 2002). The same period saw the

first steps towards an international cooperation for dealing with environmental

problems. For instance, it was in 1948 that the United Nations created the International

Union for the Preservation of Nature.

The '70s of the 20 century inaugurate the second phase of modern

environmentalism – the institutionalisation phase. The institutionalisation steps

included the organization of international conferences, the signing of international

treaties, the issuing of national legislation and the creation of environmental Ministries

and Green parties. It was also during this decade that the major environmental NGOs

were founded. These steps were accompanied by a more generalized and less critical

environmental concern, visible in many countries around the world (Dunlap, 2008).

During the ‘80s and ‘90s of the 20 century these trends were consolidated and a

Generalization phase started (Castro & Mouro, 2011). While polls showed growing

public concern with environmental problems, the notion of “sustainable development”

was forged. The notion quickly became a reference concept, which helped unify

discourses and advance social consensus (Castro, 2012; Uzzell & Räthzel, 2009). In

post war years “green” critics had raised objections to “development” as entailing too

much consumption of resources; however when “development” became qualified as

“sustainable”, the resulting expression became acceptable and influent (Uzzell &

Räthzel, 2009). Today the omnipresent and conciliatory notion of “sustainable

development” is so broad that even groups with diverging goals can find their interests

represented in it.

In the European Union the notion was instrumental for providing a rational for

the many environmental laws and directives issued in the last two decades (Castro,

2012). The main focus of this phase in EU member states was – and remains – the

attempt to achieve generalized change towards sustainability at the level of nations,

spreading full-fledged accommodation of and obedience to the sets of new and complex

legislations already in place and regulating domestic, industrial and corporate waste

management, energy options, water conservation, transport options, biodiversity

protection or the management of electric residues.

The social sciences, with social psychology among them, tried to monitor and

understand these new trends and transformations as they unfolded. As a result, a

multidisciplinary field of studies attempting to understand the human and social

dimensions of environmental problems and (possible) solutions and to map public

positions in this regard was created. This field – I propose to call it “social studies of

sustainability” – first endeavoured to study the “socio-demographic factors associated

with environmentalism” and the “values, beliefs and other social psychological

constructs related to environmentalism” (Dietz, Stern & Guagnano, 1998, pg. 451).

Methodologically, these tasks were initially mostly pursued through questionnaire based

studies.

During the first 30 years the field showed some theoretical and methodological

fragmentation and research questions of a dynamic type - such as how different

environmental beliefs reflect inter-group conflicts - were incipient or even lacking

(Castro, 2006). In more recent years, however, it has expanded in various directions and

the core metaphors around which it organizes also extended. Regarding core metaphors,

the trajectory was from environmental concern to sustainability and now to climate

change. During the first decades, research was concerned, as mentioned, with

understanding how people made sense of environmental protection goals, looking for

instance at how subscribing to certain types of values (e.g. biosferic values) predicted

environmental concern (Dietz, Stern & Guagnano, 1998). In the following years studies

began to worry also more systematically with how sense making was linked to action

and with how to change people’s ideas, norms and behaviours in order to achieve

sustainability; more recent times see a preoccupation with how climate change is

understood, represented in the media, and with what people are doing or failing to do in

order to mitigate its consequences. Cutting across the core metaphors, some applied

topics remained relatively stable throughout these years are. Resource conservation –

including here recycling, energy and water conservation -, biodiversity protection and

natural resource management, pollution problems and use of new and renewable energy

sources, green purchasing and transportation options have been important topics

systematically researched.

Recent overviews characterize the field as continuing to pay too much attention

to the individual level of analysis, relying too much on the premise that achieving social

change means mainly remodelling the behaviour of individuals (Uzzell & Räthzel,

2009; Castro, 2012), and offering privileged attention to sustainability problems

solvable from the side of consumption, and not enough consideration to those that can

be dealt with through production (Uzzell & Räthzel, 2009). Studies have also offered

more attention to private sphere behaviours than to public sphere ones, often forgetting

the professional and citizen dimensions of people’s intersection with sustainability

matters (Castro, 2012). Consequently, research has not always looked at how social

change towards sustainability also means remodelling the relations among certain

groups involved in the production and transformation of “green” discourses and

proposals (Harré, Brockmeier & Muhlhausler, 1999), and/or between these and certain

societal institutions, failing to stimulate more the engagement of the field with policy

and decision-makers (Spence & Pidgeon, 2009).

In this context, studies informed by the TSR have made a number of significant

contributions that were helpful in advancing research towards a less individual and

introverted perspective, looking at more dynamic questions. The TSR has the potential

for continuing to do this, as I hope to show in a section to follow. Before that, however,

I will very briefly present the central aspects of the theory that fashion and position it as

instrumental for contributing to the field of social studies of sustainability by integrating

and expanding it.

2. An outline of the potential contributions of TSR

In social psychology there are two main types of approaches aimed at understanding

how people interpret and make sense of the world (Vala & Castro, 2013). The first type

privileges social factors and interaction. The second type focuses on cognitive factors

and the processing of information. The theory of social representations belongs to the

first tradition, the one looking at how social factors and social relations inform sense-

making. There are other theories and approaches looking at these same aspects, like for

instance those focusing on social norms. Yet, the Theory of Social Representations

(TSR) offers an epistemological specificity: the positioning of the dialogical triangle

Self-Object-Alter as the condition of emergence of representations (Moscovici, 1972;

Markova, 2008). This epistemological positioning means that the TSR sees relations as

the locus of meaning making, or the locus of interpretation of objects.

Two major consequences follow from assuming that the Ego-Alter relation is the

locus of meaning making. The first consequence is that there can be no meaning making

outside a culture. The second is that there can be no meaning making outside a given,

interactional, context. In other words, the two consequences are that all representation is

doubly situated: it has a cultural component and a contextual component (Vala &

Castro, 2012). Let us look at each in turn.

By highlighting the cultural component the TSR reminds us that “we absorb

social representations, starting in infancy, together with other elements of our culture

and with our mother tongue” (Moscovici & Markova, 2000, p. 253). It therefore recalls

that there is no reason to believe that we “are like Adam on the day of his creation,

opening his eyes on animals and other things, deprived of tradition, lacking shared

concepts with which to coordinate his sensory impressions” (Moscovici, 1998, p. 215).

In other words, TSR reminds us that when we are born we immediately enter traditions

of meaning as well as traditions of meaning-making.

This is equal to reminding us that representations – while speaking of an object –

express also the cultural and social forms that exist in a time and a space, rather than

expressing timeless and space-less objects. In turn, because culture is always grounded

and actualized in institutions, this amounts to reminding us that “While representations

are often to be located in the minds of men and women, they can just as often be found

'in the world' and as such examined separately" (Moscovici, 1998, p. 214). Approaching

a culture and its institutions involves looking at its representations in the world, or in

time and space, and therefore implies looking at stability. Yet, focusing on culture

means, naturally, also acknowledging that institutions evolve and change. So, in sum,

since no culture exists without both stability and change, research drawing on TSR

needs to include the temporal and the institutional dimensions.

Including the temporal dimension when conducting social studies of

sustainability means asking questions bringing into focus the temporal aspects involved

in how people deal with the changes required to implement environmental protection

and sustainability goals. In turn, including the institutional dimension means

acknowledging that some representations enter specific cultural and societal structures,

i.e., are institutionalized, for instance through laws and regulations. This endows them

with a particular power, and calls attention to the fact that some representations are

formal, rather stable, and institutionally decided. Yet, this naturally also calls attention

to the fact that not all representations are institutionalized, and therefore brings to the

fore that representations are not all equal, and surely do not voice equally well all the

groups that a society harbors in a given moment in time (Moscovici, 1988;

Jovchelovitch, 2007; Castro, 2012; Howarth, 2006). This makes conflict - among

different representations and different groups - a third dimension, besides the temporal

and the institutional, that needs to be considered by studies drawing on TSR. And this

also means that, while looking at conflict, it is important to contemplate also what type

of representations – hegemonic, emancipated or polemic (Moscovici, 1988) – are being

discussed.

The second consequence of having the dialogical triangle at the center of

meaning making is, as mentioned, that there can be no sense making outside a specific

interactional context. By highlighting this aspect, the theory recalls that sense-making is

for orienting towards the specific Other of concrete relationships, not just the generic

Other of culture. So it calls attention to what in representation is or may be contingent,

informal, context and relation specific. Again, this calls for taking seriously the time

dimension, as no relations exist outside a project, i.e. without a projection into an

anticipated future (Bauer & Gaskell, 2008).

The combination of the two aspects – culture and context – brings forward an

actor who, in communicating and in thinking, in relating and in musing about relations,

is always responding simultaneously to the generic Alter of culture and the concrete

Alter of the interactional context. An actor who, in representing, pays attention to what

is happening here and now, but also to what is continuously made present through

cultural institutions. In order to understand this actor, the field of social studies of

sustainability has to look at how communication, language and discourse continuously

link the cultural and the contextual, the institutional and the contingent (Castro & Batel,

2008). And therefore communication is a fourth dimension to be taken into account.

In sum, then: a field of social studies of sustainability informed by the approach

of social representations needs to look at the four dimensions of: time, institution,

conflict and communication. Several recent research programs explicitly reclaiming

their link with TSR have indeed combined several of these four dimensions. I shall now

illustrate how they did this, re-counting their main assumptions and findings, and

showing how the studies inter-twine in different ways all or some of the four

dimensions above, extracting clear research consequences and results from them. By

doing this I shall simultaneously attempt to better substantiate what it concretely means

to look at time, institutions, conflict and communication from the perspective of the

TSR. I will divide the next section in two parts, one including studies in which the

dimensions of time and institution are particularly relevant; the other aggregating

research in which the dimensions of conflict and communication are very evident. In

many ways this is an artificial division, since the four dimensions are present in most of

the studies; yet, they are not privileged to the same extent and this division tries to

highlight that.

3. Illustrations from recent research

3.1. Time and institution

The first set of studies I shall present examines meaning-making in the context of

individuals and communities dealing with the new laws for environmental protection, and

place in time some of the psycho-social processes these bring about. Laws and regulations

therefore constitute the main institutional dimension here approached. This is a very

important dimension, since this type of innovation originating in the legal and policy

sphere is highly central in our Era of global commitments (Beck, 2009), many of which are

subsequently translated into national laws. In the sustainability domain this is a particularly

clear trend. Today in many countries around the world and assuredly in European Union

(EU) member states, there are numerous regulations and laws wishing to promote social

and cultural change towards sustainability (Baker, 2007). The psycho-social processes

mobilized for the reception of these laws are also the processes through which people

adjust to a certain sociopolitical order and its institutions (Moghaddam, 2008), and

therefore a topic of major relevance for a theory concerned with how representations

respond simultaneously to culture and its institutions, as well as with how institutional

dimensions affect the specific contexts in which relations occur (Castro, 2012).

This institutional side of environmental change is not always recognized by socio-

psychological approaches. For instance, although there are numerous studies examining the

influence of environmental norms on change, they rarely acknowledge the fact that these

are new – or innovative – norms, many of which originate in new laws. These studies

consequently disregard the time and institutional dimensions of these norms and the

specific effects these may have on change. Moreover, most approaches to norms, besides

implicitly assuming norms to be co-defined in informal groups in ways largely

unconstrained by institutional facts such as state laws (Cialdini & Trost, 1993), usually

look more at behavioural/individual change and less at social change. This means that they

also overlook the fact that the new laws and norms affect in different ways different non-

voluntary formed groups, like professional and/or expert groups, and affect some

communities and groups more than others (Batel & Castro, 2009; Castro, 2012; Buijs et al.,

2012). In this sense, many studies on norms forget that the normative system specific of our

time needs to be viewed as including not just informal norms and values (Moghaddam,

2008), but also actual laws and policy commitments (Castro, 2012). By this, they also

neglect looking at how it happens in the context of inter-group relations, and brings about

conflict.

Yet, contrarily to these trends, some studies have drawn on TSR for explicitly

focusing on how new environmental laws and regulations as institutional facts affect

representational change in time. These studies have namely looked at how: (1) new

legislation on water pollution impacts on social representations of a river along a 30 years

span (Brondi et al, 2011); (2) certain factors in time can attenuate conflicts over new

protected areas (Hovardas & Kofiartis, 2008); (3) communities living in protected sites

respond to the new biodiversity laws and regulations (Mouro & Castro, 2012); (4)

impression management concerns may offer an indicator of whether or not new laws have

achieved the status of hegemonic norms (Félonneau & Becker, 2008; Castro & Bertoldo,

2012; Fischer et al., 2012). I shall now review these studies.

The study by Brondi and colleagues (2012) aimed to explore change and

stability in the social representation of the Italian Chiampo river over 30 years (see pg.

286). The authors assumed that the various components of a representation – like

emotions, images and practices - need not change in unison, and they wished to explore

how three legislative moments (time 1: first pollution regulations; time 2: some years

after their implementation; time 3: when new EU regulations were adopted) made these

components evolve along the years. The results show how the images of the river

progress to become more positive along time, as the river becomes less polluted by

force of the legislation. Yet results also show how in time 3 the habitual behaviour

continues to be one of avoidance and distrust of the river’s water, despite the positive

image of the now clear waters. This illustrates how the past is slow to evade from

representations, and conflicts may emerge among the different components of the

representation, expressing intra-personal contradictions and cognitive polyphasia

(Jovchelovitch, 2007), instrumental for adjusting to social and cultural change. Some of

the components can change faster, while others take longer and may consequently delay

change in other dimensions. Consequently, only by keeping the debate alive and

involving the concerned publics and users can the full process of change be assured,

even in the presence of laws (Brondi et al., 2011).

In this same regard, another example illustrates how the inclusion of local

groups in resource management in time may work to attenuate inter-group conflicts

arising in law-defined protected areas. In the Dadia Forest Reserve (Greece), and after

fierce park-people conflicts, locals’ positions have now shifted towards endorsement of

the protected area (Hovardas and Korfiatis, 2008). This can be attributed at least

partially to the fact that environmental measures in Dadia have been implemented by

local people working as park guards and guides involved in several activities in the

Reserve (Buijs et al., 2012). Their local embeddedness helped a representation of the

Reserve as “pure nature” to gradually diffuse among local residents. Moreover, these

local minority members were recruited for several years, which allowed their influence

to persist over time (Hovardas and Korfiatis, 2008).

Another study examines how local communities living in Natura 2000 protected

areas manage some of the dilemmas emerging from the conflicts between the new laws

for biodiversity conservation and local knowledge and positions (Mouro & Castro,

2012). It shows that the encounter between legal and local knowledge engenders a

specific format of cognitive polyphasia, which first offers generic support to the law

(through conventionalization: in general I agree with the law) and only then contests it

through thematization (but, in practice, the law is too strict). This “yes, but” type of

discursive organization allows community members to support the laws – a cultural and

societal imperative - while simultaneously opening space for negotiating their

contextual meanings and guaranteeing that the criticisms following the “but” do not

elicit negative social consequences. Here, then, cognitive polyphasia seems to enable

the expression of representations which do not seek full blown polemic, but attempt to

maintain cooperation in the context of an ongoing negotiation of meaning. This

negotiation offers respect to societal goals (expressed in the laws), while it attempts to

revise contextual implementations. In other words, polyphasia seems to be happening

here in the context of emancipated representations, those which sustain the everyday

conflict of interpretations and allow some ambivalence to emerge (Vala, Garcia-

Marques, Gouveia-Pereira & Lopes, 1998).

Another set of studies looking at the processes through which people deal with

new laws in time, departs from the premise that since the law is equal for all, well-

succeeded new laws are those which in time become hegemonic representations

associated to hegemonic norms, i. e., “uniform and coercive across a structured group,

like a nation” (Moscovici, 1988, p. 221). Classical examples of hegemonic

representations associated to hegemonic norms are the belief in a just world (Alves &

Correia, 2008) or the internality norm (Dubois & Beauvois, 2005). Yet, this is the ideal

format of the process of accommodation of new laws. The actual process can be – while

it is evolving in time - much more complex and hybrid. One path towards understanding

representations associated to new laws while the accommodation process is evolving is

examining how people present themselves and judge others– i.e. studying impression

management. For example, if agreement with the ideas or behaviours promoted by the

laws is seen as a requirement for a positive self-presentation, and disagreement a

requirement to a negative self-presentation, then the idea or behaviour can be said to be

hegemonic (Gillibert & Cambon, 2003). This has been investigated for conservation

ideas and behaviours by Félonneau and Becker (2008) and by Castro & Bertoldo

(2011). These studies show that expressing sustainable beliefs is now required for a

positive self-presentation and refused for a negative self-presentation, demonstrating

their positive social value. This signals the hegemonic status of sustainability ideas and

norms. But a distance, or gap, still is maintained between what is stated as desirable and

what is actually performed, and this can be seen as a sign of an emancipated

representation. Yet, even for those who do not always perform the behaviours the

normative dimension is highly relevant. An interview study across 5 European countries

has shown for example that many participants – mostly in in Scotland and the

Netherlands - spontaneously and specifically classified their own everyday behaviours

as “good” or “bad”, the “bad” ones being those that violated the implicit norms of

energy conservation, or local purchasing of fresh products (Fischer et al., 2012). This

indicates not only a clear awareness of what is normative; it also shows the participants

are offering a self-presentation that both incorporates that awareness and signals that the

speaker is already “punishing” her/himself for violating the norm (by classifying their

own behaviour as “bad”).

The same study (Fischer et al., 2012) also corroborates the findings of Brondi

and colleagues (2011) above mentioned, by showing that the various components of the

representations of energy and climate change – in this case, the normative, the cognitive

and the affective components – are not in unison and this creates inner tensions, and

cognitive polyphasia (Fischer et al., 2012). Another study shows, in turn, that tensions

may arise at the level of one single component – beliefs - , and bring about ambivalence

(Castro, Garrido, Reis & Menezes, 2009) as expression of inner conflict.

In summary – about time and institution in the environmental field

On the whole the set of studies above reviewed show evidence of how the institutional

promotion of change through new laws may open up representational conflicts. The

conflicts more clearly brought to the fore in these studies are intra-personal ones, and

are expressed in cognitive polyphasia, conveying the fact that not all components of a

representation change in unison, or are aligned at a certain point in time and space. It

was also shown that for understanding these phenomena it is important to take into

account that there are (at least) three different types of representations, and examine

how these types change in time.

The next section reviews studies that are more focused on how representational

conflicts can be linked to inter-group conflicts, and how they are expressed in

communication and discourse.

3.2. Conflict and communication

As mentioned, from the premises of TSR deducible from the dialogical triangle it

follows that working with the theory means paying simultaneous attention to

representations expressing the cultural, and more homogeneous across context, and

representations expressing the contextual, and more heterogeneous across context, since

more contingent to the position of individuals and groups in the social order and

regarding the issues at stake. In what regards this second dimension, the TSR has often

highlighted how social categories constitute an organizing principle for representational

processes (Doise, Clemence & Lorenzi-Cioldi, 1992; Echelroth et al., 2011). As such,

the theory may improve our understanding of how different groups differ with regard to

sense making and how these differences relate to local conflicts and are negotiated in

everyday communication and re-presented in mediated formats. It is thus important at

this point to note that the communication in the heading of this section will refer to both

interpersonal and mediated communication, the two types emphasized by the TSR.

The studies to be now reviewed make salient: (1) how representations respond to

cultural repertoires and contextual demands; (2) the role representational conflicts play

in social conflicts over how natural resources should be managed (Buijs et al., 2012),

how risk information must be transmitted (Poumadère & Bertoldo, 2010) or which types

of agriculture to favour; (3) how conflicts between scientific/expert groups and local

groups are expressed in discourse and communication (Selge, Fischer, van der Wal,

2011; Batel & Castro, 2009). Finally, a set of studies demonstrates (4) the usefulness of

a central notion of the SRT- anchoring -, for analyzing mediated communication about

climate change (Caillaud, Kalampalikis & Flick, 2011; Hoijer, 2010; Uzelgun & Castro,

2013).

A first example shows then how the heterogeneity of representations about the

new biodiversity laws (Mouro, 2011) expresses both cultural repertoires and contextual

aspects. Three positions emerged from the analysis of discourses of communities living

in Natura 2000 sites; these were simultaneously anchored in general categories - views

of nature identified by Cultural Theory and found around the world (see Dake, 1992;

Lima & Castro, 2005) - and local concerns. One view supported the current policy for

protecting a nature seen as fragile, in the protected sites as well as everywhere. A

second view wanted the elimination of laws as an obstacle to local development and

depicted Nature as robust and un-spoilable by industry or intensive farming. Still

another discourse called for adjusting the law to local specificities to allow for

sustainable forms of production in a Nature seen as robust, but only up to a point.

Also drawing on TSR, a synthesis of various studies about how conflicts

regarding natural resource management were linked to different representations can be

found in Buijs et al (2012). One study regards the protection of the wolf in the

Scandinavian Peninsula, where, due to strict protection, a new wolf population can now

be found. This expansion has led to hot controversies between social groups - between

nature managers and sheep farmers, between conservationists and local residents,

between biologists and hunters (Buijs et al., 2012; Figari & Skogen, 2011). The study

has shown how both enthusiasts and opponents of the reappearance of wolves shared an

admiration for wolves, as well as a core representation of the wolf as inextricably tied to

the idea of wilderness. Yet, a closer look at the more peripheral elements of the

representation revealed clear divergences with regard to how enthusiasts and adversaries

represented the relationship between wolves and local nature. While farmers and

hunters – wolf opponents - saw the natural environment as a landscape for human

sustainable use (i.e., areas for cultivating, hunting or berry picking), wolf supporters

saw this same environment as wilderness, and therefore, aligned with the wolf’s nature

and needs.

Another example of conflicting representations regards representations of

agriculture, but echoes rather similar themes. Working in France, Michel-Guillou

(2012), illustrates how the expression “sustainable agriculture” can encircle a high

heterogeneity of positions and conflicting goals. Those farmers more committed to

ecological farming view the notion of “sustainable” as leading to a questioning of the

very notion of growth and they represent sustainable farming as local, and based on

proximity. Yet, there are also farmers that view agriculture as human sustainable use of

the land, viewing the notion as supporting the possibility to conciliate economic growth

with environmental protection.

Conflicting representations regard also conceptions of risk. Poumadère and

Bertoldo (2010) analysed several cases of conflicts between the representations of risk

that shape the regulations applying to dangerous facilities, on one hand, and the

representations of local communities living in industrial areas, on the other. For local

populations, risks are naturalized and, when in risk situations, they do not immediately

uptake the risk information the facilities make available in accordance with the

regulations. In the same vein, a study about social representations of electricity (Devine-

Wright & Devine-Wright, 2009) clearly taps on inter-group factors. The study shows

how issues of national identity were a part of people’s understanding of electricity and

how they positioned themselves to electricity related themes was influenced by group

membership. For instance, participants from a Scottish town “articulated their concerns

about local impacts of pylon upgrade in the wider spatial and political context of

Scottish-English intergroup tensions (pg. 369)”.

Another set of studies illustrating inter-group conflicts focuses more explicitly

on tensions arising from the encounters between scientific and local knowledge (Batel

& Castro, 2009; Callaghan, Moloney, & Blair, 2012; Selge, Fischer & van de Wal,

2011; see also Buijs et al., 2012). A first example regards the new laws aiming to foster

public participation in environmental decision-making processes. Batel and Castro

(2009) examined the conflict between the expert and lay spheres of a Lisbon

neighborhood regarding the transformation of an historic Convent. The analyses reveal

that experts mostly use a reification-like communicative format to re-present the

controversy (assuming the existence of only one correct form of thinking an acting),

which reiterates their position as “those who know” and excludes community members

from the decision-making process, despite the laws. In turn, community members used

more often a consensualization-like format, in which arguments assumed the legitimacy

of different perspectives and discourses left open some possibilities of negotiation. This

study highlights that taking into account how specific communication formats express

power relations and may accentuate conflicts is crucial for a better understanding of the

socio-psychological processes involved in acceptance and resistance to change.

Another example concerns recycled water. Despite its scientific validity as an

environmentally sound and sustainable solution to Australia's ‘water crisis’, asserted as

such by the scientific community and the government, the Australian public offered

recycled water unexpected resistance (Callaghan et al., 2012). Callaghan and colleagues

(2012) shed some light on this resistance. They show how resistance is not linked to

lack of recognition of the environmental value of water recycling, and how the majority

of respondents expressed favourable views towards water recycling for purposes that

had no direct contact with the body. Yet, they also demonstrate that when the proximity

of the water to the body increased, favourability towards recycled water decreased, and,

by identifying the themata of purity/impurity as underpinning the social understanding

of water recycling, they show how un-favourability was linked with concerns with

impurity/safety. This use of the themata notion amply demonstrates how people

“employ validity criteria for their background knowledge that are at odds with scientific

standards” (Wagner, 2007, pg. 19) but find their origins in other types of legitimacy.

The themata concept has also been instrumental for understanding common

sense thinking about global warming. An interview study of London residents (Smith &

Joffe, 2012) discerned in the interviews the themata of self/other, natural/unnatural, and

certainty/uncertainty; these same themata were also obtained as objectified, via

mediated images and symbols of global warming frequent in the media. This

corroborates the importance of researching mediated communication. In the field of

social studies of sustainability the TSR has stimulated several recent analysis of the

press: about climate change (Caillaud, Kalampalikis & Flick, 2011; Hoijer, 2010;

Uzelgun & Castro, 2013), or protected areas (Castro, Mouro & Gouveia, 2012;

Hovardas & Stamou, 2006). As mentioned, many of the studies resort to the notion of

anchoring as a research tool. In a comparison of how the German and the French media

represented the 2007 Bali climate conference, Caillaud, Kalampalikis & Flick (2011)

show how in Germany it anchors to political, moral and human categories. This works

to bring climate change “close to home”, as both a global and a local problem. In

France, the conference news anchor it to financial and political categories, and to the

rich/poor countries divide, accentuating more the global dimension, and pushing it

further away from “home”. Another study shows how in Sweden, the media anchors

climate change issues in emotions, by using, for example, pictures appealing to

compassion, like “sweet and cuddly polar bears and walruses” (Hoijer, 2010, pg. 727).

Another example concerns how news articles in the mainstream Turkish press use the

rhetoric of science, presented in the form of a disembodied monologue, to establish

climate change as a factual threat (Uzelgun & Castro, 2013). The study indicates that

one way of achieving this is by anchoring climate change to its impacts on “sweet”

species and polar-regions, while representing its threats to human society in a distant

future, dissociating it from its concrete political context and concrete local action.

In fact, all these studies discuss important possible and plausible impacts that the

media depictions may have upon public responses and public opinion. Yet, none of

them has directly coupled media analysis with reception studies. Here lies then a most

fruitful avenue for future research, now that the existing mapping of press depictions is

starting to offer a comprehensive view of the topic.

Concluding remarks

The results and conclusions of the studies here presented reiterate what TSR has been

demonstrating in other applied fields: how social change is a complex process unfolding

gradually, or in phases, and not an on/off accomplishment (Castro & Batel, 2008;

Castro & Mouro, 2011), one idea that lies at the heart of TSR since its inception

(Moscovici, 1972, 1988). They also again highlight how innovation – in this case legal

innovation and normative innovation - produces debate, and how debate can produce

both acceptance and resistance to change. This thereby originates psycho-social

processes and phenomena of great interest for research but which can only be unveiled

if we take into account several levels of analysis, and acknowledge that representational

change does not happen without conflict, both inter-group and intra-personal.

Some of the studies reviewed focused then on the intra-personal expression of

the phenomena involved in the accommodation of innovation and in the debate

innovation produces. We saw examples of how the push for change originates inner

conflicts, contradiction, cognitive polyphasia and ambivalence, which may work as

forms of resistance to change. And we also saw how the same factors may produce in

other conditions acceptance and normative influence helping advance change.

Other studies took a more inter-group perspective, and showed how representations

are expressions of groups and their conflicting positions and showed the comprehensive

nature of meaning making and social thought. On the whole, it seems clear from these

contributions that the approach of social representations can inspire accrued interest in the

institutional support received by innovative sustainability laws and norms - or lack - in the

different contexts and institutions to which individuals are committed as citizens or

professionals (Castro & Batel, 2008).

Importantly, I believe, the studies here reviewed - both those with a more intra-

personal focus and those using a more inter-group perspective - also reiterate two

additional aspects. One is that indeed not all representations are equal. The other is that

when innovations enter a society the debate of representations assumes different formats

in different phases. Some representations are indeed more coercive, or hegemonic, are

incorporated in practices and institutions, go mostly undiscussed and require a lot of

effort to be changed. Others generate polemic, being passionately opposed by some

groups and fervently defended by others as admitting no compromise; and, others, still,

are re-negotiated and re-signified in subtle, constant, small, creative ways, sometimes

for very long periods of time.

By taking together this set of recent studies it is possible then to discern some

major opportunities for future research. I will now highlight four of these opportunities,

linked to the four dimensions of time, institution, conflict and communication that have

organized this review, as a possible contribution for stimulating new studies.

Regarding time, it seems very important to investigate how the three types of

representations may be linked to the cycles of innovation, and what are the social,

psychological and psycho-social processes that in time may be more important in

making representations change from one type to another. Regarding institution, one

aspect meriting more future research is how impression management aspects intertwine

with resistance to and acceptance of new laws and norms and role of possible conflicts

between different types of norms (namely, local versus societal). If this is done by

taking into account that the specific contexts and groups in which we present ourselves

and judge others affect and influence self-presentation and hetero-judgement, this is also

a way of advancing research about conflict. Moreover, if impression management

studies are fashioned so as to look at how language and discourse carry the signs of

what is normative (cfr. Fisher et al., 2012), and moreover, carry the signs of how the

speaker excuses her/himself for the violation of normative imperatives, this is also a

way of advancing research about communication. Finally, and still regarding

communication, a topic meriting urgent attention are reception studies, namely the

reception of media presentations of central topics, like climate change. In my view

researching these aspects can help in forging comprehensive and dynamic questions and

contribute for devising a more integrated field of social studies of sustainability.

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