Semiotic Construction of the Self in Multicultural Societies

A Theory of Proculturation

Vladimer Lado Gamsakhurdia, Vladimer Gamsakhurdia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367545925
• eBook ISBN: 9780429574887
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología aplicada

Semiotic Construction of the Self in Multicultural Societies elaborates on a holistic theory on the self, by means of integrating social representation theory, dialogical self theory and particular ideas from Vygotskyan developmental psychology in one framework.

This book sends a humanistic message by indicating the power of inexhaustible human imagination that empowers individuals to strive for knowing the unknown, checking limits of their abilities and challenging (distancing) and at the same time, affectively and semiotically engaging (undistancing and recreating) their heritage cultures. It provides theoretical elaborations and innovations through the example of the case study of Georgian society and particular cases of proculturation. The theoretical and empirical explorations of proculturation experiences allow ways of tracing the rebuilding of the bridges between psychological and anthropological sciences, paving a path towards transdisciplinary approaches.

This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of social psychology, semiotics and multicultural studies.

Chapter 1

Considering semiotic dynamics of social representation

Social representation theory (SRT) appeared in the middle of the 20th century as a counter-movement against more “individualistic” stances in social psychology, which dominated the field in those times. Young Serge Moscovici (Marková, 2017; Moscovici, 2008) was dissatisfied by widespread reductionist and mechanistic approaches in psychology, and gave birth to the theory which emphasized the fundamental role of the “social” (Sammut et al., 2015). Notably, he was specifically interested in structuralist and systemic approaches like cybernetics and Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology. SRT was conceived as a systematic theory of social processes, incorporating ideas from cognitivism, sociology, and anthropology. Moscovici brought the “social” component into the social psychology of his time and promoted the importance of communicative practices (Linell & Marková, 1993; Marková, 2000, 2017). As a result, SRT became one of the emblematic symbols of European social psychology’s resistance to the American reductionist and mainly quantitative/experimental wing of the field.

This chapter cannot cover the entirety of SRT with its numerous proliferations; instead, the discussion focuses on a consideration of those axiomatic theoretical assumptions which underpin the basic structure of the theory, and its relation to sociocultural psychology of semiotic dynamics in particular.

Firstly, in order to better understand Moscovici’s views, it is necessary to clarify more clearly the context that existed by the time of the appearance of SRT. Initially, we should describe the general features of the dominating “American social psychology” in relation to which Moscovici elaborated his ideas (Jahoda, 1988). “American social psychology” has been, and still is, mainly occupied by studying individuals’ reactions to particular environmental/situational stimuli, mostly measuring them in laboratory settings or by conducting widespread quantitative surveys with questionnaires. Muzafer Sherif, Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram and other classic social psychologists (Howard, Ross, & Nisbett, 1992; Ross & Nisbett, 1991) were investigating individuals’ particular reactions to specific situations/instructions/conditions and were generalizing aggregated (summed) results to the group, without paying attention to the underlying subtleties of intrapersonal or interpersonal mental processes or to so-called “outliers”. Humans’ reactions were implicitly conceived as ontologized parameters without delving into the developmental features of research subjects’ phenomenological experiences (Valsiner, 2017b). They were treating groups as sums of individuals, and the inherent developmental aspect of the “social”, along with the fact of the systematic character of interrelations between individuals, was virtually ignored.

In some cases, discrepant tendencies were openly disregarded in favour of simplified inductive deductions. For example, the first phase of Sherif’s “Robbers Cave experiment” failed initial hypotheses, while the second attempt is believed to have been highly manipulated. It is reported that research participants even confronted the experimenter, who was trying to impose a desirable scenario even though research subjects did not show hostility towards out-group members, as Sherif claimed (Perry, 2018). Classic social psychological experimental data provided partially valuable information on particular tendencies characterizing in-group and out-group processes; however, they were essentially unserviceable in terms of understanding social processes in their totality. And most importantly, the role of subjectivity for the social processes was ignored. This is where Moscovici appeared with fresh ideas on social processes.

Social representations versus attitudes

From the very beginning, Moscovici explicitly opposed “social representations” to “attitudes” in order to distinguish his views from the traditional social psychology of his time (Marková, 2017). The study of attitudes had been at the heart of social psychology since Thomas and Znaniecki’s famous study on Polish emigrants in Chicago (Abbott & Egloff, 2008; Echavarria, 1940; Thomas & Znaniecki, 1919). Thomas even stated that attitudes should be the main research object for social psychology (Farr, 1998).

Attitudes reveal people’s positive or negative emotional position, whether or not they like something or someone, while social representations contain not only affective component but also predominantly cognitive schemas which organize humans’ information processing system (Marková, 2000; Moscovici, 2008). Attitudes belong to individuals, and when researchers talk about groups’ attitudes they mean aggregates of individual data, whereas social representations are conceived as the modes of knowing and understanding, which are essentially “social” and operate beyond the idiosyncratic mental processes. SRT’s main achievement was that it naturally stood up against simplistic behavioristic stances as it re-introduced emphasis on ideas and non-visible mental activities. The theoretical scope of SRT has been very ambitious since its inception, and aimed at elaborating on an all-encompassing theory of social mind. Moscovici implied that social representations reflect systematic interrelations between affective and cognitive processes; however, he did not elaborate much on the former, which resulted in the excessively rationalistic approach.

From “collective representations” towards “social representations”

Notably, SRT itself was deeply grounded in Durkheim’s sociological theory. While trying to make social psychology more “social” Moscovici often refers to Durkheim’s “collective representation” (Moscovici, 1988b, 1998) and brings it into his model to accentuate the primacy of collective processes over individuality. Moscovici agrees with Durkheim in that thinking is a collective process and is unattainable for an isolated individual. Thus, any mental process is regarded as inherently social. However, Moscovici made significant advancement in comparison to Durkheim’s original views, reflecting the internal fragmentation of societal structures (Moscovici & Marková, 1998) by introducing the term “cognitive polyphasia”, which reflects the plurality of contradictory social representations concerning certain phenomena. Moreover, social representations are conceived as dynamic phenomena and might be changed through social communication, whereas “collective representations” do not have the possibility of transformation, as Durkheim altogether diminished the role of individual subjectivity. Furthermore, it is crucial to consider SRT in terms of fundamental paradigmatic assumptions as it has been developed through a process of swirling in-between the various theoretical dichotomies.

SRT in and out of the dichotomic traps

Relating to internal and external infinities

Cartesian social psychology divided the mental system into the internal and outer parts, where the latter has been regarded as a dependable source of information, while the former was considered as just a passive perceiver. This led to the conceptual separation of individual and society from each other. Moscovici criticized the Cartesian stance, indicating the dependence of human thinking (and representing process) on the socially communicated system of meanings (Moscovici, 1988b).

According to SRT, human thinking, perception, and selective attention are dependent on the conventionalized system of notions and categories. Moscovici indicates that humans may not be able to notice a particular stimulus, even if it is visibly present in front of them, if it does not correspond to any of the socially conventionalized cognitive categories. For example, white people might overlook Afro-Americans in the streets of the USA (Moscovici, 2001). So, Moscovici argues that mental processes are conditioned by socially constructed and shared classificatory systems, which have compulsive power. Moscovici refers to Bartlett, who indicated that people tend to ignore particular non-conventionalized features of perceived objects in order to fit them into the commonly accepted classes (Bartlett, 1932). Until the coming of the Renaissance era, most people in Europe were sure that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Nowadays we know that stars and planets move the other way around; however, even today, when we watch a sunset, we still perceive/experience that the sun is going down despite knowing that it is not the case. So, personal reality is constructed by social reality (Lewin, 1947).

“We see only that which underlying conventions allow us to see.”

(Moscovici, 2001)

SRT enriched over-simplistic individualistic studies on human cognition by i highlighting its social basis. However, Moscovici’s views were still somewhat reductionistic, as he mostly preserved the idea of unilateral conditioning. In a sense, an assumption on the primacy of social processes led to the implicit consideration of social representations as independent variables. Moscovici treats social representations not as a theoretical concept, but as a real phenomenon (Moscovici, 1988b, 2001) that directs the human mind. Social representations are attributed to autonomy and independence from individual mental processes (Moscovici, 2001, 2008). By implicitly preserving Durkheim’s beliefs on the decisive importance of collective forces, Moscovici relegated an individual to be seen as a secondary product of collective thinking and activity.

“Representations are social entities, with a life of their own, communicating between themselves …”

“The information we receive, and to which we try to give a meaning, is under control and has no other significance for us than they [social representations] give it.”

(Moscovici, 2001; author’s comment in parentheses)

So, according to SRT, an individual is mostly being dissolved into socially constructed representations. Representations are believed to be forming sui generis, while the self’s agentivity, as a factor, is mainly ignored despite the initial goal of elaborating a more inclusive approach.

SRT, the self, and sociocultural dynamics

Moscovici’s tendency to disregard idiosyncratic mental processes is problematic in one other sense. If we assume that social representations are autonomous from individuals, then the possibility of sociocultural dynamics comes to be ambiguous, as social representations should not be attributed agency. Moscovici stated that social representations might be changed through historical development and communication; however, he never referred to the importance of the subjective interpretation of this matter. The main ways for changing social representations considered by the core followers of SRT are the modification of group members or the disappearance of a group altogether (Sammut et al., 2015); however, it seems unclear how individuals are related to social representations. Such a stance makes the underlying mechanism of mental dynamics somewhat vague, improbable, and/or even tragic—especially because of the excessive accent on the social processes that come at the expense of the dismissal of the role of the self.

Thus, inasmuch as subjectivity was not unambiguously reflected in SRT and social representations have attributed an autonomy from the self, then the “social” mental phenomena came to be implicitly regarded rather as mostly static entities. The only meaningful indication on subjectivity is the idea of “polemic representations” which belong to particular individuals that contradict hegemonic social representations, but the meaning and place of the former in the broader system of sociocultural dynamics, and how the self relates to the latter, are not clear. The indication of possible mechanisms for sociocultural changes provided by SRT is too vague and leads to theoretical deadlock, as it ignores not only subjectivity in general, but the affective dimensions of it which are at the core of any meaning-making processes.

It is the agentic self who communicates, acts, constructs ideas, and moves through lived-experiences, not the abstract idea of groupness or society (Valsiner, 2000, 2014). The self is the subject of constructive activities and creativity in general. It enacts and makes alive any representation by making its interpretations. Representation, if not negotiated by the self, is similar to the dead languages such as Latin. So, a person is the primary agent leading mental dynamics.

S/he is driven not by merely external stimulation or guidance, but by the ambition to achieve particular goals in life (Satō, Mori, & Valsiner, 2016; Tateo, 2014, 2016; Valsiner, 2017b) as humans’ action is inherently driven by their intentions (Brentano, 1995). Any person is constantly heading to the future.

So, by dismissing subjectivity, SRT overlooked the real lived-experiences, which are always personal and underpinned by human intentionality. “Social” should signify the invisible chemistry of intersubjective and interobjective relationality, but not a super-human or over-human entity. By placing the accent on relationality, we are able to adhere to the idea of systemic processuality and avoid essentialization of such abstractive sociocultural phenomena as “social representation”. Representations are constructed through interpersonal relations that evolve in the sociocultural context; however, that process is always managed by the self, which is the only subject of the process.

In this sense, representations could be regarded not as social, but as interpersonal. The latter predicative conveys more clearly that the process is constructed in-between various persons/subjects and not by abstract society.

SRT and time-dimension

The depersonalized and static character of social representations is additionally revealed in their excessive dependence on the past and history. Moscovici explicitly stated that the past is the basis of present social processes. “Memory prevails over deduction” and reason (Moscovici, 2001). According to him, history defines our current feeling, thinking, and representing processes. Notable studies on social representations are mainly oriented on describing the status quo and its historical foundations at best (Sammut et al., 2015). The future time is absent in Moscovici’s SRT.

Neglection of the prospective (future) time-dimension furthermore discloses that SRT treats humans as simplistically reactive beings, who respond to the stimuli that are provided by the sociocultural environment. Wagner et al.’s studies of inter-objectivism are a vivid example of the excessive accent on external objects (Wagner, Kello, & Rämmer, 2018). The weight of conditioning is placed excessively on the external world, ignoring the creative potential of internal higher mental processes of imagination. Ironically enough, Moscovici’s theory is implicitly leading to those theoretical implications that he explicitly tried to distance from.

According to Moscovici, social representations’ prime function is to reduce uncertainty and tension. He believed that balance and clarity are the main benefits of social thinking. However, people always cope and co-create tension as they live in a relative tensegrity (Marsico & Tateo, 2017). People are not usually satisfied by what they have at the moment or had in the past, and desire better/further developments. Most people, if not all, are inherently characterized by striving for future accomplishments, which is expressed more or less saliently. Excessive accents on the past that is already completed and relatively clear left future-related ambiguity and tensions out of Moscivician SRT’s focus. However, even history is being remembered in relation to future expectations and desires/intentions. Subsequently, I will discuss one of the most important post-Moscovician developments in SRT, which addresses the time-dimension explicitly.

Bauer & Gaskell’s (1999) renowned Toblerone model indicates the future orientation of social representations along with the past; however, they explicitly stated that the process of knowing is never idiosyncratic, contradicting the idea of human creativity, intentionality, and agency. While it is clear that the imaginary other is always present in the process of meaning-making (Marsico et al., 2009; Mead, 1934), it is also crucial to reflect the importance of personal subjectivity, as it is the self who relates to the external voices, not otherwise. Bauer and Gaskell assume that the peculiarity might prevent individuals from understanding each other; however, this view is not accurate, as people have an inherent ability of sembling/empathy (Valsiner, 2000) that enables them to establish interobjective conversation even without prior existing common ground. Moreover, the idea of humans’ uniqueness by no means requires the absolutization of differences, but rather indicates the different flavours and ornaments that individuals can mould. Imagination allows people to feel-into and think-into other selves’ minds, which is the basis for co-genetic construction of humanity (Tateo, 2016, 2018a; Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013); however, higher mental processes remain idiosyncratic.

So, classic SRT, and even more so the Toblerone model, efficiently reflected macro-level social tendencies; however, they did not cover the creative abilities of humanity. Bauer and Gaskell did not pay much attention to the capabilities of human imagination and its role in the construction of imagination (Bauer & Gaskell, 1999; Sammut et al., 2015). If people’s cognition was restrained only by existing “systems of knowledge” (which is how Bauer and Gaskell define social representations in line with Moscovici), then individual discoveries and much of artwork would have never been created. For example, it is known that Da Vinc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Series Editor Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Considering semiotic dynamics of social representation
• 2 Overcoming fragmentation—semiotic dynamics of the self’s construction
• 3 Theory of proculturation
• 4 Proculturation as a systemic phenomenological process
• 5 Considering methodological preconditions for proculturation studies
• 6 Historical roots of Georgianness—Ethnic positioning through reintegrative proculturation
• 7 Constructing social representations as sign-complexes—from historical foundations towards contemporary Georgianness
• 8 The case of an emigrant’s proculturation—a semiotic jump in human development
• 9 Epilogue: Proculturation of the self in context
• References
• Index