Dr Sandra Jovchelovitch, S307

Optional course for MSc Culture and Society, MSc Social and Cultural Psychology, MSc Organisational and Social Psychology, MSc Social and Public Communication, MSc Global Media and Communications (with Fudan or USC) and MSc Health, Community and Development. Students on degrees without a psychology component may only attend subject to numbers, their own degree regulations and at the discretion of the Teacher responsible.

The objective of the course is to allow students to explore in depth the relationship between social representations and social contexts, with especial attention to the construction of everyday forms of knowledge, institutional functioning and community life.

The course will cover the social context of representational activity: (i) The genesis and development of representations, (ii) The public nature of representations, (iii) Time and place in the construction of representations: Memory and identity; Representing institutions and communities: (i) Institutions: The symbolic and the material in the life of communities, (ii) The instituting and the instituted in the life of communities, (iii) Institutions and communities as potential space; Representing/constructing Others: (i) The other institutionalised: strategies of classification, segregation and exclusion, (ii) The other in the community: strategies of habituation, denial and differentiation, (ii) The other in dialogue: solidarity and strategies of communicative action; The limitations and possibilities of social psychological intervention: (i) Research as a dialogical act: Interpretation, knowledge and empowerment.

Lecture (one hour) (PS437) x 10 LT, seminar/class (one hour) x 10 LT.

D Jodelet, Madness and Social Representations (1991); M Douglas, How Institutions Think (1987); C Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (1987); M Foucault, Madness and Civilization (1971); J Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol I and II (1987); S Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921); D W Winnicott, Playing and Reality (1971); I Martin-Baró, Writings for a Liberation Psychology (1994).

1. A formal two-hour examination in the ST: two questions from a choice of five (50%).
2. A written assignment of not more than 3,000 words (50%).