EASP Summer School 2010

Christian Staerkle, University of Lausanne

Xenia Chryssochoou, Panteion University

This workshop is dedicated to the study of the normative regulation of psychological processes underlying social change and social stability. It focuses on the conceptualisation and empirical analysis of representations which sustain, justify or question existing social arrangements, and analyses how individuals position themselves towards these representations. Based on the assumption that people think, communicate and act on the basis of shared beliefs and shared knowledge, a social representational view highlights the normative and ideological foundations of cognitive and motivational processes. Psychological processes are therefore contextualised and their effects on domination systems defined by social class, gender, ethnicity and race analysed.

The workshop features presentations and discussions of classic and recent research on societal psychology, debates about key theoretical issues and group work in order to exchange and formulate research ideas. An important goal of the workshop is to elaborate new research questions and hypotheses on socially relevant issues, and original ways to test them. Theoretical issues to be addressed include the dialectic interplay between social change and social stability, the relationship between representation and identity, and the normative foundations of individual behaviour. Depending on participants'; background and interests, research topics may include justification of social order, social movements and social protest, or minority and majority perspectives on social change and stability. The most appropriate methods to test new hypotheses will be discussed, and may include the use of international survey data (e.g., European Social Survey, European Values Study), experiments or qualitative analyses.

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