INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE REPRESENTATIONS IN SOCIAL-CONTEXT - A MODEST CONTRIBUTION TO RESUMING THE INTERRUPTED PROJECT OF A SOCIOCULTURAL DEVELOPMENTAL-PSYCHOLOGY

This article suggests an approach to representation - simultaneously c onstructivist, sociocultural, and interpretive - that can address the complementary roles of culture and individual agency in development. T he necessary starting point is to recognize, following Durkheim, that collective representations are an irreducible reality sui generis and play a constitutive role in the formation and structuring of individua l representations. Development must be understood as a genuinely diale ctical process that includes the active appropriation (not just passiv e absorption) of collective representations through various modes of s ocially structured symbolic action. This requires both distinguishing and grasping the interplay of three analytical levels: individual, rel ational or interactional, and collective. Piaget's work is shown to of fer an instructive case of how promising tendencies in this direction have become derailed. The authors also offer a concrete illustration o f one line of research informed by the kind of theoretical approach ad vocated here.