Knowledge in Context: Representations, Community and Culture

In this classic edition of her groundbreaking text Knowledge in Context, Sandra Jovchelovitch revisits her influential work on the societal and cultural processes that shape the development of representational processes in humans.

Through a novel analysis of processes of representation, and drawing on dialogues between psychology, sociology and anthropology, Jovchelovitch argues that representation, a social psychological construct relating Self, Other and Object-world, is at the basis of all knowledge. Exploring the dominant assumptions of western conceptions of knowledge and the quest for a unitary reason free from the ‘impurities’ of person, community and culture, Jovchelovitch recasts questions related to historical comparisons between the knowledge of adults and children, ‘civilised’ and ‘primitive’ peoples, scientists and lay communities and examines the ambivalence of classical theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky, Freud, Durkheim and Lévy-Bruhl in addressing these issues.

Featuring a new introductory chapter, the author evaluates the last decade of research since Knowledge in Context first appeared and reassesses the social psychology of the contemporary public sphere, exploring how challenges to the dialogicality of representations reconfigure both community and selfhood in this early 21st century. This book will make essential reading for all those wanting to follow debates on knowledge and representation at the cutting edge of social, cultural and developmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, development and cultural studies.

Sandra Jovchelovitch is Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics. Before coming to England, she trained as a psychologist in Brazil, where she actively participated in the process of de-institutionalisation and re-structuring of policies related to the care of the mentally ill. Her research interests are both theoretical and applied and she has published widely in the field of social representations, health, community and development in both English and Portuguese.