Embracing Change: Knowledge, Continuity, and Social Representations

This book uses a social representations perspective to understand the relationship between social change and continuity, with a particular focus on the production of shared knowledge and the role of the ’other.’ By first bringing the primacy of relationships and communication to the forefront of the knowing process, and by taking social and cultural forces into account, this book examines growing streams of research on this theoretical and methodological approach. Via contributions from leading experts in their fields, this book applies this framework to a wide range of pressing topics in our daily lives, including healthcare, environmental challenges, aging, and intercultural encounters. Over the course of the book, patterns and trends emerge to advance our knowledge of how change has been studied in social psychology, how common knowledge is organized in everyday life, and how scholars can study and contribute to knowledge patterns as the world evolves.

This book is a valuable tool for students and scholars interested in social change and continuity in social and cultural psychology, sociology, political science, healthcare, and related fields.

Alberta Contarello is a full professor of social psychology at the University of Padova, Italy, where she is co-founder and member of the PhD course in social sciences. She has been a visiting scholar in various European and Brazilian universities. Her research and interests include qualitative and
quali-quantitative methods in social psychology, social psychology and literature, the social construction of knowledge, gender, generation, and aging in society.