Reflections on Bauer and Gaskell's Towards a Paradigm for Research on Social Representations

Resumo

This commentary considers Bauer and Gaskell’s (1999) much-cited paper Towards a paradigm for research in social representations. It examines both the main theoretical contribution of the paper (the project in representation) and the methodological guidelines that the paper puts forward, considering the impact of both of these in the field of social representations. It argues that there is considerably more conceptual and empirical work to be done on the interesting concept of the project, and also focuses on the issue of the ‘disinterested research attitude’ which Bauer and Gaskell (1999) propose, suggesting that this is more controversial than the rest of their methodological discussion.