Would the Real Social Representation Please Stand Up? Three Levels of Analysis of Social Representations of European American and Mexican American Identity

  • Manfred Max Bergman University of Cambridge

Abstract

Basing this research on questionnaire data collected from 203 European Americans and 93 Mexican Americans residing in the south-west of the US, I will develop three incommensurate conclusions about their social representation of self- and ethnic identity. Despite the use of identical observations and variables, I will accomplish this by using different statistical, theoretical, and conceptual approaches. The divergence of results, despite using identical data, must be understood in two ways: first, identities and representations are far more complex than any one theory or method of the competing strands in the social sciences allows for at present. Second, despite using statistical methods, I will arrive at divergent results because of the way data was analysed. More generally, with this paper I intend to illustrate the complexity and some of the pitfalls of comparative research.

Published
2017-12-23
Section
Free standing papers