Francesco Paolo COLUCCI Psychology Department, University of Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy

1. Common Sense, Everyday Practices and Media Communication Francesco Paolo COLUCCI Psychology Department, University of Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy francescopaolo.colucci@unimib.it

2. The problem “Processes ofchange in our daily life” The processes ofchange: central question for all scientific – Galilean (Lewin 1931) – thought. Criticism of social representations theory, in particular their relation to the problem of change and to the concept of common sense. A conception of common sense isomorphic with that of the everyday and in terms of its relation to the “théories savantes” conveyed through media communication. Change <-----> (Everiday Life <--------> Common Sense) Common Sense <--------------------------> Théories Savantes (media communication)

3. Controversial aspects • of social representations theory • in relation to the problem of change (the risk of ’Scholasticism’) The dualism dividing the reified from the consensual and, in the last analysis, social representations from science: “The contrast between these two universes is psychologically powerful. The border between them splits collective reality, even physical reality, in two. Obviously, science is the mode of knowledge corresponding to reified universes and social representations the one corresponding to the consensual universes...” (Moscovici,1981, p.187)

4. In fact, limiting here what is a much wider question, Moscovici seems to reduce “the contrast between these two universes” to one between the mode of knowledge of science and that of social representations: “Bien que, dans n’importe quelle culture, il existe deux types de savoirs, deux modes de pensée non seulement différents en degré mais aussi en qualité. C’est une interprétation que nos recherches autorisent. Toutefois, à ce stade de notre connaissance, il faut rester prudent”. (Moscovici, 1994, p. 230). A “bifurcated mind” (Wagner and Hayes, 2005, p. 57). Dualism (“bifurcated”) conception  problem of change ??

5. Change  (Everiday Life  Common Sense) = dialectical relations between changes in real conditions and changes in subjectivity. Subjects cannot be viewed solely as entities that attempt to anchor themselves to what is already known, to fixed points. Conflicts between opposing themata (eg Darwinian vs Creationist ideas): a process of negotiation that can help to explain, more than change the continual re-emergence in different forms of old, “archetypal” conflicting conceptions. “On dit depuis longtemps que notre pensée, surtout notre pensée sociale, tend a conserver son acquis, a préserver les connaissances, les normes, les croyances et les explications qui existent déjà... Ainsi le monde sociale se maintient à titre de lieu stable et prévisible” (Moscovici, 1994, p. 228).

6. The problem of change risks, therefore, remaining substantially unresolved in the theory of social representations. That is, unless one understands by change: the process whereby social representations are formed (but S. R. are conservative) or as a gradual slow or merely superficial transformation: something like the continual and fleeting changes in flowing water that does not alter the riverbed, in the old metaphor used by Wittgenstein (1969) and then also by Moscovici (1993).

7. Problem of change substantially unresolved  The problematic definition and analysis of the relations between common sense and social representations. A (possible) relation between common sense and social representations: ‘First-hand knowledge’ or common sense properly speaking – theuniversal cognitive basis shared (partagé) by all men, which makes communicative exchange possible – and ‘second-hand knowledge’ – theset of social representations, relating to the most diverseobjects, that are continually formed and transformed (Moscovici and Hewstone, 1984).

8. As a “first-hand knowledge”common sense tends to be unchangeable and it cannot be the object of debate, disagreement or negation; tend towards continuity rather than change and it is very unlikely that it will be able to explain and, above all, bring about change: • In S.R. theory: C.S. objectification + anchoring: • the process of objectification is “the first process necessary to the elaboration of social representation” (Abric, 1996, p. 78) and, as a consequence, common sense always transforms the abstract into concrete images [is it incapable of abstraction?]; and by its very nature simplifies (Guimelli, 1994, p.13); • the process of anchoring, the “mode of knowledge” of social representations, proceeds in a basically univocal way by leading the uncertain back to the certain, the extraneous to the familiar, to what is securely acknowledged and commonly accepted or socially shared.

9. 2) The unsolved problem of common sense A set of interconnecting questions - the same elusive problem: common sense = social representations (“the modern version of common sense”)? common sense  social representations? what relation between the whole and the part? common sense  cognitive processes ? C.S.  ideologies / cultures / mentalities / collective memories ? ‘common sense’ = ‘everyday thought’ = ‘everyday knowledge’ = ‘common knowledge’ = ‘lay knowledge’?

10. common sense  scientific thinking / science / several sciences / “théories savantes”/ “specialized knowledges”? medicine or politics ≠ subatomic physics or molecular biology. protoscientific  scientific  protoscientific // or Protoscientific  scientific  protoscientific  scientific / “specialized knowledges” (medicine or politics) ...

11. How common sense can be understood • If C. S. noyau central  generating S. R = this function requires activity. • Therefore: • Not: • Forms of knowledge or self-evident thinking like a becalmed and stagnant sea : they cannot be the object of debate, disagreement or negation; confined to enabling communication, the possibility of mutual understanding,. nothing other than “what everyone knows”; uniform, predictable, unreflexive, incapable of criticism and doubt, if not a “dark area of ignorance”; a “natural attitude” (Schutz 1962-1966), tacit ordinary knowledge that suspends doubt,pre-interpreted and intersubjectively shared typifications through which social reality is reproduced; “a kind of cognitive routine”, which is manifested as a “tendency to remove every problematical feature”. • In S.R. theory: C.S.  objectification + anchoring

12. Instead: • Also a source of negotiation, misunderstanding and conflict: ‘common’ should not be equated with ‘uniform’; characterized by “polysemy and polymorphism” to the extent that it is intrinsically contradictory. It both rejects doubt and lies at its origin; it confirms and takes for granted existing reality but is also able to reflect critically on it and to change it, to be alternately conservative and revolutionary. • A) ≠ B): two opposing ways of understanding common sense.

13. A) ≠ B): two opposing ways of understanding common sense. • The mainstream or predominant position: an essentially elitist conception that considers solely scientific thought as valid and holds that only philosophers and scientists, who have the exclusive on such thought, are capable of doubt, criticism, innovation and creativity. • Conception of common sense followed by a minority and proposed here – formulated by Antonio Gramsci (1975; Colucci, 1999a).

14. Conception B: Common sense, as “bon sens”, (i.e. its “sound kernel”) has the capacity to criticize and reject superstitions and religious beliefs (Voltaire Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)  Gramsci) This “good sense” is not a simple mediocre reasonableness: It expresses, rather, the capacity to grasp the real connections between things and their consequences; critical capacity to see through the deceptions of ideologies imposed from above (by the dominant classes) often through the use of fear, to unmask the “verbiage (fumesticherie) of philosophers” (Gramsci); today, the myriad of ideas being constantly transmitted by a omnipresent television and by other even more recent and nonetheless strongly persuasive mass media.

15. This C.S. lies at the origin and provides the foundations for philosophy and science and sometimes anticipates the ideas of philosophers and scientists: able to create and not only submit to and metabolize what is created by scholars (“savants”), scientists, and philosophers. C. S. ↕↨ (Philosophy – Science – Theories Savantes)

16. Roots of C.S.in the 18th century Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico “Vico’s formula, verum ipsum factum, is here profoundly significant. From the very outset, my research has been carried out from the perspective of this construction or this making of the social” (Moscovici, 1999, p. 222; lectio magistralis on the occasion of his Laurea honoris causa from the University of Bologna) “verum ipsum factum”: men can only know what they making and truth derives from making: “the criterion of truth for a object lies in making it” (Rossi, 1998, p 22)  basis of History (i.e. Scienza Nuova) History consisting not of physical objects (like the natural world) or mental objects (like those in mathematics) “but of reasons, proposals, actions, fears, hopes and of languages, myths, laws and civil institutions. In this world, man is no passive spectator…given that he is both actor and protagonist in it” (ibid., p. 23).

17. verum-factum  Vico’s ideas on common sense: “uniform ideas among entire peoples” - popular knowledge” (“sapienza volgare”). Fundamental creative functions of “uniform ideas”: the essential one of guiding human action, which at the same time generates these same ideas - origin of natural law (Principj di Scienza Nuova 1744: Degnità xii, xiii, xvii) and natural languages (“common vernaculars”). Fundamental contents of “uniform ideas”: fables, beliefs, rites, “mythical poetry”, for the first time understood as creations no longer of single individuals but of “common knowledge” and, hence, from the imaginations of “entire peoples”. “Common knowledge” so important that the “secret knowledge of philosophers” takes its origin from it (Scienza Nuova, Libro secondo). “uniform” = ‘common’, ‘shared’ by those belonging to the same, even wide-ranging, culture. Not entirely standardized, banal, passive, unproblematical ideas to be taken for granted.

18. Common sense and everyday life: from practices to praxis Abric, Flament and other scholars at the University of Aix-en-Provence: practices and representations “s’engendrent mutuellement" (Abric, 1994a; 1994b) Social / Everiday Practices  Social Representations But an underlying determinism remains: External / Real Conditions  (Social / Everyday Practices  S. R.) Without any inverse action being considered possible: Real Conditions  (Everyday Practices  S.R.)  Real Conditions

19. Real Conditions  (Everyday Practices  S.R.)  Real Conditions • This problem of change  the meaning of • everyday practices / life • 3 Different conceptions of everyday life: • The more traditional or usual conception: • everyday life = ‘stability’, ‘the obvious’, ‘the taken-for-granted’, ‘routines’, ‘rituals’, and ‘regularity’ (Fiese, 1992; Fiese and Kline 1993); everyday is “contrasted with special days” … “as a routine contrasted with extraordinary spheres of society” … “as a sphere of natural, spontaneous, unconsidered, true experience” and so on (Wagner and Hayes, 2005, 25).

20. B) Everyday life as characterized by dualism – Two Everyday: B1) “time without history”, that of “normality”, of work and the other routine and obvious, compulsory and repetitive practices that ensure continuity and the reproduction of a “reassuring protective order”; B2) losing this traditional “negative connotation”, it can also become the “place” for change and “innovation”. (Lefebvre, 1958-1961, 1968; Heller, 1974). C) Conceptions of everyday proposed here: rejects both the reductionism and unidirectionality of the A) and the dualism of the B): fragility of concepts like ‘unconscious’, ‘obvious’, ‘ordinary’, ‘routine’, and ‘regular’ set in opposition to ‘conscious’, ‘reflective’, ‘extraordinary’… dividing line separating “the reality that we experience as obvious and taken for granted” or “unconsidered” from the one we experience as having opposing characteristics eludes us continually.

21. Conception C) of everyday practices / life proposed here: ↨↕ Theory of Activity / Tätigkeit / Praxis (Bologna - 1991 International Seminar dedicated to Gramsci’s ideas on the interconnected concepts of common sense, praxis, and hegemony relevant to social psychology) INTERIORIZATION S A O ESTERIORIZATION (Stadler, 1980, p.146)

22. Isomorphism between: Conception B) of common sense (Antonio Gramsci 1975). And Conception C) of everyday practices / life “il est vrai que partout s’étend et se précise le quadrillage de la ‘surveillance’, il est d’autant plus urgent de déceler comment une société entière ne s’y réduit pas; quelles procédures populaires (elles aussi ‘minuscules’ et quotidiennes) jouent avec les mécanismes de la discipline et ne s’y conforment que pour les tourner...” (de Certeau, 1990, pp. xxxix-xl)

23. Media communication in everyday life Work: ‘flexible’ precarious  hardly possible to be still considered as routine – everyday practices Social relevance of other activities: consumer behaviour: people tend to identify with one another and associate as consumers and no longer only as workers Michel de Certeau: Subjects of everyday life as first of all consumers producers-consumers  writers-readers (of images) The virtual reality ‘constructed’ by media: importance of social representations – “reconstructions” of the most varied social objects (Moscovici)

24. The importance of imagination and fantasy: Vico: “…respect for the moment of fantasy in human life…; a passionate defence of the world of the imagination, poetry, myth as a world that has its own dimensions and characteristics and cannot be directly adapted to the method of reason” (Rossi, 1998, p. 38). Man is not passive popular imagination possesses creativenessabilities. “mythical poetry” ▼ ▼ virtual reality created by modern media. media communication ← Conflict → ordinary people: virtual and mythical reality of media are instrument of power and social control citizens not entirely passive / their feeling and thinking is not an “echo”.

25. Two researches: The capacity of laymen readers to reinterpret communication, be critical and express the need and demand for change. • 1) The case of the anti-cancer cure used by a doctor, • Professor Di Bella, which erupted in Italy in the late • 1990s. (Colucci, Montali, 2004; Montali, Colucci, 2002) • cancer = prototypical illness • General hypothesis: this case gave rise to a conflict between “the reified universe” – scientific, medical and governmental institutions – and “the consensual universe” – laymen, patients and their relatives – meant here as an expression of common sense.

26. An important role was played by the mass media in fomenting the conflict while at the same time representing it. Features of social representation: sacredness of science; irrationality and emotiveness; religiously emotional way in which illness is experienced. Nevertheless: Conflict consensual vs reified  needs of ordinary people. Not only justified but have a rational basis since they have to fight against the arrogance and narrow-mindedness of conventional medicine and “official” science with their alien institutionalized practices.

27. Political change in Italy from the early 1990s: • relations between citizens and media • communication • during election campaigns from 1994 onwards. • It emerged that citizens are able to employ the • rationality of “good sense” to express new word • views and to demand for change in opposition to • professional politicians who are still tied to the old familiar patterns, familiar especially to • themselves (Colucci, Camussi, 1996).

28. Analysis of radio conversations between citizens and experts during election campaigns (Montali, Colucci et al. presented at this Congress, 2006): “Personalization” process (typical feature of the social representations of politics) persistently more present in the discourse of experts than in that of citizens: the press and the experts reduce general political issues in Italy to the figure of Berlusconi, thereby attributing to him a practically absolute role. The experts’ discourses and media communication focuses on political tactics and disputes. Citizens concentrate more on “real” social problems, both specific (taxation, inflation, work) and general (war, immigration, terrorism, Europe). In brief, the discourse of citizens is not entirely characterized by simplification processes, heuristics and cognitive shortcuts, anchoring and objectification. These are not the processes that distinguish the discourse of citizens from that of experts.

29. A final question: the role of the expert Conflict between media communication – as the expression of a power that aims to controlling and guiding public opinion – and the so-called “hommes ordinaires”, “never completely subjugated” (de Certeau) who, on the contrary, attempt to give expression to their criticisms and defend and assert their own needs. Conflict between opus nostrum and opus alienum (Moscovici). What, in such a conflict, is the role of elites and experts who reject the role of the “cunning priests” of the dominant power, guardians of the constituted order, and who instead intend to side with ordinary people in defense of their freedom and needs? The role of the ”minorités actives” (Moscovici) The question ofhegemony, the role of intellectuals (Gramsci).

30. Hegemony as both a political and cultural struggle: The educational system is the main arena in the struggle for cultural hegemony (The educational system = Today the mass media and information system) The struggle for hegemony, to be carried out within the institutions by opposing dominant class culture, is inevitably a long-lasting process involving all subjects. All subjects: every “single concrete individual”. Intellectuals and ordinary people, elites and the masses. Elites  Masses Masses, who have needs and ideas that they are able to express and insist on.

31. The Gramsci’s contradiction: Democratic, perspective: Elites  Masses Elitist position: In the struggle for hegemony he assigns the primary role to the Party (The Communist Party), “modern prince” (“moderno principe”) and to the “intellectuals organic” to that Party. De Certeau’s utopia: ‘confidence’ in a widespread capacity for opposition and resistance that eludes any political guidance: No possible positive role for elites-minorités actives, experts.

32. Citizens express demand for independent experts (independent from industry and both economic and political interests). Demand for a critical provider of information free from any ties and any kind of conditioning. This is a figure that recalls, in part, that of the free-thinker in the 18th century when common sense and public opinion – the “Öffentlichkeit” (Habermas, 1962) – became protagonists in society. These notions gain meaning if linked to those very concrete realities that are people and their needs.