scholarly journals Fragmented Ethnopolitical Social Representations of a Territorial Peace Agreement: The Mindanao Peace Talks

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Jayme Montiel ◽  
Judith M. de Guzman ◽  
Ma. Elizabeth J. Macapagal

This article examines fractures in the social representations of a contested peace agreement in the longstanding territorial conflict of Mindanao. We compared representational structures and discourses about the peace talks among Muslims and Christians. Study One used an open-ended survey of 420 Christians and Muslims from two Mindanao cities identified with different Islamised tribes, and employed the hierarchical evocation method to provide representational structures of the peace agreement. Study Two contrasted discourses about the Memorandum of Agreement between two Muslim liberation fronts identified with separate Islamised tribes in Mindanao. Findings show unified Christians’ social representations about the peace agreement. However, Muslims’ social representations diverge along the faultlines of the Islamised ethnic groups. Findings are examined in the light of ethnopolitical divides that emerge among apparently united nonmigrant groups, as peace agreements address territorial solutions. Research results are likewise discussed in relation to other tribally contoured social landscapes that carry hidden, yet fractured ethnic narratives embedded in a larger war storyline.

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-72
Author(s):  
Cristina Jayme Montiel ◽  
Judith M. de Guzman

Using social representations theory, we studied the social meanings of a controversial Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In Study One, we describe the discursive content of the social debate by content analyzing articles from newspapers and selected websites. Study Two uses a survey to examine the fit between social representations of the political elite, as found in media, and the nonelite in Mindanao territories where the MOA was hotly contested. Study Three presents the social representations of the MOA at the local level through analysis of key informant interviews and archival data. Discriminant analysis on survey data shows that in general, the debate of political elites in media mirrors the contentions on-the-ground. However, the issue of constitutionality was only taken up by the political elite. Our findings suggest that the political stumble of the GRP-MILF peace process lay in a lack of procedural fairness and an on-the-ground participatory process acceptable to all antagonistic parties. However, the socially represented fair procedure is not about conventional democratic ways like using or not using a constitutional frame, but rather about pragmatic positioning and public consultations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 51-82
Author(s):  
Angélica Caicedo-Moreno ◽  
Pablo Castro-Abril ◽  
Wilson López-López ◽  
Lorena Gil Montes

Colombia had the longest internal armed conflict in Latin America, and its government reached a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas in 2016. This article explores the transitional justice social representations during the signing of the peace agreement (study 1) and their implementation, during 2019-2020 (study 2). The first study analyzes the news related to the institutions created from the peace agreement during 2016. The second study explores different psychosocial variables associated with its two most controversial institutions, the Truth Commission (TC) and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) during 2019-2020, after the beginning of its work. The findings revealed that news articles from two principal Colombian newspapers illustrate two anchoring categories of transitional justice with an emphasis on victims, while the political position of the newspaper suggests possible disagreements on what peace entails. Surveys showed that political position and victimization are crucial for the approval and support of the TC and the JEP, as well as correlated with the level of media consumption regarding these institutions. Received: 17 September 2021Accepted: 15 November 2021


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Neyla Graciela Pardo Abril

AbstractCollective memories are multiple discursive practices, in which social representations about a common past are used to build and maintain cohesion and identity of groups socio-historically located at a socio-culturally determined moment and to project future in frameworks of rights and dignity. It is understood that the memories articulated to the Colombian armed conflict are diverse: different stories of violence, oppression and resistance of peoples, communities and groups are identified and made explicit. Thirty media narratives distributed in the ElTiempo.com Special “Thirty encounters with peace” (2017) comprise the universe of research. The sample is made up of seven narratives that propose the sense of testimony. The selected format is storytelling, which is built in the special edition of the newspaper as a communication proposal for the reconstruction of the social fabric, within the year after the signing of the Peace Agreement between the National Government and the FARC-EP (post-agreement). The research is nucleated on situations of rights violations linked to the conflict, and the proposals derived from these narratives, as regards the overcoming of the exercises of violence to which they refer. The analysis is assumed from the principles of Multimodal and Multimedia Critical Discourse Studies (MMCDS). The forms of representation in the discourses, their multimodal articulations and the multimedia implications in the production of meanings are articulated; the final aim is to derive sociopolitical consequences of the discursive proposal, constructed and socialized in the narratives of the special edition of the newspaper.


2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Tafani ◽  
Lionel Souchet

This research uses the counter-attitudinal essay paradigm ( Janis & King, 1954 ) to test the effects of social actions on social representations. Thus, students wrote either a pro- or a counter-attitudinal essay on Higher Education. Three forms of counter-attitudinal essays were manipulated countering respectively a) students’ attitudes towards higher education; b) peripheral beliefs or c) central beliefs associated with this representation object. After writing the essay, students expressed their attitudes towards higher education and evaluated different beliefs associated with it. The structural status of these beliefs was also assessed by a “calling into question” test ( Flament, 1994a ). Results show that behavior challenging either an attitude or peripheral beliefs induces a rationalization process, giving rise to minor modifications of the representational field. These modifications are only on the social evaluative dimension of the social representation. On the other hand, when the behavior challenges central beliefs, the same rationalization process induces a cognitive restructuring of the representational field, i.e., a structural change in the representation. These results and their implications for the experimental study of representational dynamics are discussed with regard to the two-dimensional model of social representations ( Moliner, 1994 ) and rationalization theory ( Beauvois & Joule, 1996 ).


1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Flament

This paper is concerned by a possible articulation between the diversity of individual opinions and the existence of consensus in social representations. It postulates the existence of consensual normative boundaries framing the individual opinions. A study by questionnaire about the social representations of the development of intelligence gives support to this notion.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Bonetto ◽  
Fabien Girandola ◽  
Grégory Lo Monaco

Abstract. This contribution consists of a critical review of the literature about the articulation of two traditionally separated theoretical fields: social representations and commitment. Besides consulting various works and communications, a bibliographic search was carried out (between February and December, 2016) on various databases using the keywords “commitment” and “social representation,” in the singular and in the plural, in French and in English. Articles published in English or in French, that explicitly made reference to both terms, were included. The relations between commitment and social representations are approached according to two approaches or complementary lines. The first line follows the role of commitment in the representational dynamics: how can commitment transform the representations? This articulation gathers most of the work on the topic. The second line envisages the social representations as determinants of commitment procedures: how can these representations influence the effects of commitment procedures? This literature review will identify unexploited tracks, as well as research perspectives for both areas of research.


Author(s):  
Virgínia Xavier Pereira da Silva ◽  
Raquel de Souza Ramos ◽  
Olga Veloso da Silva Oliveira ◽  
Lailah Maria Pinto Nunes ◽  
Sergio Correa Marques ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Winckler ◽  
F Zioni ◽  
G Johson

Abstract Background This study aims to analyse the social representations of health needs in a Brazilian municipality, questioning the capacity that public policies developed and implemented by the Brazilian Health System (SUS) had to meet these needs. Methods Qualitative case study in which the data were analysed by: 1) the Health Needs Taxonomy (Matsumoto, 1999), as an instrument for assessing health needs, formatting the interview guide and organizing the empirical data; 2) the Theory of Social Representations (Jovchelovitch, 2000), to capture health needs; 3) Content Analysis (Bardin, 2004), as an instrument of analysis and comparison of perceived needs. The methodological path used was the same in the two moments in which this research is based (2009 and 2016). The entire municipal territory was analyzed and 26 representatives of civil society organizations were interviewed. Results Based on the results given, we state that health is a permanent and timeless need, but the mediations for its satisfaction have changed historically. The interface between quantitative indicators and subjectivity in assessing needs reveals the authoritarian architecture of its decision-making process, which has ruined the necessary democracy for prioritising and meeting those needs. The asymmetrical relationships present in the Brazilian society have both undermined the collective character of health needs and promoted the distance between who care and who are cared for. Most of the priorities listed by the interviewees in 2009 remain composing the social context of the municipality in 2016. Conclusions The challenges for comprehensive health care remain critical given both the decrease in popular political participation and in institutional spaces, which leads to the annulment of the right to a universal health. Interdisciplinary and participatory diagnostics remain essential to understand the complexity of social changes and the challenges for the consolidation of meeting health needs. Key messages The capacity that public policies developed and implemented by the Brazilian Health System (SUS) had to meet these needs. The challenges for meeting health needs remain critical given both the decrease in political participation and in institutional spaces, which leads to the annulment of the right to a universal health.


2021 ◽  
pp. 193672442098296
Author(s):  
Bernardeau-Moreau Denis

Our article addresses disability as a social construct. More precisely, our intention is to see to what degree practices and exchange and interaction situations operate on social representations of physical disability in professional environments. Our aim is to provide some elements for reflection with regard to the imagined issues of physical disability in the workplace by focusing, in particular, on the social representations that they trigger among employees and managers who work with disabled colleagues on a day-to-day basis.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document