Introduction: Why a Social Representations Perspective?

This chapter introduces the social representations perspective that forms the background of the entire volume, presenting the social-psychological gaze (regard psychosocial): the acknowledgment that the knowledge of a social object necessarily requires the mediation of an Alter, a “thirdness.” From this premise, specific ways of studying change and continuity in meaning-making derive, putting change at the forefront as well as concerns about the role of the researcher along the path. After considering these features, the chapter briefly presents the various parts that compose the book and the single chapters. From a social representations stance or from cognate perspectives, several keywords and topics are encountered, both on a theoretical side and with empirical examples, addressing social issues in domains such as health, aging, inequalities, environment, and community.

From Prototypical Stimuli to Iconographic Stimuli: The Power of Images in the Study of Social Representations

When we are interested in the image of a social object, we are interested in what individuals have perceived about that object, the ways in which they have interpreted those perceptions, and what they think about that object. Fully agreeing with the idea that the use of iconographic stimuli can enhance the traditional methods and techniques that are used to study any social representation, in this article, two techniques will be presented. The first, the prototypical stimuli technique, was proposed in the second half of the 1980s by Galli and Nigro. The second technique, iconographic stimuli, creatively integrate images and words in a single tool, was designed more recently to study the social representation of culture by Galli, Fasanelli, and Schember. Researches here reviewed clearly shows that the image has the great power to attract to itself the very objects depicted, a power that the word often does not possess. It is images that make people reflect, help them to think about issues concerning the fundamental aspects of everyday life. The work here presented, carried out in first person by the writer, as well as by all the other authors who are concentrating their efforts in this direction, only represents a starting point of reflection. New and more articulated studies will be able to support with heuristic evidence what so far seems to be configured as a suggestive hypothesis, which in any case will require a wider and shared interdisciplinary effort.

EXPRESS: Do cognitive load and ADHD traits affect the tendency to prioritise social information in scenes?

We report two experiments investigating the effect of working memory (WM) load on selective attention. Experiment 1 was a modified version of Lavie et al. (2004) and confirmed that increasing memory load disrupted performance in the classic flanker task. Experiment 2 used the same manipulation of WM load to probe attention during the viewing of complex scenes, while also investigating individual differences in ADHD traits. In the image viewing task, we measured the degree to which fixations targeted each of two crucial objects: (1) a social object (a person in the scene) and (2) a non-social object of higher or lower physical salience. We compared the extent to which increasing WM load would change the pattern of viewing of the physically salient and socially salient objects. If attending to the social item requires greater default voluntary top-down resources, then the viewing of social objects should show stronger modulation by WM load compared to viewing of physically salient objects. The results showed that the social object was fixated to a greater degree than the other object (regardless of physical saliency). Increased saliency drew fixations away from the background leading to slightly increased fixations on the non-social object, without changing fixations on the social object. Increased levels of ADHD-like traits were associated with fewer fixations on the social object, but only in the high salient, low load condition. Importantly, WM load did not affect number of fixations on the social object. Such findings suggest rather surprisingly that attending to a social area in complex stimuli is not dependent on the availability of voluntary topdown resources.

Silence Sits in Places

Having become interested in the uprising of the Hirak movement and its denouncement of a 'cancer epidemic' in the Moroccan Rif, I ended up having what appeared to be a shattered experience, one broken by refusals to speak, miscommunication and bureaucratic barriers. Upon returning home, the very same silence that had surrounded my fieldwork then emerged as a resourceful tool with which to make sense of an opaque history. In this article, I will therefore consider silence as a social object that we encounter during fieldwork, as a positional issue and as an epistemological space. In this sense, engaging with what appears to be at the margin of everyday speech requires consideration of silence as something that is made powerful precisely by its being left unsaid.

PROFESSIONAL MOBILITY OF A FUTURE SPECIALIST IN THE STRUCTURE OF READINESS FOR ACTIVITY IN SPECIALTY: ESSENTIAL AND CONCEPTUAL ASPECT

The article presents an analysis and generalization of approaches to the essence and content of professional mobility of future specialists. It is concluded that professional mobility is directly interrelated with readiness to work in the specialty, since these two concepts have common elements in the structure, in particular professional knowledge, abilities, skills and professionally important qualities. Taking into account the results of the analysis of research related to the problem of professional mobility, it was found out that this concept can be defined as readiness and ability to work in the context of transformation of professional (production, service) tasks, development of new specialties or changing them. Professional mobility covers the ability to successfully switch to another activity or change types of activities, effectively use the system of generalized professional techniques to perform any tasks in the professional sphere, and it is relatively easy to move from one type of activity to another. For professional mobility, it is important to have a high level of generalized professional knowledge, experience in improving them and obtaining them independently. The results of the review of publications on the research topic suggest that there are two types of mobility – horizontal and vertical. Horizontal mobility involves the transition of an individual or social object from one social position to another, which is at the same level, as well as a change of place of residence. As for vertical mobility, it involves the transition of an individual or social object from one social position to another. It was found out that mobility is an integrative property that is formed and developed during practical, educational, social, socio-cultural activities of a person and provides him or her with the opportunity to realize one’s inclinations, abilities, opportunities.

The Normativity of Musical Works

The cases of copyright infringement that occasionally crop up in the world of music raise many interesting questions: what do we mean when we talk about the identity of a musical work and what does such an identity involve? What in fact are the properties that make it something worth protecting and preserving? These issues are not only of legal relevance, they are central to a philosophical discipline that has seen considerable advances over the last few decades: musical ontology. Taking into account its main theoretical models, this essay argues that an understanding of the ontological status of musical works should acknowledge the irreducible ambivalence of music as an “art of the trace” and as a “performative art.” It advocates a theory of the musical work as a “social object” and, more specifically, as a sound artefact that functions aesthetically and which is based on a trace informed by a normative value. Such a normativity is further explored in relation to three primary ways of conceiving and fixing the trace: orality, notation and phonography.

Social object: museum object in the participatory museum

The «new museology» movement, which seeks to revise the principles and foundations of the activities of modern museums, has introduced a few new concepts into consideration, one of which is the concept of «social object». «New Museology» interprets a social object as the basis for constructing an exposition of a participatory museum, which makes it possible to consider a social object as an analogue of a museum item. Since the concept of a «museum item» is one of the key theoretical tools of modern museology, its content can be expanded within the framework of the scientific understanding of a participatory museum. Directions of such a theoretical study are presented in this article. The analysis of the transformation of a museum object into a social object during the transition from the traditional principle of building a museum exposition to a participatory one made it possible to identify several problems in the activities of a participatory museum related to the communication potential of its exhibits. The understanding of a social object is formed based on an analysis of examples of exposition and exhibition activities presented in the book by N. Simon «The Participatory Museum».

UN ANÁLISIS FENOMENOLÓGICO DE LA PROPIEDAD CONTRAPUESTO AL "NEW REALISM" DE MAURIZIO FERRARIS

El presente ensayo compara un análisis fenomenológico de la propiedad con el nuevo realismo de Maurizio Ferraris. La comparación expone los límites de la perspectiva fenomenológica al mismo tiempo que también muestra los momentos estructurales de su modo de dación: (1) momento intuitivo; (2) momento de la solicitud; (3) momento del reconocimiento; (4) momento de la propiedad. Una vez expuesta la unidad de estos momentos, el ensayo pone de manifiesto cómo la perspectiva del nuevo realismo pensaría la propiedad a través de la nueva ontología del objeto, es decir, como un objeto social vinculado a un acto social. Las conclusiones exponen el carácter fenoménico de la propiedad como condición del análisis fenomenológico, en contraposición al planteamiento de Ferraris, donde la propiedad sería tratada como un objeto. No obstante, ambas perspectivas pensarían la propiedad como un acto vinculado al deseo de apropiación, lo que permite una inves-tigación fenomenológica de la voluntad.The present essay compares a phenomenological study of the property with the new realism of Maurizio Ferraris. The comparison shows the limits of the phenomenological perspective and simultaneously the structural moments of its mode of givenness: (1) the intuitive moment; (2) the moment of the request; (3) the moment of the admission; (4) the moment of the ownership. Once the unity of these moments is exposed, the essay shows how the perspective of the new realism would think the property through a new ontology of the object, that is, as a social object related to a social act. The conclusions expose the phenomenological character of the property as a condition of the phenomenological approach in contrast to the Ferrari’s proposal, where the property would be treated as an object. Nevertheless, both perspectives would think the property as an act related to the wish of appropriation, which allows the phenomenological investigation of the will.

PROFESSIONAL MOBILITY AS A FACTOR OF BORDER GUARDS READINESS FOR PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY: UKRAINIAN AND EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

The article presents an analysis and generalization of approaches to the nature and content of professional mobility. It is concluded that professional mobility is directly interrelated with readiness to work in the specialty, since these two concepts have common elements in the structure, in particular professional knowledge, abilities, skills and professionally important qualities. Taking into account the results of the analysis of research related to the problem of professional mobility, it was found out that this concept can be defined as readiness and ability to work in the context of transformation of professional (production, service) tasks, development of new specialties or changing them. Professional mobility covers the ability to successfully switch to another activity or change types of activities, effectively use the system of generalized professional techniques to perform any tasks in the professional sphere, and it is relatively easy to move from one type of activity to another. For professional mobility, it is important to have a high level of generalized professional knowledge, experience in improving them and obtaining them independently. The results of the review of publications on the research topic suggest that there are two types of mobility – horizontal and vertical. Horizontal mobility involves the transition of an individual or social object from one social position to another, which is at the same level, as well as a change of place of residence. As for vertical mobility, it involves the transition of an individual or social object from one social position to another. It was found out that mobility is an integrative property that is formed and developed during practical, educational, social, socio-cultural activities of a person and provides him with the opportunity to realize his inclinations, abilities, opportunities. It was found that in the context of training of border guard agencies' personnel in the EU, professional mobility of border guards is ensured by their high level of interoperability, which is a necessary condition for effective organization of protection of EU external borders by representatives of various European border guard agencies. The most common form of ensuring the professional mobility of European border guards is working within the Permanent Corps of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex. The training of Ukrainian Border Guard Agency's staff in the context of European integration requires the study of the experience of border agencies in EU countries to provide conditions for the development of professional mobility of border guards, which requires further thorough study of the outlined topic.