0000000000088081
AUTHOR
Serge Moscovici
The taboo against group contact: Hypothesis of Gypsy ontologization
The concept of this article is that the symbolic relationships between human beings and animals serve as a model for the relationships between the majority and the ethnic minority. We postulate that there are two representations that serve to organize these relationships between human beings and animals: a domestic and a wild one. If the domestic animal is an index of human culture, the wild animal is an index of nature which man considers himself to share with the animal. With the wild representation, contact with the animal will be taboo, as it constitutes a threat to the anthropological difference. We offer the hypothesis that ontologization of the minority, that is, the substitution of …
Natura y cultura como principio de clasificación social. Anclaje de representaciones sociales sobre minorías étnicas
ResumenLos estudios sobre el racismo indican que en la actualidad en el contexto occidental predomina la discriminacion latente sobre la manifiesta. Aun replicandose este patron, tambien se observa que unas minorias son mas discriminadas que otras. Se plantea que el enfoque de las representaciones sociales puede resultar mas adecuado que los enfoques actitudinales para comprender esa fisonomia del racismo. Tras diferenciar discriminacion y ontologizacion, la principal hipotesis es que la dimension natura-cultura sirve de base para una clasificacion social, dentro de la cual determinadas minorias son representadas fuera del mapa social (ontologizacion). Se presenta un estudio que ilustra, po…
A study of minorities as victims
This article presents the idea that during the 1990s an important change took place in relation between minorities and majorities: the emergence of minorities as victims alongside the formerly predominant active, militant minorities. A hypothesis is raised that these two types of minorities differ in their agenda as well as in the nature of the influence they exert. Active minorities trigger an external conflict with majority and induce conversion (latent rather than overt influence); minorities as victims create an internal conflict, a sense of guilt, within the majority, while they exert an exclusively overt influence. We report two experiments confirming our hypothesis. We discuss the no…