Ideal type

Abstract: Based on Moscovici’s (1961) classical study on the cultivation of psychoanalytic ideas in France in the 1950’s and our own research on modern biotechnology, we propose a paradigm for researching social representations. Following a consideration of the nature of representations and of the ‘iconoclastic suspicion’ that haunts them, we propose a model of the emergence of meaning relating three elements: subjects, objects, and projects. The basic unit of analysis is the elongated triangle of mediation (SOPS): subject 1, object, project, and subject 2, captured in the image of a ‘Toblerone’. Such social units cultivate, that is produce, circulate and receive representation which may be embodied in four modes–habitual behaviour, individual cognition, informal communication and formal communication–and in three mediums–words, visual images or non-linguistic sounds. We propose an operational definition of a ‘social representation’ as the comparison of four characteristics of communication systems: the content structures (anchorings and objectifications; core and peripheral elements), the typified processes (diffusion, propagation, propaganda etc.), and their functions (identity, attitude, opinion, resistance, ideology etc.), within the context of segmented social milieus. Seven implications for research on social representations are outlined: (1) content and process; (2) segmentation by social milieus rather than taxonomies; (3) cultivation studies within social milieus; (4) multi-method (mode and medium) analysis; (5) time structures and longitudinal data; (6) the crossover of cultural projects and trajectories; (7) the disinterested research attitude. This ideal type paradigm leads to an operational clarification to identify new research questions, and to guide the design and evaluation of studies on social representations.

Abstract: Understanding of society may be gained through construction of an ideal type of primitive or folk society as contrasted with modern urbanized society. Such a society is small, isolated, nonliterate, and homogeneous, with a strong sense of group solidarity. The ways of living are conventionalized into that coherent system which we call "a culture." Behavior is traditional, spontaneous, uncritical, and personal; there is no legislation or habit of experiment and reflection for intellectual ends. Kinship, its relationships and institutions, are the type categories of experience and the familial group is the unit of action. The sacred prevails over the secular; the economy is one of status rather than of the market. These and related characterizations may be restated in terms of "folk mentality." In studying societies comparatively, or one society in the course of change, with the aid of these conceptions, problems arise and are, in part, solved as to the necessary or probable interrelations of some of the el...

Abstract: L'ouvrage phare du pere de la sociologie allemande comporte ses concepts cles : la methode des ideaux-types, les formes de domination, la rationalisation de la societe. Une oeuvre marquante pour la discipline...

Abstract: Aspects of the “ideal types” of American (Type A) and Japanese (Type I) forms of organization are compared and related to their socio-cultural roots. A hybrid organizational “ideal type” (Type Z), which is particularly appropriate for many situations in today's changing American society, is presented.

Abstract: The problem suggested by the terms “rationality” or “rational action” as used in current literature is most certainly central to the methodology and epistemology of the scientific study of the social world. The terms themselves, however, are not only used with many different meanings — and this sometimes in the writings of the same author as, for instance, Max Weber — but they represent only very inadequately the underlying conceptual scheme. In order to bring out the concealed equivocations and connotations, and to isolate the question of rationality from all the other problems surrounding it, we must go further into the structure of the social world and make more extensive inquiries into the different attitudes toward the social world adopted, on the one hand, by the actor within this world, and, on the other hand, by the scientific observer of it.