EASP Small Group Meeting in Honor of Serge Moscovici
Thursday, 17.11.2016 til Friday, 18.11.2016
Paris Institute of Advanced Studies, Paris, France
This meeting will be held in honor of Serge Moscovici (1925-2014) and his lifelong achievements in social sciences, in general, and social psychology, in particular. In 2016, the European Association of Social Psychology will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Moscovici played a founding role in the creation of the EASP, and was its first president. Throughout his multi-faceted work, Moscovici paid special attention to the examination of the epistemological foundations of social psychology (i.e., "what one thinks determines how one thinks") and its position at the crossroads of the social sciences. In many writings he argued that the originality of the psychosocial perspective resides in articulating the collective with the individual, science with common sense, social thought with individual thought, minorities with majorities. Moscovici developed new theories (collective polarization, social representations, influence of minorities, social innovation) and applied his critical talent to many other articulating theories of social psychology (attribution, reactance, altruism, social cognition, mass psychology, etc.). His work on political ecology, less known by social psychologists, adds a further dimension to a multifaceted intellectual oeuvre, engaged in the present and the future of our societies.
The meeting aims to bring together junior and senior researchers to discuss theoretical aspects of Moscovici’s work, his conceptual contributions, and the impact of his findings on of social psychology. The meeting is therefore open to participation beyond the circle of past Moscovici’s collaborators. Applications from PhD students are particularly welcome. We will examine how Moscovici’s contributions can help to face the contemporary challenges of our discipline, if it wants to have societal impact: Rising tensions between communities, the necessity to help individuals change to more sustainable behaviour; new digital systems for social networking, increased intercultural contacts through globalization, emerging forms of collective intelligence (e.g. Wikipedia), etc.