Chapter 9 - They ‘Made Flowers Grow Where It Seemed Impossible’

Summary

9. Although Moscovici insisted that the triadic Ego–Alter–Object model forms the core of the theory of social representations and communication, bringing out its potentialities still awaits further research. Most importantly, Moscovici argued that the model involves not only intellectual qualities but relationships and interaction of participants in their mutual construction of social representations and of processes of influence. However, despite its theoretical and practical potentials, Moscovici did not develop the triadic model in any detail, leaving it as an abstract schema.

In this chapter, I have drawn attention to the rich potentialities of the triadic model in relation to dialogical intellectual interactions, ethics, aesthetics, responsibility, and engagement on the one hand and to populism and distortion of the model on the other. In their multifaceted interdependencies, individuals and groups create their social reality, impose control on each other, and create their bonds of solidarity, difference, and indifference. The Selves and Others are social agents with their histories, identities, aims, intentions, and desires. It is this perspective of the interdependence between intellectual, interactional, and relational qualities within the Ego–Alter–Object that affords for the dialogical interpretation of the triadic model. The phenomena to which the model refers are heterogeneous and multidimensional.