Common Sense of Experts

Abstract

The dialectics between different modes of knowledge is at the very core of social sciences. In particular, the theory of social representations looks at expert and lay modes as they were not peculiar of specific domains but rather as they were mutually interdependent. Based on the conceptual distinction between reified and consensual universes, this article explores the interplay between these two sources of knowledge through the analysis of the social representations of justice produced by justice professionals. In particular, the exploration of the social representations of justice amongst experts offers intriguing clues to overtake the idea that the lay understanding of justice is somehow opposed to the expert viewpoint and to accept the polyphasic understanding of this complex object. The article reports the findings of a qualitative investigation of the social representations of justice amongst professionals. The staff members of the Youth Social Services (YSS) and the Juvenile Classification Home and Residential Community (JCHRC) were interviewed, and transcriptions were content analysed. The findings indicated that professionals generate multiple theories of justice with each presenting a particular articulation of the basic interplay between expert and lay viewpoints. Most important, findings indicate that the context of everyday working practice has a significant symbolic valence that goes beyond the boundaries of the reified context of institutional justice system.

How Ideology Shapes Legal Concepts: The Case of Public Order

“…Abric's (1993) structural approach (see Wachelke, 2012, for a review) then maintains that SRs are structured as the core (parts of the SR that are highly agreed upon and deemed important) and the periphery (serving as an interface allowing for SR's flexible adaptation to various contexts and conditions). SR theory has been applied to various phenomena (e.g., the internet in Moreira et al, 2023, or identity in Breakwell, 2014, including legal topics (e.g., justice in Barreiro, 2021, or Rochira, 2014law in Levin-Rozalis, 2007;or intellectual property in Pauling, 2009).…”