Social representations of history, wars and politics in Latin America, Europe and Africa

Abstract

This study analyzes how people perceive world history on three continents: Latin America, Europe and Africa. A total of 1179 university students form Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde were asked to evaluate world events and leaders in terms of their valence and importance. The results demonstrated that social representations of history show a Euro/North American-centric, long-term positive evaluation, recency, and sociocentric bias. Euro/North American-centric events and leaders were found to be rated as more important and were more positively perceived in general. Distant political events, like French or American Revolution, were considered to be more positive than XX century similar events, which supports the long-term positive evaluation bias hypothesis. The hypothesis on recency bias was partially substantiated. Confirming the existence of such bias, World War II was rated as more important than the previous XX century wars and revolutions. Socio-centric bias also received partial support. African participants rated Mandela as a more important leader than other participants did. Latin Americans rated Che Guevara less positively, which suggests that some leaders are generally idealized icons, not based on group belongingness. However, results did not bring support to the centrality of war hypothesis. Wars were indeed negatively evaluated and World War II was rated as an important and negative event. Nevertheless, war-and politics-related events were not perceived as more important than the Industrial Revolution, suggesting that people appraise the importance of long-term socioeconomic factors of history when responding to close-ended quantitative measures (vs. open-ended salience measures). Results are discussed in the framework of social representations of history. Representaciones sociales de la historia, guerra y política en América Latina, Europa y ÁfricaResumen El estudio analiza como las personas perciben la historia mundial en tres continentes: Latinoamérica, Europa y África. 1179 estudiantes universitarios de Argentina, Brasil, Perú, Portugal, España, Guinea-Bissau y Cabo Verde evaluaron una lista de eventos mundiales y líderes en lo que concierne a su valoración e importancia. Los resultados han mostrado que la representación social de la historia se caracteriza por un Euro centrismo, una evaluación positiva a largo plazo, y por sesgos socio-céntricos. Los eventos "Occidentales" (vinculados a Europa y Norteamérica) fueron evaluados como más importantes y percibidos más positivamente que los no-Occidentales. Eventos políticos distantes, como la Revolución Francesa o Americana, fueron evaluados más positivamente que eventos similares del siglo XX, apoyando la hipótesis de la evaluación positiva del pasado lejano. La hipótesis del sesgo de recencia o proximidad fue parcialmente confirmada, ya que la II Guerra Mundial fue evaluada como más importante que revoluciones o guerras anteriores al siglo XX.El sesgo socio-céntrico también recibe apoyo parcial. Los africano...

Introduction to the Special Issue: Colonial past and intercultural relations

“…Furthermore, the existing research has demonstrated the hegemony of Western historical representations of the past Techio et al, 2010). Therefore, as already signalized by Volpato and Licata (2010), future research should above all include the perspective of the colonizers and the colonized simultaneously, which has so far only rarely been done empirically.…”

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“…The prevalence of a social representation of history as a process of collective violence is also confirmed by new research using a closedended questionnaire showing that historical calamities centered on violence are the most coherent concept across 30 societies' evaluations of historical events (Liu et al, 2010). However, another recent study with Spanish and Portuguese speaking samples using the same format (Techio et al, 2010) revealed that wars, and among them WWII, were rated as important and negative historical events, but wars were not perceived as more relevant than the Industrial Revolution, insinuating that people are aware of the importance of long-term socioeconomic factors in world history when prompted about them. In other terms, the warfare's centrality hypothesis was not confirmed.…”

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