Do the Shoemaker’s Children go barefoot? Diversity in Social Psychology and the Two Worldmaps of its Diachronic Evolution
Do the Shoemaker’s Children go barefoot? Diversity in Social Psychology and the Two Worldmaps of its Diachronic Evolution

Summary/Abstract: In social sciences the status of diversity changed in the recent years from a “researchobject” to a matter of concern: some social scientists questioned their own communities’ diversityin terms of geography, gender, language, traditions, methodology, etc. Science is a social field likeany other (Bourdieu, 1975), an organized form of social life, which may be characterized anddescribed by a number of invariants, termed fundamental categories (Bouthoul, 1952). We conducteda diachronic case study on the geographic diversity of two social scientists’ communities, the socialrepresentations community and the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP), usingBouthoul’s categories to describe them operationally. The results show that the two communitiesshare some aspects but differ in their values, hierarchy and boundaries. We then analyzed theevolution of their geographic diversity over time, by comparing their diversity index in 1992 and2012. The results showed that the geocultural diversity increased in the social representationscommunity, but decreased in EASP; the results also show that the two cover different areas in theworld. The results call for a discussion on research inclusiveness and its consequences.

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