The Book in Collective Representations and Images
The Book in Collective Representations and Images

Summary/Abstract: This essay purports to bring to focus a series of collective valorizations of books in the Romanian context. Ethnographic data and quantitative research concerning the book consumption in various ages lie at the basis of cataloguing several representations of books. Of these we mention: the book as gift, the book as tool, the book as object, the book as a repository of knowledge, the book as salvation, the book as concentrated time, etc. Each of these hypostases of books applies both to those who use books in print and those who use e-books. This demonstrates that, irrespective of the technology put into publishing and print, social representations of books which offer them a special ontological status persist in the collective mindset. All this has consequences both in the social sphere and at the level of human attitude. The book represents access to knowledge and it implicitly confers formulae of social achievement or it institutes hierarchies and stirs respect, admiration and curiosity

• Details
• Contents