Abstract

This paper essays to compare the concept of common sense, especially as it has been studied by A. Schutz, with the social representations approach proposed by Serge Moscovici. Since social representations have had several empirical applications above all in social psychology but just a little in sociology, we suggest that it is important to discover new possible developments if we understand its sociological perspective. From Durkheim's collective representations Moscovici proposes the social representation as "phenomenon", showing three principal shifts of his hypothesis: i) the difference between science and natural language as different worlds where meaning is produced; ii) the dynamic aspects of social representations; iii) the crucial role of mass media communication. We find some interesting analogies with the analysis of the social distribution of knowledge described by Shutz and we propose that social representations re-construct common sense in the course of local situations of everyday interaction experience; so they can be regarded as local operators of common sense, by means both of "molecular" or interpersonal "influences" and mass communication interpretative effects.