“Bartlett's Way”and Social Representations

The Case of Zen Transmitted across Cultures

Abstract

Bartlett's theory of social conventionalisation is examined both theoretically and empirically with a view to facilitating the advancement of Moscovici's theory of social representations. The value of Bartlett's theory for the elaboration of social representations theory is demonstrated by exploring in particular its concrete utility in sociogenetic analyses of representations involving comparative studies both cross-cultural and cross-time. Some of the other features of Bartlett's theory are also discussed, including its potential for advancing representations research in general through cross-fertilisation with variations of embodied representations theories which have recently been put forward.