Active Faults as Social Representations

Abstract

The Japanese term“Katsu-danso”or“active faults, ”which was a technical term borrowed from natural sciences, has been widely used in Japan since the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Quake. The present study analyses based on social representation theory how this term has been used to familiarize unfamiliar events caused by this unprecedentedly huge disaster, and how it has been integrated into everyday knowledge. Content analyses of newspapers and magazine articles which covered the disaster were conducted. First, the author focused on metaphorical expressions about the term to investigate the anchoring process which was proposed by Moscovici as the first step of the familiarization. Secondly, precursory quake reports were highlighted. These reports are good illustrations of the objectification process, the second step characterizing social representation. For people often associated unfamiliar concrete phenomena, observed before the disaster, with the term in the retrospective statements they made after the disaster to objectify an abstract image of the term.