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Hope in Africa? Social representations of world history and the future in six African countries

par Cabecinhas, Rosa;Liu, James H.;Licata, Laurent ;Klein, Olivier ;Mendes, Júlio;Feijó, João;Niyubahwe, Aline
Référence International journal of psychology, 46, 354-367
Publication Publié, 2011

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

Data on social representations of world history have been collected everywhere in the world but sub-Saharan Africa. Two studies using open-ended data involving university students from six African countries fill this gap. In Study one, nominations from Cape Verde and Mozambique for the most important events in world history in the last 1000 years were dominated by war and politics, recency effects, and Western-centrism tempered by African socio-centrism on colonization and independence. The first three findings replicated previous research conducted in other parts of the world, but the last pattern contrasted sharply with European data. Study two employed a novel method asking participants how they would begin the narration of world history, and then to describe a major transition to the present. Participants most frequently wrote about the evolution of humanity out of Africa, followed by war and then colonization as a beginning, and then replicated previous findings with war, colonization, and technology as major transitions to the present. Finally, when asked about how they foresaw the future, many participants expressed hope for peace and cooperation, especially those facing more risk of collective violence (Burundi and Congo). A Colonial/Liberation narrative was more predominant in the data from former Portuguese colonies (Angola, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau), than in the former Belgian colonies (Burundi and Congo).