State of the art of social representations theory in Asia. An empirical meta-theoretical analysis

Part of a larger research project aimed at performing the meta-theoretical analysis of theworldwide literature published on social representations theory (SRT), this article exploresthe state of art of the theory in the geocultural context of Asia, spatially and temporally, as wellas from a conceptual, disciplinary, theoretical, empirical and thematic point of view. The Gridfor MetaTheoretical Analysis was used on 194 sources, extracted from the So.Re.Com“A.S. deRosa”@-library. Multi-step strategies of data analyses offer a diversified picture of findings: (a)descriptive statistics and geomapping with Tableau Desktop the bibliometric impact country bycountry; (b) structural multidimensional view of significant intersections between“meta-data”performing hierarchical clustering on the top of the multiple correspondence analysis. Thethree clusters detected reveal a shift from a more generic and applied tradition of researchon SRT in 2002–2011 to a more theoretically oriented empirical research trend starting from2011, identifying the scientific production anchored into different Asian regions (Indonesia,China and Israel) and mainly differentiated by the methodology employed. Results revealedthat SRT was adopted due to its epistemological and empirical compatibilities with the purposeof creating an original Asian social psychology, interested in indigenous social phenomenaspecific to cultural backgrounds