Abstract:

Maca Urbano, D.Y. & Echeverri Londoño, M.C. (2006).
Representaciones sociales de Justicia Restaurativa en una comunidad marginal.
Papers on Social Representations, 15, pages 2.1-2.19
[http://www.psr.jku.at/]

Social Representations are forms of knowledge that allow the subject or the group to 
appropriate external knowledge in the service of everyday life. Accordingly, the present 
study is about Restorative Justice, its Social Representations and their development in a 
group of adolescents, the tutors and supervisors belonging to a Foundation in a marginal 
and conflict-prone community in Aguablanca, Colombia. This institution aims at 
implementing this kind of justice as a new model and alternative to violent conflict 
resolution in the area. Being a new practice in this community, the emerging representations 
of Restorative Justice are a worthwhile object of study. Our interest is to investigate how 
local socio-cultural conditions interact with the new concept to transform its original 
understanding. There are three groups of respondents: Eleven adolescents, nine tutors and 
two consultants. The representatives of these groups play different roles in this program 
and they bring a different background to bear in the process. For data collection we use 
semi-structured interviews, participant observation, questionnaires, and field diaries of 
the researchers and participating students. We find that the Social Representation of the 
adolescents and the tutors departs considerably from the theoretical concept of Restorative 
Justice, while that of the consultants is closer to the original idea of the concept. We explain 
this finding as resulting from the developmental level of the participants’ moral system, the 
presence or absence of an egocentric perspective and the degree of emotional commitment. 
These conditions mediate between psychological and emotional factors and the possibilities 
and limitations set by the socio-cultural context within which the actors intervene.