THE DRAWING TECHNIQUE AS A TOOL FOR THE STUDY OF THE SOCIAL REPRESENTATION OF CULTURE

The aim of the present study is to investigate how children think culture, in the theoretical perspective of the Moscovici's (1961) Social Representations. The research was carried out in Naples (Italy) on 138 pupils of two lower secondary schools. According to the Community Profile of the City of Naples (Comune di Napoli, 2012), through a non random judgment sampling, the interviewees were divided into two different subsamples: mid-high economic status and mid-low economic status. The main purpose was to explore the influence of participants' status differences on their representation of the object. Research methodology is based on the Drawing Technique that is considered one of the best tool to interview developmental age subjects (Galli, Nigro & Poderico, 1989; Galli & Fasanelli, 1995;). Effectively, the drawing represents the most powerful and direct way of children expression. Participants were asked "to draw culture", then to comment on their drawings and in the end to define culture. Data collected through this strategy, were processed by a categorical-frequency content analysis. Our results showed both convergent and divergent representations among the two different economic status subsamples. On the one hand the iconographic identification of culture (as " school/teaching" actions) is similar for all the children involved in the study, on the other hand the definition of culture is different between the two subsamples. The mid-high economic status participants showed a culture representation focused on the classic role of the artist and the art, instead the mid-low economic status children showed a culture representation based on the folks costumes and traditions.