Societies Under Threat

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Introduction—Threats: An Indispensable Debate

   • Denise Jodelet, Jorge Vala, Ewa Drozda-Senkowska

   Pages 1-10

3. Thinking Threats: Opening Views on Phenomena and Social Processes

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

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   2. Uses and Misuses of Threats in the Public Sphere

      • Denise Jodelet

      Pages 13-26

   3. Unbounded Environment, Risk Society, and Potentialization of Threats: A Challenge for Social Sciences

      • Lionel Charles, Bernard Kalaora

      Pages 27-39

   4. Transcendental Damage Versus Global Risks

      • Dominique Bourg

      Pages 41-46

   5. Modalities of Perceiving Threats: The Time Factor

      • Henri Atlan

      Pages 47-53

   6. In the Age of Societal Uncertainty, the Era of Threat

      • Dame Glynis Breakwell

      Pages 55-71

4. Building Threats: Cultures, Groups, and Identities

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 73-73

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   2. From the “Classic” Terrorism of the 1970s to Contemporary “Global” Terrorism

      • Michel Wieviorka

      Pages 75-85

   3. Climate Change in Sociocultural Contexts: One Risk, Multiple Threats

      • Sabine Caillaud, Virginie Bonnot, Silvia Krauth-Gruber

      Pages 87-99

   4. A Lasting Symbolic National Threat: The Dispute Over the Name Macedonia

      • Nikos Kalampalikis

      Pages 101-112

   5. Gypsies: What Threat? Threat and Purity in Majority and Minority Relationships

      • Juan A. Pérez, Farah Ghosn

      Pages 113-126

   6. Immigrants and Refugees: From Social Disaffection to Perceived Threat

      • Jorge Vala, Cícero Roberto Pereira

      Pages 127-140

5. Confronting Threats in the Public Sphere: Refusal, Change, Action

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 141-141

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   2. Climate Change in the XXIst and Following Centuries: A Risk or a Threat?

      • Filipe Duarte Santos

      Pages 143-155

   3. Climate Change: Anticipated Risk or Heralded Catastrophe? Questions from a Thwarted Public Enquiry

      • Laurence Tubiana, François Lerin

      Pages 157-171

   4. Financial Black Swans: Unpredictable Threat or Descriptive Illusion?

      • Christian Walter

      Pages 173-186

   5. Threat and Oblivion: Interpreting the Silence Over the Spanish Flu (1918–19)

      • Maria Luisa Lima, José Manuel Sobral

      Pages 187-199

   6. Collective Responses to Collective Traumas: Synchronization and Collective Resilience

      • Bernard Rimé

      Pages 201-211

This book illuminates the importance of threat on the representation of everyday life, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Divided into three parts, the book sets out by addressing the conceptual aspects of threat and by opening views  on phenomena and social processes associated with threat. It shows how  threat constitutes an analytical category that simultaneously involves social, psychological, religious, historical and political factors, and calls for a sufficiently broad conceptual definition to integrate pluri-disciplinary contributions. The second part focuses on the building of threats, mainly the environmental threats that have reached a tragic dimension today and are a core aspect of world concerns, the contemporary global terrorism, the migrations and the challenges these bring to contemporary societies, as well as the threats associated with the emergence of nationalism and the diverse aspects of excluding the Other. The final part examines the coping strategies, including oblivion, denial and defiance associated with different sources of threats, for instance those arising from epidemic and collective diseases, financial technology, natural disasters and collective traumas.

• Social Meanings of Threats
• Social Psychological Processes Creating Threat from Risk
• Notion of Threat in the Public Sphere
• Collective Emotional Experiences on Threats
• Global Terrorism
• Migrants and Refugees as Threats
• Disclosure of Minority Groups
• Intimate Relationships and the AIDS Threat
• Risk and Threats of Climate Change
• Threats of Financial Technology
• Controlling Threats
• Potentialization of Threats
• Environmental Threats for Society
• Coping with Threats in the Public Sphere

• Directeur d’Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

  Denise Jodelet

• Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

  Jorge Vala

• Laboratoire de Psychology Sociale, University of Paris, Paris, France

  Ewa Drozda-Senkowska

Denise Jodelet, Docteur d’Etat in Social Psychology, Directeur d’Etudes at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and member of the Foundation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme has taken the direction of the Laboratoire de Psychologie sociale of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales after its founder, Serge Moscovici. Specialized in the study of Social Representations she has directed various programs of research and doctoral thesis (particularly in the domains of environment, health, memory, education). She has published many books and articles, of theoretical and empirical nature, on social representations, pointing particularly on the fields of madness and mental health, body, health, environment, collective memory and social threats). She is currently oriented towards meaning construction and transmission through art and religion, giving attention to the imaginary dimension of social representations. Her work has led her to establish stretch collaborative relations with diverse universities in Europe, Latin and South America, Asia and Africa. Responding to Serge Moscovici’s desire to give continuity to the international network animated in the Laboratoire Européen de Psychologie Sociale, she has founded and his the President of the “Réseau Mondial Serge Moscovici” (REMOSCO) at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris.


Jorge Vala, PhD in Social Psychology, is an Emeritus Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS)/University of Lisbon. Jorge Vala is a former Director of the Institute for Social Sciences from the University of Lisbon and he was the National Coordinator of the European Social Survey (ESFRI). At ICS, his research focus on socio-cognitive processes, namely in the field of social representations and ideologies, social norms and social identities. His present projects articulate these processes with the study of racism and prejudice, migration issues, social threats, political attitudes, social justice, and validation of everyday knowledge.


Ewa Drozda-Senkowska, is Professor of Social Psychology in the University of Paris where she has been the Director of the Laboratory of Social Psychology and where she was  the Director of the Institute of Psychology. She created a laboratory for the study of social threats at its University. She has coordinated several works on collective irrationalities, the pitfalls of reasoning and  psychology of anticipation. She authored several books, chapters and scientific papers focusing on group behaviour and, the more recent ones, on social threats.

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