This entry presents the concept of collective representations, a concept that originated in the social theory of Emile Durkheim. Durkheim addressed this concept in his studies of social solidarity, the family, morality, philosophy, religion, and the mechanisms that determine social life in contemporary society, the late nineteenth century, and early twentieth century, in France. The idea of collective representation first appeared in 1898, when Durkheim, in his article “Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives,” published in Sociologie et Philosophie (1924), addressed the topic of individual and collective representations. For Durkheim, collective representations refer to the influence of ideas on the structure of social life. They represent a synthesis of the cognitive and the social, and he defines them as categories, notions, or ideas that constitute the institutionalized system of social meanings. These representations form the cultural framework of society, through which it organizes the production of meaning, identity, and its very structure (Durkheim, Las formas elementales de la vida religiosa. S.XXI, Madrid, 1993; Durkheim, Sociología y filosofía. Granada, Comares, 2006).