what is representation and example

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representation

[ rep-ri-zen- tey -sh uh n , -z uh n- ]

• the act of representing.
• the state of being represented.
• the expression or designation by some term, character, symbol, or the like.
• action or speech on behalf of a person, group, business house, state, or the like by an agent, deputy, or representative.

to demand representation on a board of directors.

• Government. the state, fact, or right of being represented by delegates having a voice in legislation or government.
• the body or number of representatives, as of a constituency.
• the act of speaking or negotiating on behalf of a state.
• an utterance on behalf of a state.
• presentation to the mind, as of an idea or image.
• a mental image or idea so presented; concept.
• the act of portrayal, picturing, or other rendering in visible form.
• a picture, figure, statue, etc.
• the production or a performance of a play or the like, as on the stage.
• Often representations. a description or statement, as of things true or alleged.
• a statement of facts, reasons, etc., made in appealing or protesting; a protest or remonstrance.

a representation of authority.

/ ˌrɛprɪzɛnˈteɪʃən /

• the act or an instance of representing or the state of being represented
• anything that represents, such as a verbal or pictorial portrait
• anything that is represented, such as an image brought clearly to mind
• the principle by which delegates act for a constituency
• a body of representatives
• contract law a statement of fact made by one party to induce another to enter into a contract
• an instance of acting for another, on his authority, in a particular capacity, such as executor or administrator
• a dramatic production or performance
• often plural a statement of facts, true or alleged, esp one set forth by way of remonstrance or expostulation

phonetic representation

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Other words from.

• nonrep·re·sen·tation noun
• over·repre·sen·tation noun
• prerep·re·sen·tation noun
• self-repre·sen·tation noun
• under·repre·sen·tation noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of representation 1

Example Sentences

It was a metaphorical statement of giving and withdrawing consent for a show rooted in a literal representation of Coel being assaulted.

The mathematically manipulated results are passed on and augmented through the stages, finally producing an integrated representation of a face.

I hope this list—a representation of the most consequential changes taking places in our world—is similarly useful for you.

“Given the moment we are in, I can only hope our institutions really understand what this failure of representation means to our city,” he said.

The voters don’t want to have an elected city attorney on the, and representation said, that’s fine.

With all that said, representation of each of these respective communities has increased in the new Congress.

As this excellent piece in Mother Jones describes, however, Holsey had outrageously poor representation during his trial.

During that time days, Livvix went through court hearings without legal representation.

What do you think prompted the change in comic book representation of LGBTQ characters?

Barbie is an unrealistic, unhealthy, insulting representation of female appearance.

With less intelligent children traces of this tendency to take pictorial representation for reality may appear as late as four.

As observation widens and grows finer, the first bald representation becomes fuller and more life-like.

The child now aims at constructing a particular linear representation, that of a man, a horse, or what not.

He had heard it hinted that allowing the colonies representation in Parliament would be a simple plan for making taxes legal.

But sufficient can be discerned for the grasping of the idea, which seems to be a representation of the Nativity.

Related Words

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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Representation in Literature: Why It’s Important & How To Handle It

October 10, 2018 by ANGELA ACKERMAN

Happy to welcome Deborah Dixon , a passionate author, editor, and racial justice activist to talk a bit on Representation in Literature, a topic of importance and something I think many of us want to understand better so we can encourage the right sort of discussions and help bring about change. Please read on!

The issue of representation has become an important one in literature and throughout the entertainment industry. As an author and publisher of color, I am often asked to offer insight on how best to include characters of diverse backgrounds. Specifically, this means characters from minority or underrepresented groups, such as ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA+ persons, religious minorities, those with disabilities, and to some extent, socioeconomic minorities. In this article, I will use the term “minority” to refer to members of all of these groups.

First, my credentials: I am Jamaican, neurodivergent, and simultaneously a citizen of and immigrant to the United States, among other things. These credentials do matter, because the basis of a person’s regard for your opinion on these sensitive matters starts with your background. It isn’t the whole picture; not every minority person has the same breadth of experiences, and many majority members have been exposed to the problems that minority members face. Also, like anything else, background and privilege are nuanced. Even I have some sources of privilege: I am cisgender and not physically disabled.

Also valued is the nature of a writer’s privilege. I won’t discuss privilege and entitlement too much here, as there are plenty of resources on both, such as this exploration of the different elements of identity.

There are two primary reasons why representation is important: inclusivity and perception .

Seeing people who look, act, and experience life like them in media makes a person feel included in a society, and it reinforces positive views of themselves and what they can achieve in society. Also, members of other groups, especially majority groups, base their ideas of groups on what they see in the media . For example, a hiring manager who watches too many police procedurals might view candidates of minority races as having criminal tendencies.

For people who exist outside of these marginalized and underrepresented groups, it can be hard to imagine life with the experiences and hardships that minorities experience. Without those experiences, writing characters of diverse backgrounds can seem daunting.

A good start is to be cognizant of the problems that your character would face and when those problems would have to be addressed. People of minority groups are still people; we have similar needs and similar motivations. The main difference is in the ways that society and its structures are arrayed against any particular group.

Therefore, in some situations, it will be perfectly acceptable to write a minority character just as you would any other. If a character’s romantic relationships are never brought up, then their sexual orientation might be little more than a footnote. Likewise, a black student’s college career might be just like that of a white student if the college itself is diverse and tolerant.

However, if the character is placed in a situation where their identity would be a factor, then it would be irresponsible to overlook it. For example, a black character being pulled over by the police should be described as feeling exceptional anxiety over their possible treatment by the officers. Whether the writer feels that this is a legitimate fear is irrelevant; it is what black people experience, and it is a problem that we continue to battle . Any work that included a black character getting along famously with the police would be soundly ridiculed by the black community.

Also, it might be tempting to fall back on stereotypes, but these are harmful images that still negatively affect members of those minorities. Take, for example, the common use of Middle Eastern characters as villains , or the portrayal of Native Americans as oversexualized savages . If these are the characters that are being written, then we would rather not have them at all!

Remember that minority characters are not there to be “exotic” ornaments for your plot. One striking example I encountered as an editor was a white writer using an almost all-white cast who included an Asian woman as a manicurist. It was meant as a cheeky observation, but in practice, it supported yet another harmful stereotype, and it would have reinforced to readers that Asian woman are only fit to run nail salons.

Always Do the Research

There is plenty of first-hand material about the situations that minority groups face, and many companies, including mine , offer research specific to fiction writing. If you happen to know someone from the group that you are interested in writing about, then ask that person if they can offer any insight, and be prepared for them to possibly turn you down.

Finally, remember that this is a cultural exchange; you must offer something in return. Consider promoting minority authors. Don’t just tack on characters to be “diverse,” and don’t borrow elements from a group without context, such as European knights using scimitars because they’re “cool.”

For a well-known example of what not to do , observe J. K. Rowling’s approach to including Native Americans in the Potterverse. She combined the hundreds of Native American cultures into one homogenous “community,” reappropriated important cultural touchstones, and supported harmful narratives of Natives accepting white colonialism. Although she was called out on this , she has not publicly apologized or changed her approach.

The best recent example of representation being done right is a film: 2016’s The Accountant , in which the main character, played by Ben Affleck, is high-functioning autistic. While the character is written in a very predictable fashion—aural oversensitivity, emotional vacancy—Affleck’s performance provides nuance that elevates the entire story. It’s clear that he and his supporting cast did the research, and while the movie’s overall effect on the autistic community is debatable, many of us saw pieces of ourselves in its protagonist .

Although the entertainment industry at large is welcoming more content written by minority members, most stories that reach the mainstream are still ones written by the majority—white, straight people. The majority still has a much stronger voice. Use it to amplify positive portrayals of the people who need them the most.

As with anything else, when in doubt, ask.

Look for editors who specifically offer sensitivity reading as part of their processes. Many editors, like those at Shalamar, offer diversity feedback as a matter of course.  Here’s an additional resource to check out if you are incorporating diversity in your work:

Writing Diversity Checklist

We welcome respectful discussion–if you have questions or comments, debra is here to discuss.

Shalamar is a book publishing and author advocacy company based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Created in 2016 by a trio of writers, Shalamar aims to break down barriers to entry in publishing by offering accessible and affordable services to new and undiscovered writers.

The company also supports initiatives to amplify voices from underrepresented and marginalized groups. They can be found at @shalamarllp on Facebook and @ShalamarNOLA everywhere else.

Deborah Dixon is a cofounder, author, and editor at Shalamar . She has published two novels, seven novellas, and numerous short stories of her own.

She is a digital rights and racial justice activist, and her opinions on social issues, the publishing process, and Saints football can be found on Twitter at @Deboracracy .

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers , a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

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Reader Interactions

October 18, 2020 at 10:26 am

I believe that books are the essence of who we are and who we dream of being. Therefore, representation is a crucial component in building the identity of an individual and its sense of belonging. Reading about someone who looks like you makes you feel that you can achieve anything and that you truly belong in the society. Seeing someone just like me being reflected in a book makes me feel that I’m not the outsider that I always thought I was. However, there is indeed a lack of representation of minority groups in books. I totally agree that the lack of representation has become an important issue in literature and that minorities should be depicted more in books. In that being said however, any representation should not be accepted just because of the lack of it. Disrespectful and damaging representations of minorities should not be tolerated just for the sake of finally being represented in books.

August 13, 2019 at 11:26 pm

Great stuff, and the Shalamar tips before publishing are excellent and extensive! Thanks for this. Will help my Gr 12 English class think oppressive representation that occurs in some of these more subtle ways.

August 13, 2019 at 11:40 pm

August 22, 2019 at 3:51 pm

Thank you so much Wes, and best wishes for your English class! Glad you found this information and the resources helpful. Feel free to reach out if I can help further!

October 12, 2018 at 12:08 am

As a Native American author, I want to thank you for this post. Keep fighting the good fight!

It is hard to find books where people like me aren’t A) Sexy Shifters B) Poor C) Swindlers

Which is funny, since none of the Lenni-Lenape people that I know are any of those. Hang on… *runs outside, looks at the moon, tries real real extra super hard* Nope. Still not a shifter. Darn. 😉

My people also didn’t wear huge feather headdresses, live in teepees, say “howgh” for hello, or most of the other traits that perhaps were exhibited in the western tribes. We did, however, influence the creation of the original laws of this country, such as the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Obviously not well enough to be considered human until 1879, or be eligible to be citizen of the land we’d lived on for thousands of years until 1924, or get the Voting Rights Act fully nailed down (looking at two states right now…). But hey, we tried.

If anyone out there does have a book with well-written Lenni-Lenape characters, please track me down and drop a buy link. I’m always looking!

October 12, 2018 at 2:24 pm

Preach it! I would love to sit many, many non-Native writers (sadly, including some Black ones) down and have them write this sentence a few hundred times:

Native American communities are NOT monolithic.

As you can see above, I refuse to let Rowling live it down.

If anyone out there has a story will well-developed Lenni-Lenape characters, I just might publish it. 😉

October 11, 2018 at 10:02 pm

That’s definitely some great stuff, and I largely agree. I do take issue with simply saying there are some things you should “never do.” For example, making an autistic character have some unique strange ability can work if it’s done well or the usual cliches of the trope are subverted.

I’m not saying that just for the sake of debate. I have autism myself, and my current story in progress plays on that trope.

October 12, 2018 at 2:13 pm

Thank you Claire! And thanks for checking out our list!

The things that made it onto the Never-Do list aren’t there because they can’t be done well, but because when they are done (well or otherwise), they consistently cause harm to real, living people of that particular group.

Regarding autistic characters, I’ll go and change my wording on the list, but I did think specifically of powers that are related to a character’s autism, correcting the ‘imbalance’ of the disability. (An autistic character with, say, lightning powers, unrelated to her autism, would probably be okay.)

Objectively, a disability-superpower autistic character could possibly be done well, especially by an autistic writer, but I respectfully disagree that the character *should* be done even so. Even if the character was brilliant and an excellent role model, like a neurodivergent Wonder Woman, she would still be perpetrating objectifying stereotypes about how we need a ‘cure’ to balance out our deficiencies. It also isolates a model minority within the autistic community, as it elevates ‘superhuman’ autistics (ie savants) above others on the spectrum, valuing them more and devaluing the others as useless or helpless.

(Here’s an article that goes into model minorities more: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/why-good-doctor-is-bad-medicine-autism-1098809 )

So while this kind of character could work from a character-development standpoint, her existence would cause strain on those of us (like you and me) who deal with autism stereotypes regularly. My opinion is that the character isn’t worth the harm done, but we likely have different experiences and observations that lead to different conclusions. 🙂

October 11, 2018 at 9:15 pm

Wonderful! Very revelant!

October 12, 2018 at 1:29 pm

Thanks for reading, Traci!!

October 11, 2018 at 2:03 pm

First of all, Who Dat!!!

Thank you so much for writing this article, Deborah. I loved that you explained that a writer needs to remember that diverse characters are still human beings. I also hate that you had to say that.

I had a small press from Mississippi, where I’m from, reach out to me about wanting to work with me. The minute they found out I was a lesbian they quickly let me know that they could not work with a story with LGBTQ+ characters, because they wouldn’t know how to market it. It was shocking and saddening. Needless to say, I did not work with them.

Thank you again, and I look forward to checking out your company and your work!

October 11, 2018 at 4:12 pm

Yeah you rite Keli!!!!

I’m sorry to hear about your experience with that press! And yet I’m not surprised. The inclusion of underrepresented writers ourselves is another topic that I’m passionate about, and fortunately I get to work toward that goal through Shalamar.

Being treated that way, particularly by a press that sought you out, had to have stung, and rightfully so; but, with the benefit of hindsight, people that closed-minded would have been rough to work with anyway, so maybe it was for the better, rudeness and prejudice aside.

(Marketing professionals are specifically taught to adapt to different audience, genres, and trends, so that excuse is always code for “we don’t want to work with you.”)

I hope you found a much better home for your writing, and would love to hear from you anytime!

October 11, 2018 at 10:23 am

Glad to have you here discussing something that I think confuses a lot of people because sometimes we can see part of the picture, but not the whole thing and so we don’t necessarily realize the ripples that come from stereotypes or the level of inequity out there.

In our fiction it is our job to make the reader feel part of another’s point of view. I think as a Caucasian and a Caucasian author, I need to work harder to do what I can to make sure all voices are represented. Change comes about through understanding, and this happens at all levels from governing entities to the drivers of industries to the producers of content and the consumers of that content.

Thanks for being here!

October 11, 2018 at 9:06 am

Hi everyone! Angela, thank you SO MUCH for your help and your kindness! You are an inspiration to me as an author advocate. <3

Readers: Thanks for checking out this article! I am happy to answer any further questions you might have here. You can also contact me directly if you'd prefer a one-on-one conversation.

Much love from New Orleans!

October 11, 2018 at 9:03 am

Thanks for being here today, Deborah!

October 11, 2018 at 3:59 pm

Hi Becca! Thanks for having me! 🙂

[…] Ackerman talks about the importance of inclusivity and perception.   Inclusivity prescribes that the characters in the texts that we use should be as […]

[…] Deborah Dixon examine representation in literature: why it’s important and how to handle it. […]

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Examples of representation

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the highest point of a mountain

Keeping up appearances (Talking about how things seem)

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Political Representation

The concept of political representation is misleadingly simple: everyone seems to know what it is, yet few can agree on any particular definition. In fact, there is an extensive literature that offers many different definitions of this elusive concept. [Classic treatments of the concept of political representations within this literature include Pennock and Chapman 1968; Pitkin, 1967 and Schwartz, 1988.] Hanna Pitkin (1967) provides, perhaps, one of the most straightforward definitions: to represent is simply to “make present again.” On this definition, political representation is the activity of making citizens’ voices, opinions, and perspectives “present” in public policy making processes. Political representation occurs when political actors speak, advocate, symbolize, and act on the behalf of others in the political arena. In short, political representation is a kind of political assistance. This seemingly straightforward definition, however, is not adequate as it stands. For it leaves the concept of political representation underspecified. Indeed, as we will see, the concept of political representation has multiple and competing dimensions: our common understanding of political representation is one that contains different, and conflicting, conceptions of how political representatives should represent and so holds representatives to standards that are mutually incompatible. In leaving these dimensions underspecified, this definition fails to capture this paradoxical character of the concept.

This encyclopedia entry has three main goals. The first is to provide a general overview of the meaning of political representation, identifying the key components of this concept. The second is to highlight several important advances that have been made by the contemporary literature on political representation. These advances point to new forms of political representation, ones that are not limited to the relationship between formal representatives and their constituents. The third goal is to reveal several persistent problems with theories of political representation and thereby to propose some future areas of research.

1.1 Delegate vs. Trustee

1.2 pitkin’s four views of representation, 2. changing political realities and changing concepts of political representation, 3. contemporary advances, 4. future areas of study, a. general discussions of representation, b. arguments against representation, c. non-electoral forms of representation, d. representation and electoral design, e. representation and accountability, f. descriptive representation, other internet resources, related entries, 1. key components of political representation.

Political representation, on almost any account, will exhibit the following five components:

• some party that is representing (the representative, an organization, movement, state agency, etc.);
• some party that is being represented (the constituents, the clients, etc.);
• something that is being represented (opinions, perspectives, interests, discourses, etc.); and
• a setting within which the activity of representation is taking place (the political context).
• something that is being left out (the opinions, interests, and perspectives not voiced).

Theories of political representation often begin by specifying the terms for the first four components. For instance, democratic theorists often limit the types of representatives being discussed to formal representatives — that is, to representatives who hold elected offices. One reason that the concept of representation remains elusive is that theories of representation often apply only to particular kinds of political actors within a particular context. How individuals represent an electoral district is treated as distinct from how social movements, judicial bodies, or informal organizations represent. Consequently, it is unclear how different forms of representation relate to each other. Andrew Rehfeld (2006) has offered a general theory of representation which simply identifies representation by reference to a relevant audience accepting a person as its representative. One consequence of Rehfeld’s general approach to representation is that it allows for undemocratic cases of representation.

However, Rehfeld’s general theory of representation does not specify what representative do or should do in order to be recognized as a representative. And what exactly representatives do has been a hotly contested issue. In particular, a controversy has raged over whether representatives should act as delegates or trustees .

Historically, the theoretical literature on political representation has focused on whether representatives should act as delegates or as trustees . Representatives who are delegates simply follow the expressed preferences of their constituents. James Madison (1787–8) describes representative government as “the delegation of the government...to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” Madison recognized that “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” Consequently, Madison suggests having a diverse and large population as a way to decrease the problems with bad representation. In other words, the preferences of the represented can partially safeguard against the problems of faction.

In contrast, trustees are representatives who follow their own understanding of the best action to pursue. Edmund Burke (1790) is famous for arguing that

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interest each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole… You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament (115).

The delegate and the trustee conception of political representation place competing and contradictory demands on the behavior of representatives. [For a discussion of the similarities and differences between Madison’s and Burke’s conception of representation, see Pitkin 1967, 191–192.] Delegate conceptions of representation require representatives to follow their constituents’ preferences, while trustee conceptions require representatives to follow their own judgment about the proper course of action. Any adequate theory of representation must grapple with these contradictory demands.

Famously, Hanna Pitkin argues that theorists should not try to reconcile the paradoxical nature of the concept of representation. Rather, they should aim to preserve this paradox by recommending that citizens safeguard the autonomy of both the representative and of those being represented. The autonomy of the representative is preserved by allowing them to make decisions based on his or her understanding of the represented’s interests (the trustee conception of representation). The autonomy of those being represented is preserved by having the preferences of the represented influence evaluations of representatives (the delegate conception of representation). Representatives must act in ways that safeguard the capacity of the represented to authorize and to hold their representatives accountable and uphold the capacity of the representative to act independently of the wishes of the represented.

Objective interests are the key for determining whether the autonomy of representative and the autonomy of the represented have been breached. However, Pitkin never adequately specifies how we are to identify constituents’ objective interests. At points, she implies that constituents should have some say in what are their objective interests, but ultimately she merely shifts her focus away from this paradox to the recommendation that representatives should be evaluated on the basis of the reasons they give for disobeying the preferences of their constituents. For Pitkin, assessments about representatives will depend on the issue at hand and the political environment in which a representative acts. To understand the multiple and conflicting standards within the concept of representation is to reveal the futility of holding all representatives to some fixed set of guidelines. In this way, Pitkin concludes that standards for evaluating representatives defy generalizations. Moreover, individuals, especially democratic citizens, are likely to disagree deeply about what representatives should be doing.

Pitkin offers one of the most comprehensive discussions of the concept of political representation, attending to its contradictory character in her The Concept of Representation . This classic discussion of the concept of representation is one of the most influential and oft-cited works in the literature on political representation. (For a discussion of her influence, see Dovi 2016). Adopting a Wittgensteinian approach to language, Pitkin maintains that in order to understand the concept of political representation, one must consider the different ways in which the term is used. Each of these different uses of the term provides a different view of the concept. Pitkin compares the concept of representation to “ a rather complicated, convoluted, three–dimensional structure in the middle of a dark enclosure.” Political theorists provide “flash-bulb photographs of the structure taken from different angles” [1967, 10]. More specifically, political theorists have provided four main views of the concept of representation. Unfortunately, Pitkin never explains how these different views of political representation fit together. At times, she implies that the concept of representation is unified. At other times, she emphasizes the conflicts between these different views, e.g. how descriptive representation is opposed to accountability. Drawing on her flash-bulb metaphor, Pitkin argues that one must know the context in which the concept of representation is placed in order to determine its meaning. For Pitkin, the contemporary usage of the term “representation” can signficantly change its meaning.

For Pitkin, disagreements about representation can be partially reconciled by clarifying which view of representation is being invoked. Pitkin identifies at least four different views of representation: formalistic representation, descriptive representation, symbolic representation, and substantive representation. (For a brief description of each of these views, see chart below.) Each view provides a different approach for examining representation. The different views of representation can also provide different standards for assessing representatives. So disagreements about what representatives ought to be doing are aggravated by the fact that people adopt the wrong view of representation or misapply the standards of representation. Pitkin has in many ways set the terms of contemporary discussions about representation by providing this schematic overview of the concept of political representation.

1. Formalistic Representation : Brief Description . The institutional arrangements that precede and initiate representation. Formal representation has two dimensions: authorization and accountability. Main Research Question . What is the institutional position of a representative? Implicit Standards for Evaluating Representatives . None. ( Authorization ): Brief Description . The means by which a representative obtains his or her standing, status, position or office. Main Research Questions . What is the process by which a representative gains power (e.g., elections) and what are the ways in which a representative can enforce his or her decisions? Implicit Standards for Evaluating Representatives . No standards for assessing how well a representative behaves. One can merely assess whether a representative legitimately holds his or her position. pdf include--> ( Accountability ): Brief Description . The ability of constituents to punish their representative for failing to act in accordance with their wishes (e.g. voting an elected official out of office) or the responsiveness of the representative to the constituents. Main Research Question . What are the sanctioning mechanisms available to constituents? Is the representative responsive towards his or her constituents’ preferences? Implicit Standards for Evaluating Representatives . No standards for assessing how well a representative behaves. One can merely determine whether a representative can be sanctioned or has been responsive.

Brief Description . The ways that a representative “stands for” the represented — that is, the meaning that a representative has for those being represented.

Main Research Question . What kind of response is invoked by the representative in those being represented?

Implicit Standards for Evaluating Representatives . Representatives are assessed by the degree of acceptance that the representative has among the represented.

Brief Description . The extent to which a representative resembles those being represented.

Main Research Question . Does the representative look like, have common interests with, or share certain experiences with the represented?

Implicit Standards for Evaluating Representatives . Assess the representative by the accuracy of the resemblance between the representative and the represented.

Brief Description . The activity of representatives—that is, the actions taken on behalf of, in the interest of, as an agent of, and as a substitute for the represented.

Main Research Question . Does the representative advance the policy preferences that serve the interests of the represented?

Implicit Standards for Evaluating Representatives . Assess a representative by the extent to which policy outcomes advanced by a representative serve “the best interests” of their constituents.

One cannot overestimate the extent to which Pitkin has shaped contemporary understandings of political representation, especially among political scientists. For example, her claim that descriptive representation opposes accountability is often the starting point for contemporary discussions about whether marginalized groups need representatives from their groups.

Similarly, Pitkin’s conclusions about the paradoxical nature of political representation support the tendency among contemporary theorists and political scientists to focus on formal procedures of authorization and accountability (formalistic representation). In particular, there has been a lot of theoretical attention paid to the proper design of representative institutions (e.g. Amy 1996; Barber, 2001; Christiano 1996; Guinier 1994). This focus is certainly understandable, since one way to resolve the disputes about what representatives should be doing is to “let the people decide.” In other words, establishing fair procedures for reconciling conflicts provides democratic citizens one way to settle conflicts about the proper behavior of representatives. In this way, theoretical discussions of political representation tend to depict political representation as primarily a principal-agent relationship. The emphasis on elections also explains why discussions about the concept of political representation frequently collapse into discussions of democracy. Political representation is understood as a way of 1) establishing the legitimacy of democratic institutions and 2) creating institutional incentives for governments to be responsive to citizens.

David Plotke (1997) has noted that this emphasis on mechanisms of authorization and accountability was especially useful in the context of the Cold War. For this understanding of political representation (specifically, its demarcation from participatory democracy) was useful for distinguishing Western democracies from Communist countries. Those political systems that held competitive elections were considered to be democratic (Schumpeter 1976). Plotke questions whether such a distinction continues to be useful. Plotke recommends that we broaden the scope of our understanding of political representation to encompass interest representation and thereby return to debating what is the proper activity of representatives. Plotke’s insight into why traditional understandings of political representation resonated prior to the end of the Cold War suggests that modern understandings of political representation are to some extent contingent on political realities. For this reason, those who attempt to define political representation should recognize how changing political realities can affect contemporary understandings of political representation. Again, following Pitkin, ideas about political representation appear contingent on existing political practices of representation. Our understandings of representation are inextricably shaped by the manner in which people are currently being represented. For an informative discussion of the history of representation, see Monica Brito Vieira and David Runican’s Representation .

As mentioned earlier, theoretical discussions of political representation have focused mainly on the formal procedures of authorization and accountability within nation states, that is, on what Pitkin called formalistic representation. However, such a focus is no longer satisfactory due to international and domestic political transformations. [For an extensive discussion of international and domestic transformations, see Mark Warren and Dario Castioglione (2004).] Increasingly international, transnational and non-governmental actors play an important role in advancing public policies on behalf of democratic citizens—that is, acting as representatives for those citizens. Such actors “speak for,” “act for” and can even “stand for” individuals within a nation-state. It is no longer desirable to limit one’s understanding of political representation to elected officials within the nation-state. After all, increasingly state “contract out” important responsibilities to non-state actors, e.g. environmental regulation. As a result, elected officials do not necessarily possess “the capacity to act,” the capacity that Pitkin uses to identify who is a representative. So, as the powers of nation-state have been disseminated to international and transnational actors, elected representatives are not necessarily the agents who determine how policies are implemented. Given these changes, the traditional focus of political representation, that is, on elections within nation-states, is insufficient for understanding how public policies are being made and implemented. The complexity of modern representative processes and the multiple locations of political power suggest that contemporary notions of accountability are inadequate. Grant and Keohane (2005) have recently updated notions of accountability, suggesting that the scope of political representation needs to be expanded in order to reflect contemporary realities in the international arena. Michael Saward (2009) has proposed an innovative type of criteria that should be used for evaluating non-elective representative claims. John Dryzek and Simon Niemayer (2008) has proposed an alternative conception of representation, what he calls discursive representation, to reflect the fact that transnational actors represent discourses, not real people. By discourses, they mean “a set of categories and concepts embodying specific assumptions, judgments, contentions, dispositions, and capabilities.” The concept of discursive representation can potentially redeem the promise of deliberative democracy when the deliberative participation of all affected by a collective decision is infeasible.

Domestic transformations also reveal the need to update contemporary understandings of political representation. Associational life — social movements, interest groups, and civic associations—is increasingly recognized as important for the survival of representative democracies. The extent to which interest groups write public policies or play a central role in implementing and regulating policies is the extent to which the division between formal and informal representation has been blurred. The fluid relationship between the career paths of formal and informal representatives also suggests that contemporary realities do not justify focusing mainly on formal representatives. Mark Warren’s concept of citizen representatives (2008) opens up a theoretical framework for exploring how citizens represent themselves and serve in representative capacities.

Given these changes, it is necessary to revisit our conceptual understanding of political representation, specifically of democratic representation. For as Jane Mansbridge has recently noted, normative understandings of representation have not kept up with recent empirical research and contemporary democratic practices. In her important article “Rethinking Representation” Mansbridge identifies four forms of representation in modern democracies: promissory, anticipatory, gyroscopic and surrogacy. Promissory representation is a form of representation in which representatives are to be evaluated by the promises they make to constituents during campaigns. Promissory representation strongly resembles Pitkin’s discussion of formalistic representation. For both are primarily concerned with the ways that constituents give their consent to the authority of a representative. Drawing on recent empirical work, Mansbridge argues for the existence of three additional forms of representation. In anticipatory representation, representatives focus on what they think their constituents will reward in the next election and not on what they promised during the campaign of the previous election. Thus, anticipatory representation challenges those who understand accountability as primarily a retrospective activity. In gyroscopic representation, representatives “look within” to derive from their own experience conceptions of interest and principles to serve as a basis for their action. Finally, surrogate representation occurs when a legislator represents constituents outside of their districts. For Mansbridge, each of these different forms of representation generates a different normative criterion by which representatives should be assessed. All four forms of representation, then, are ways that democratic citizens can be legitimately represented within a democratic regime. Yet none of the latter three forms representation operates through the formal mechanisms of authorization and accountability. Recently, Mansbridge (2009) has gone further by suggesting that political science has focused too much on the sanctions model of accountability and that another model, what she calls the selection model, can be more effective at soliciting the desired behavior from representatives. According to Mansbridge, a sanction model of accountability presumes that the representative has different interests from the represented and that the represented should not only monitor but reward the good representative and punish the bad. In contrast, the selection model of accountability presumes that representatives have self-motivated and exogenous reasons for carrying out the represented’s wishes. In this way, Mansbridge broadens our understanding of accountability to allow for good representation to occur outside of formal sanctioning mechanisms.

Mansbridge’s rethinking of the meaning of representation holds an important insight for contemporary discussions of democratic representation. By specifying the different forms of representation within a democratic polity, Mansbridge teaches us that we should refer to the multiple forms of democratic representation. Democratic representation should not be conceived as a monolithic concept. Moreover, what is abundantly clear is that democratic representation should no longer be treated as consisting simply in a relationship between elected officials and constituents within her voting district. Political representation should no longer be understood as a simple principal-agent relationship. Andrew Rehfeld has gone farther, maintaining that political representation should no longer be territorially based. In other words, Rehfeld (2005) argues that constituencies, e.g. electoral districts, should not be constructed based on where citizens live.

Lisa Disch (2011) also complicates our understanding of democratic representation as a principal-agent relationship by uncovering a dilemma that arises between expectations of democratic responsiveness to constituents and recent empirical findings regarding the context dependency of individual constituents’ preferences. In response to this dilemma, Disch proposes a mobilization conception of political representation and develops a systemic understanding of reflexivity as the measure of its legitimacy.

By far, one of the most important shifts in the literature on representation has been the “constructivist turn.” Constructivist approaches to representation emphasize the representative’s role in creating and framing the identities and claims of the represented. Here Michael Saward’s The Representative Claim is exemplary. For Saward, representation entails a series of relationships: “A maker of representations (M) puts forward a subject (S) which stands for an object (O) which is related to a referent (R) and is offered to an audience (A)” (2006, 302). Instead of presuming a pre-existing set of interests of the represented that representatives “bring into” the political arena, Saward stresses how representative claim-making is a “deeply culturally inflected practice.” Saward explicitly denies that theorists can know what are the interests of the represented. For this reason, the represented should have the ultimate say in judging the claims of the representative. The task of the representative is to create claims that will resonate with appropriate audiences.

Saward therefore does not evaluate representatives by the extent to which they advance the preferences or interests of the represented. Instead he focuses on the institutional and collective conditions in which claim-making takes place. The constructivist turn examines the conditions for claim-making, not the activities of particular representatives.

Saward’s “constructivist turn” has generated a new research direction for both political theorists and empirical scientists. For example, Lisa Disch (2015) considers whether the constructivist turn is a “normative dead” end, that is, whether the epistemological commitments of constructivism that deny the ability to identify interests will undermine the normative commitments to democratic politics. Disch offers an alternative approach, what she calls “the citizen standpoint”. This standpoint does not mean taking at face value whomever or whatever citizens regard as representing them. Rather, it is “an epistemological and political achievement that does not exist spontaneously but develops out of the activism of political movements together with the critical theories and transformative empirical research to which they give rise” (2015, 493). (For other critical engagements with Saward’s work, see Schaap et al, 2012 and Nässtrom, 2011).

There have been a number of important advances in theorizing the concept of political representation. In particular, these advances call into question the traditional way of thinking of political representation as a principal-agent relationship. Most notably, Melissa Williams’ recent work has recommended reenvisioning the activity of representation in light of the experiences of historically disadvantaged groups. In particular, she recommends understanding representation as “mediation.” In particular, Williams (1998, 8) identifies three different dimensions of political life that representatives must “mediate:” the dynamics of legislative decision-making, the nature of legislator-constituent relations, and the basis for aggregating citizens into representable constituencies. She explains each aspect by using a corresponding theme (voice, trust, and memory) and by drawing on the experiences of marginalized groups in the United States. For example, drawing on the experiences of American women trying to gain equal citizenship, Williams argues that historically disadvantaged groups need a “voice” in legislative decision-making. The “heavily deliberative” quality of legislative institutions requires the presence of individuals who have direct access to historically excluded perspectives.

In addition, Williams explains how representatives need to mediate the representative-constituent relationship in order to build “trust.” For Williams, trust is the cornerstone for democratic accountability. Relying on the experiences of African-Americans, Williams shows the consistent patterns of betrayal of African-Americans by privileged white citizens that give them good reason for distrusting white representatives and the institutions themselves. For Williams, relationships of distrust can be “at least partially mended if the disadvantaged group is represented by its own members”(1998, 14). Finally, representation involves mediating how groups are defined. The boundaries of groups according to Williams are partially established by past experiences — what Williams calls “memory.” Having certain shared patterns of marginalization justifies certain institutional mechanisms to guarantee presence.

Williams offers her understanding of representation as mediation as a supplement to what she regards as the traditional conception of liberal representation. Williams identifies two strands in liberal representation. The first strand she describes as the “ideal of fair representation as an outcome of free and open elections in which every citizen has an equally weighted vote” (1998, 57). The second strand is interest-group pluralism, which Williams describes as the “theory of the organization of shared social interests with the purpose of securing the equitable representation … of those groups in public policies” ( ibid .). Together, the two strands provide a coherent approach for achieving fair representation, but the traditional conception of liberal representation as made up of simply these two strands is inadequate. In particular, Williams criticizes the traditional conception of liberal representation for failing to take into account the injustices experienced by marginalized groups in the United States. Thus, Williams expands accounts of political representation beyond the question of institutional design and thus, in effect, challenges those who understand representation as simply a matter of formal procedures of authorization and accountability.

Another way of reenvisioning representation was offered by Nadia Urbinati (2000, 2002). Urbinati argues for understanding representation as advocacy. For Urbinati, the point of representation should not be the aggregation of interests, but the preservation of disagreements necessary for preserving liberty. Urbinati identifies two main features of advocacy: 1) the representative’s passionate link to the electors’ cause and 2) the representative’s relative autonomy of judgment. Urbinati emphasizes the importance of the former for motivating representatives to deliberate with each other and their constituents. For Urbinati the benefit of conceptualizing representation as advocacy is that it improves our understanding of deliberative democracy. In particular, it avoids a common mistake made by many contemporary deliberative democrats: focusing on the formal procedures of deliberation at the expense of examining the sources of inequality within civil society, e.g. the family. One benefit of Urbinati’s understanding of representation is its emphasis on the importance of opinion and consent formation. In particular, her agonistic conception of representation highlights the importance of disagreements and rhetoric to the procedures, practices, and ethos of democracy. Her account expands the scope of theoretical discussions of representation away from formal procedures of authorization to the deliberative and expressive dimensions of representative institutions. In this way, her agonistic understanding of representation provides a theoretical tool to those who wish to explain how non-state actors “represent.”

Other conceptual advancements have helped clarify the meaning of particular aspects of representation. For instance, Andrew Rehfeld (2009) has argued that we need to disaggregate the delegate/trustee distinction. Rehfeld highlights how representatives can be delegates and trustees in at least three different ways. For this reason, we should replace the traditional delegate/trustee distinction with three distinctions (aims, source of judgment, and responsiveness). By collapsing these three different ways of being delegates and trustees, political theorists and political scientists overlook the ways in which representatives are often partial delegates and partial trustees.

Other political theorists have asked us to rethink central aspects of our understanding of democratic representation. In Inclusion and Democracy Iris Marion Young asks us to rethink the importance of descriptive representation. Young stresses that attempts to include more voices in the political arena can suppress other voices. She illustrates this point using the example of a Latino representative who might inadvertently represent straight Latinos at the expense of gay and lesbian Latinos (1986, 350). For Young, the suppression of differences is a problem for all representation (1986, 351). Representatives of large districts or of small communities must negotiate the difficulty of one person representing many. Because such a difficulty is constitutive of representation, it is unreasonable to assume that representation should be characterized by a “relationship of identity.” The legitimacy of a representative is not primarily a function of his or her similarities to the represented. For Young, the representative should not be treated as a substitute for the represented. Consequently, Young recommends reconceptualizing representation as a differentiated relationship (2000, 125–127; 1986, 357). There are two main benefits of Young’s understanding of representation. First, her understanding of representation encourages us to recognize the diversity of those being represented. Second, her analysis of representation emphasizes the importance of recognizing how representative institutions include as well as they exclude. Democratic citizens need to remain vigilant about the ways in which providing representation for some groups comes at the expense of excluding others. Building on Young’s insight, Suzanne Dovi (2009) has argued that we should not conceptualize representation simply in terms of how we bring marginalized groups into democratic politics; rather, democratic representation can require limiting the influence of overrepresented privileged groups.

Moreover, based on this way of understanding political representation, Young provides an alterative account of democratic representation. Specifically, she envisions democratic representation as a dynamic process, one that moves between moments of authorization and moments of accountability (2000, 129). It is the movement between these moments that makes the process “democratic.” This fluidity allows citizens to authorize their representatives and for traces of that authorization to be evident in what the representatives do and how representatives are held accountable. The appropriateness of any given representative is therefore partially dependent on future behavior as well as on his or her past relationships. For this reason, Young maintains that evaluation of this process must be continuously “deferred.” We must assess representation dynamically, that is, assess the whole ongoing processes of authorization and accountability of representatives. Young’s discussion of the dynamic of representation emphasizes the ways in which evaluations of representatives are incomplete, needing to incorporate the extent to which democratic citizens need to suspend their evaluations of representatives and the extent to which representatives can face unanticipated issues.

Another insight about democratic representation that comes from the literature on descriptive representation is the importance of contingencies. Here the work of Jane Mansbridge on descriptive representation has been particularly influential. Mansbridge recommends that we evaluate descriptive representatives by contexts and certain functions. More specifically, Mansbridge (1999, 628) focuses on four functions and their related contexts in which disadvantaged groups would want to be represented by someone who belongs to their group. Those four functions are “(1) adequate communication in contexts of mistrust, (2) innovative thinking in contexts of uncrystallized, not fully articulated, interests, … (3) creating a social meaning of ‘ability to rule’ for members of a group in historical contexts where the ability has been seriously questioned and (4) increasing the polity’s de facto legitimacy in contexts of past discrimination.” For Mansbridge, descriptive representatives are needed when marginalized groups distrust members of relatively more privileged groups and when marginalized groups possess political preferences that have not been fully formed. The need for descriptive representation is contingent on certain functions.

Mansbridge’s insight about the contingency of descriptive representation suggests that at some point descriptive representatives might not be necessary. However, she doesn’t specify how we are to know if interests have become crystallized or trust has formed to the point that the need for descriptive representation would be obsolete. Thus, Mansbridge’s discussion of descriptive representation suggests that standards for evaluating representatives are fluid and flexible. For an interesting discussion of the problems with unified or fixed standards for evaluating Latino representatives, see Christina Beltran’s The Trouble with Unity .

Mansbridge’s discussion of descriptive representation points to another trend within the literature on political representation — namely, the trend to derive normative accounts of representation from the representative’s function. Russell Hardin (2004) captured this trend most clearly in his position that “if we wish to assess the morality of elected officials, we must understand their function as our representatives and then infer how they can fulfill this function.” For Hardin, only an empirical explanation of the role of a representative is necessary for determining what a representative should be doing. Following Hardin, Suzanne Dovi (2007) identifies three democratic standards for evaluating the performance of representatives: those of fair-mindedness, critical trust building, and good gate-keeping. In Ruling Passions , Andrew Sabl (2002) links the proper behavior of representatives to their particular office. In particular, Sabl focuses on three offices: senator, organizer and activist. He argues that the same standards should not be used to evaluate these different offices. Rather, each office is responsible for promoting democratic constancy, what Sabl understands as “the effective pursuit of interest.” Sabl (2002) and Hardin (2004) exemplify the trend to tie the standards for evaluating political representatives to the activity and office of those representatives.

There are three persistent problems associated with political representation. Each of these problems identifies a future area of investigation. The first problem is the proper institutional design for representative institutions within democratic polities. The theoretical literature on political representation has paid a lot of attention to the institutional design of democracies. More specifically, political theorists have recommended everything from proportional representation (e.g. Guinier, 1994 and Christiano, 1996) to citizen juries (Fishkin, 1995). However, with the growing number of democratic states, we are likely to witness more variation among the different forms of political representation. In particular, it is important to be aware of how non-democratic and hybrid regimes can adopt representative institutions to consolidate their power over their citizens. There is likely to be much debate about the advantages and disadvantages of adopting representative institutions.

This leads to a second future line of inquiry — ways in which democratic citizens can be marginalized by representative institutions. This problem is articulated most clearly by Young’s discussion of the difficulties arising from one person representing many. Young suggests that representative institutions can include the opinions, perspectives and interests of some citizens at the expense of marginalizing the opinions, perspectives and interests of others. Hence, a problem with institutional reforms aimed at increasing the representation of historically disadvantaged groups is that such reforms can and often do decrease the responsiveness of representatives. For instance, the creation of black districts has created safe zones for black elected officials so that they are less accountable to their constituents. Any decrease in accountability is especially worrisome given the ways citizens are vulnerable to their representatives. Thus, one future line of research is examining the ways that representative institutions marginalize the interests, opinions and perspectives of democratic citizens.

In particular, it is necessary for to acknowledge the biases of representative institutions. While E. E. Schattschneider (1960) has long noted the class bias of representative institutions, there is little discussion of how to improve the political representation of the disaffected — that is, the political representation of those citizens who do not have the will, the time, or political resources to participate in politics. The absence of such a discussion is particularly apparent in the literature on descriptive representation, the area that is most concerned with disadvantaged citizens. Anne Phillips (1995) raises the problems with the representation of the poor, e.g. the inability to define class, however, she argues for issues of class to be integrated into a politics of presence. Few theorists have taken up Phillip’s gauntlet and articulated how this integration of class and a politics of presence is to be done. Of course, some have recognized the ways in which interest groups, associations, and individual representatives can betray the least well off (e.g. Strolovitch, 2004). And some (Dovi, 2003) have argued that descriptive representatives need to be selected based on their relationship to citizens who have been unjustly excluded and marginalized by democratic politics. However, it is unclear how to counteract the class bias that pervades domestic and international representative institutions. It is necessary to specify the conditions under which certain groups within a democratic polity require enhanced representation. Recent empirical literature has suggested that the benefits of having descriptive representatives is by no means straightforward (Gay, 2002).

A third and final area of research involves the relationship between representation and democracy. Historically, representation was considered to be in opposition with democracy [See Dahl (1989) for a historical overview of the concept of representation]. When compared to the direct forms of democracy found in the ancient city-states, notably Athens, representative institutions appear to be poor substitutes for the ways that citizens actively ruled themselves. Barber (1984) has famously argued that representative institutions were opposed to strong democracy. In contrast, almost everyone now agrees that democratic political institutions are representative ones.

Bernard Manin (1997)reminds us that the Athenian Assembly, which often exemplifies direct forms of democracy, had only limited powers. According to Manin, the practice of selecting magistrates by lottery is what separates representative democracies from so-called direct democracies. Consequently, Manin argues that the methods of selecting public officials are crucial to understanding what makes representative governments democratic. He identifies four principles distinctive of representative government: 1) Those who govern are appointed by election at regular intervals; 2) The decision-making of those who govern retains a degree of independence from the wishes of the electorate; 3) Those who are governed may give expression to their opinions and political wishes without these being subject to the control of those who govern; and 4) Public decisions undergo the trial of debate (6). For Manin, historical democratic practices hold important lessons for determining whether representative institutions are democratic.

While it is clear that representative institutions are vital institutional components of democratic institutions, much more needs to be said about the meaning of democratic representation. In particular, it is important not to presume that all acts of representation are equally democratic. After all, not all acts of representation within a representative democracy are necessarily instances of democratic representation. Henry Richardson (2002) has explored the undemocratic ways that members of the bureaucracy can represent citizens. [For a more detailed discussion of non-democratic forms of representation, see Apter (1968). Michael Saward (2008) also discusses how existing systems of political representation do not necessarily serve democracy.] Similarly, it is unclear whether a representative who actively seeks to dismantle democratic institutions is representing democratically. Does democratic representation require representatives to advance the preferences of democratic citizens or does it require a commitment to democratic institutions? At this point, answers to such questions are unclear. What is certain is that democratic citizens are likely to disagree about what constitutes democratic representation.

One popular approach to addressing the different and conflicting standards used to evaluate representatives within democratic polities, is to simply equate multiple standards with democratic ones. More specifically, it is argued that democratic standards are pluralistic, accommodating the different standards possessed and used by democratic citizens. Theorists who adopt this approach fail to specify the proper relationship among these standards. For instance, it is unclear how the standards that Mansbridge identifies in the four different forms of representation should relate to each other. Does it matter if promissory forms of representation are replaced by surrogate forms of representation? A similar omission can be found in Pitkin: although Pitkin specifies there is a unified relationship among the different views of representation, she never describes how the different views interact. This omission reflects the lacunae in the literature about how formalistic representation relates to descriptive and substantive representation. Without such a specification, it is not apparent how citizens can determine if they have adequate powers of authorization and accountability.

Currently, it is not clear exactly what makes any given form of representation consistent, let alone consonant, with democratic representation. Is it the synergy among different forms or should we examine descriptive representation in isolation to determine the ways that it can undermine or enhance democratic representation? One tendency is to equate democratic representation simply with the existence of fluid and multiple standards. While it is true that the fact of pluralism provides justification for democratic institutions as Christiano (1996) has argued, it should no longer presumed that all forms of representation are democratic since the actions of representatives can be used to dissolve or weaken democratic institutions. The final research area is to articulate the relationship between different forms of representation and ways that these forms can undermine democratic representation.

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• Cotta, Maurizio and Heinrich Best (eds.), 2007. Democratic Representation in Europe Diversity, Change, and Convergence , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Guinier, Lani, 1994. The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy , New York: Free Press.
• Przworksi, Adam, Susan C. Stokes, and Bernard Manin (eds.), 1999. Democracy, Accountability, and Representation , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Thompson, Dennis, 2002. Just Elections , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Jacobs, Lawrence R. and Robert Y. Shapiro, 2000. Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Grant, Ruth and Robert O. Keohane, 2005. “Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics,” American Political Science Review , 99 (February): 29–44.
• Mansbridge, Jane, 2004. “Representation Revisited: Introduction to the Case Against Electoral Accountability,” Democracy and Society , 2(I): 12–13.
• –––, 2009. “A Selection Model of Representation,” Journal of Political Philosophy , 17(4): 369–398.
• Pettit, Philip, 2010. “Representation, Responsive and Indicative,” Constellations , 17(3): 426–434.
• Fishkin, John, 1995. The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Gutmann, Amy and Dennis Thompson, 2004. Why Deliberative Democracy? , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Hibbing, John and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, 2002. Stealth Democracy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Saward, Michael (ed.), 2000. Democratic Innovation: Deliberation, Representation and Association , London: Routledge.
• Severs, E., 2010. “Representation As Claims-Making. Quid Responsiveness?” Representation , 46(4): 411–423.
• Williams, Melissa, 2000. “The Uneasy Alliance of Group Representation and Deliberative Democracy,” in Citizenship in Diverse Societies , W. Kymlicka and Wayne Norman (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, Ch 5. pp. 124–153.
• Young, Iris Marion, 1999. “Justice, Inclusion, and Deliberative Democracy” in Deliberative Politics , Stephen Macedo (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University.
• Bentran, Cristina, 2010. The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Celis, Karen, Sarah Childs, Johanna Kantola and Mona Lena Krook, 2008, “Rethinking Women’s Substantive Representation,” Representation , 44(2): 99–110.
• Childs Sarah, 2008. Women and British Party Politics: Descriptive, Substantive and Symbolic Representation , London: Routledge.
• Dovi, Suzanne, 2002. “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Or Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?,” American Political Science Review , 96: 745–754.
• –––, 2007. “Theorizing Women’s Representation in the United States?,” Politics and Gender , 3(3): 297–319. doi: 10.1017/S1743923X07000281
• –––, 2009. “In Praise of Exclusion,” Journal of Politics , 71 (3): 1172–1186.
• –––, 2016. “Measuring Representation: Rethinking the Role of Exclusion” Political Representation , Marc Bühlmann and Jan Fivaz (eds.), London: Routledge.
• Fenno, Richard F., 2003. Going Home: Black Representatives and Their Constituents , Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Gay, Claudine, 2002. “Spirals of Trust?,” American Journal of Political Science , 4: 717–32.
• Gould, Carol, 1996. “Diversity and Democracy: Representing Differences,” in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political , Seyla Benhabib (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University, pp. 171–186.
• Htun, Mala, 2004. “Is Gender like Ethnicity? The Political Representation of Identity Groups,” Perspectives on Politics , 2: 439–458.
• Mansbridge, Jane, 1999. “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent ‘Yes’,” The Journal of Politics , 61: 628–57.
• –––, 2003. “Rethinking Representation,” American Political Science Review , 97: 515–528.
• Phillips, Anne, 1995. Politics of Presence , New York: Clarendon.
• –––, 1998. “Democracy and Representation: Or, Why Should It Matter Who Our Representatives Are?,” in Feminism and Politics , Oxford: Oxford University. pp. 224–240.
• Pitkin, Hanna, 1967. The Concept of Representation , Los Angeles: University of Press.
• Sapiro, Virginia, 1981. “When are Interests Interesting?,” American Political Science Review , 75 (September): 701–721.
• Strolovitch, Dara Z., 2004. “Affirmative Representation,” Democracy and Society , 2: 3–5.
• Swain, Carol M., 1993. Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
• Thomas, Sue, 1991. “The Impact of Women on State Legislative Policies,” Journal of Politics , 53 (November): 958–976.
• –––, 1994. How Women Legislate , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Weldon, S. Laurel, 2002. “Beyond Bodies: Institutional Sources of Representation for Women in Democratic Policymaking,” Journal of Politics , 64(4): 1153–1174.
• Williams, Melissa, 1998. Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.
• Young, Iris Marion, 1986. “Deferring Group Representation,” Nomos: Group Rights , Will Kymlicka and Ian Shapiro (eds.), New York: New York University Press, pp. 349–376.
• –––, 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
• –––, 2000. Inclusion and Democracy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

G. Democratic Representation

• Castiglione, D., 2015. “Trajectories and Transformations of the Democratic Representative System”. Global Policy , 6(S1): 8–16.
• Disch, Lisa, 2011. “Toward a Mobilization Conception of Democratic Representation,” American Political Science Review , 105(1): 100–114.
• –––, 2012. “Democratic representation and the constituency paradox,” Perspectives on Politics , 10(3): 599–616.
• –––, 2016. “Hanna Pitkin, The Concept of Representation,” The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory , Jacob Levy (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198717133.013.24
• Mansbridge, Jane, 2003. “Rethinking Representation,” American Political Science Review , 97: 515–528.
• Näsström, Sofia, 2006. “Representative democracy as tautology: Ankersmit and Lefort on representation,” European Journal of Political Theory , 5(3): 321–342.
• Urbinati, Nadia, 2011. “Political Representation as Democratic Process,” Redescriptions (Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History: Volume 10), Kari Palonen (ed.), Helsinki: Transaction Publishers.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• FairVote Program for Representative Government
• Proportional Representation Library , provides readings proportional representation elections created by Prof. Douglas J. Amy, Dept. of Politics, Mount Holyoke College
• Representation , an essay by Ann Marie Baldonado on the Postcolonial Studies website at Emory University.
• Representation: John Locke, Second Treatise, §§ 157–58 , in The Founders’ Constitution at the University of Chicago Press
• Popular Basis of Political Authority: David Hume, Of the Original Contract , in The Founders’ Constitution at the University of Chicago Press

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Why Representation Matters and Why It’s Still Not Enough

Reflections on growing up brown, queer, and asian american..

Posted December 27, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

• Positive media representation can be helpful in increasing self-esteem for people of marginalized groups (especially youth).
• Interpersonal contact and exposure through media representation can assist in reducing stereotypes of underrepresented groups.
• Representation in educational curricula and social media can provide validation and support, especially for youth of marginalized groups.

Growing up as a Brown Asian American child of immigrants, I never really saw anyone who looked like me in the media. The TV shows and movies I watched mostly concentrated on blonde-haired, white, or light-skinned protagonists. They also normalized western and heterosexist ideals and behaviors, while hardly ever depicting things that reflected my everyday life. For example, it was equally odd and fascinating that people on TV didn’t eat rice at every meal; that their parents didn’t speak with accents; or that no one seemed to navigate a world of daily microaggressions . Despite these observations, I continued to absorb this mass media—internalizing messages of what my life should be like or what I should aspire to be like.

Because there were so few media images of people who looked like me, I distinctly remember the joy and validation that emerged when I did see those representations. Filipino American actors like Ernie Reyes, Nia Peeples, Dante Basco, and Tia Carrere looked like they could be my cousins. Each time they sporadically appeared in films and television series throughout my youth, their mere presence brought a sense of pride. However, because they never played Filipino characters (e.g., Carrere was Chinese American in Wayne's World ) or their racial identities remained unaddressed (e.g., Basco as Rufio in Hook ), I did not know for certain that they were Filipino American like me. And because the internet was not readily accessible (nor fully informational) until my late adolescence , I could not easily find out.

Through my Ethnic Studies classes as an undergraduate student (and my later research on Asian American and Filipino American experiences with microaggressions), I discovered that my perspectives were not that unique. Many Asian Americans and other people of color often struggle with their racial and ethnic identity development —with many citing how a lack of media representation negatively impacts their self-esteem and overall views of their racial or cultural groups. Scholars and community leaders have declared mottos like how it's "hard to be what you can’t see," asserting that people from marginalized groups do not pursue career or academic opportunities when they are not exposed to such possibilities. For example, when women (and women of color specifically) don’t see themselves represented in STEM fields , they may internalize that such careers are not made for them. When people of color don’t see themselves in the arts or in government positions, they likely learn similar messages too.

Complicating these messages are my intersectional identities as a queer person of color. In my teens, it was heartbreakingly lonely to witness everyday homophobia (especially unnecessary homophobic language) in almost all television programming. The few visual examples I saw of anyone LGBTQ involved mostly white, gay, cisgender people. While there was some comfort in seeing them navigate their coming out processes or overcome heterosexism on screen, their storylines often appeared unrealistic—at least in comparison to the nuanced homophobia I observed in my religious, immigrant family. In some ways, not seeing LGBTQ people of color in the media kept me in the closet for years.

How representation can help

Representation can serve as opportunities for minoritized people to find community support and validation. For example, recent studies have found that social media has given LGBTQ young people the outlets to connect with others—especially when the COVID-19 pandemic has limited in-person opportunities. Given the increased suicidal ideation, depression , and other mental health issues among LGBTQ youth amidst this global pandemic, visibility via social media can possibly save lives. Relatedly, taking Ethnic Studies courses can be valuable in helping students to develop a critical consciousness that is culturally relevant to their lives. In this way, representation can allow students of color to personally connect to school, potentially making their educational pursuits more meaningful.

Further, representation can be helpful in reducing negative stereotypes about other groups. Initially discussed by psychologist Dr. Gordon Allport as Intergroup Contact Theory, researchers believed that the more exposure or contact that people had to groups who were different from them, the less likely they would maintain prejudice . Literature has supported how positive LGBTQ media representation helped transform public opinions about LGBTQ people and their rights. In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that the general US population significantly changed their views of same-sex marriage in just 15 years—with 60% of the population being opposed in 2004 to 61% in favor in 2019. While there are many other factors that likely influenced these perspective shifts, studies suggest that positive LGBTQ media depictions played a significant role.

For Asian Americans and other groups who have been historically underrepresented in the media, any visibility can feel like a win. For example, Gold House recently featured an article in Vanity Fair , highlighting the power of Asian American visibility in the media—citing blockbuster films like Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings . Asian American producers like Mindy Kaling of Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls demonstrate how influential creators of color can initiate their own projects and write their own storylines, in order to directly increase representation (and indirectly increase mental health and positive esteem for its audiences of color).

When representation is not enough

However, representation simply is not enough—especially when it is one-dimensional, superficial, or not actually representative. Some scholars describe how Asian American media depictions still tend to reinforce stereotypes, which may negatively impact identity development for Asian American youth. Asian American Studies is still needed to teach about oppression and to combat hate violence. Further, representation might also fail to reflect the true diversity of communities; historically, Brown Asian Americans have been underrepresented in Asian American media, resulting in marginalization within marginalized groups. For example, Filipino Americans—despite being the first Asian American group to settle in the US and one of the largest immigrant groups—remain underrepresented across many sectors, including academia, arts, and government.

Representation should never be the final goal; instead, it should merely be one step toward equity. Having a diverse cast on a television show is meaningless if those storylines promote harmful stereotypes or fail to address societal inequities. Being the “first” at anything is pointless if there aren’t efforts to address the systemic obstacles that prevent people from certain groups from succeeding in the first place.

Instead, representation should be intentional. People in power should aim for their content to reflect their audiences—especially if they know that doing so could assist in increasing people's self-esteem and wellness. People who have the opportunity to represent their identity groups in any sector may make conscious efforts to use their influence to teach (or remind) others that their communities exist. Finally, parents and teachers can be more intentional in ensuring that their children and students always feel seen and validated. By providing youth with visual representations of people they can relate to, they can potentially save future generations from a lifetime of feeling underrepresented or misunderstood.

Kevin Leo Yabut Nadal, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the City University of New York and the author of books including Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress .

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Definition of represent

 (Entry 1 of 2)

transitive verb

intransitive verb

Definition of re-present  (Entry 2 of 2)

• characterize

Examples of represent in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'represent.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English, from Anglo-French representer , from Latin repraesentare , from re- + praesentare to present

14th century, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1

1564, in the meaning defined above

Dictionary Entries Near represent

reprehensory

Cite this Entry

“Represent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/represent. Accessed 29 May. 2024.

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Popular Representation Guides

Stuart Hall and Representation

• The Male Gaze

What is Media Framing?

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Representation and the Media

Theories of representation argue that media products are not faithful or accurate reflections of reality because producers will always have to make important decisions about how the text is constructed. Think about a news broadcast. The way people, places, ideas and events are presented to the audience can be shaped by which direction the cameras were pointing, how the footage is cut and spliced into a narrative, the words used to describe the situation, and the music that accompanies the piece.

Signs are selected and combined to encode a message. Editors edit. Even selfies posted on social media are filtered. Representation, therefore, is the mediated version of reality.

Feminist Theory and Theorists

Feminism analyses and explains the impact of social forces on gender, especially the experience of women. Do media representations of femininity and masculinity systematically reinforce inequality? Find out more in our guides.

• Liesbet van Zoonen

Judith Butler and Performativity

• bell hooks and Intersectionality

• The Bechdel Test

The Representation of Women on Magazine Covers

The Beauty Myth

Representation matters. The media can have a significant impact on how we see and understand each other. This is particularly important when the narratives convey hurtful and damaging misrepresentations. The following critical frameworks examines how ethnic-racial groups are depicted in the media.

• Paul Gilroy

Key Concepts in Post-colonial Theory

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There is no doubt social and cultural contexts will affect the choices producers make when creating media texts. The following guides explore some of the processes which influence the representation of people, places and important issues.

Agenda-Setting Theory

Ideology and the Media

Stereotypes

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{{item.title}}, my essentials, ask for help, contact edconnect, directory a to z, how to guides, english k–12, understanding representation video.

Duration : 2 minutes 46 seconds

Transcript of Understanding representation

[characters are all sitting on chairs holding art books and pencils]

Erin – So what's that drawing assignment for today, Mr. Cranna?

Mr Cranna – Today, I want you to draw a hero. And go!

[Horns play]

Mahdi and Mr Cranna – Done.

Erin – Done.

Mr Cranna – Time to reveal our drawings. Erin – Wow they're all super different.

Mahdi – How? We all drew the same thing. A hero.

Mr Cranna – Our drawings are different because they're our individual representations of a hero. A representation is how we depict things or ideas, when we compose a text. In this case, a drawing. When we try to represent things in the world, we are influenced by our experiences, beliefs, cultural background and the audience for whom we're making the text.

Erin – Right, nah still don't get it.

Mr Cranna – Well, let's look at our drawings. I've used a werewolf to represent my hero, because I usually use werewolves as the main character in my comics and I always think of them as saving the day. But Erin, your representation of a hero is very different.

Erin – Yeah, well I don't think of werewolves as being heroic. I think of them as being scary.

Mahdi – So who's your hero, then?

Erin – Australian Paralympian, Jocelyn Neumiller. She's a para-canoest and competed in the Rio Paralympics.

Mr Cranna – Why have you chosen her as your representation of a hero?

Erin – Because she's got discipline and she competes in a very hard sport at the highest level.

Mahdi – Well my representation of a hero isn't a werewolf because I'm pretty sure I'm allergic. And it isn't of a sports star either, because I'm allergic to sports as well.

Erin – Then who is it?

Mahdi – It's my grandmother. My Tata's is my hero because she loves me no matter how many times I get things wrong and she gives the best hugs.

Mr Cranna – See how our representations the same thing, a hero can be so different. My representation of a hero is someone who saves the day in my stories. Erin's, is someone who is disciplined. While, Mahdi sees a hero, as someone who provides unconditional love.

Mahdi – Actually, Mr. Cranna. I've got a new representation of a hero, now.

Mr Cranna – You do?

Mahdi – Yeah, this apple.

Erin – How can an apple be representation of a hero?

Mahdi – Cause it's about to save me from my hunger.

End of transcript

Related resource

• Textual concepts representation poster (PDF 143 KB)

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Please note:

English K-10 Syllabus © 2012 Copyright NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales.

English Textual Concepts and Learning Processes, and Related Syllabus Content © State of New South Wales, Department of Education, 2017 Learning and Teaching Directorate

A business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Why Representation Matters in Marketing

May 28, 2024 • 4 min read.

Do TV commercials featuring diverse actors help increase sales? Wharton’s Zhenling Jiang tests this idea in her latest study on mortgage ads.

• Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Marketing to minority consumers has been around since the 1950s, when advertising agencies realized the untapped potential in Black consumers who were the second-largest racial group at the time. Advertising has come a long way since then, and so has the emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The result is a wider variety of ads that feature minority actors, models, and celebrities enticing minority consumers to buy. But does representation make a difference?

Research from Wharton marketing professor Zhenling Jiang determined that it does — in a big way. Her co-authored study, which examined television commercials for mortgage refinancing, found that as minority representation depicted in the ads increased from 15% to 25%, the advertising elasticity went up 14%. Advertising elasticity measures a campaign’s effectiveness in generating new sales.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the study found that ads with diverse players didn’t just increase sales among minority borrowers. There was a positive effect among white borrowers, too.

Jiang said the study sends a strong signal to brands that their genuine efforts to attract minority customers can pay off in ways they may not expect.

“When we think about DEI, we tend to think we are sacrificing something to feature more diversity. We are making a trade-off,” she said. “But it’s quite the contrary. It’s actually a nice message that they can achieve both higher sales as well as the societal goal of more inclusion and representation.”

The study , “TV Advertising Effectiveness with Racial Minority Representation: Evidence from the Mortgage Market,” was co-authored by Raphael Thomadsen , marketing professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and Donggwan Kim , who earned his doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis and joins the marketing faculty at Boston College this fall.

“We tend to think we are sacrificing something to feature more diversity. We are making a trade-off. But it’s quite the contrary.” — Zhenling Jiang

Representation and the Racial Wealth Gap

Jiang, who focuses on consumer finance topics in her research, said she chose to study mortgage refinancing ads for a very specific reason: the racial wealth gap in the U.S. With home equity as the largest contributor to household wealth, refinancing can be an important mechanism to help Black and Hispanic homeowners — two groups that haven’t always been courted by lenders.

“Mortgages are the most significant financial decision that consumers can make. If they don’t refinance when interest rates are lower, it can be very costly,” she said. “The long-standing racial disparity in the world of consumer finance makes this question more important.”

For the study, the scholars collected loan origination data from 2018 to 2021 that included information on borrower’s race and census tract-level political affiliation. They merged that with TV mortgage advertising data obtained from Kantar Media for the same time period. That data included ad spending and video files. The scholars used a double machine learning model to control for a host of variables, including image and text embeddings, lender, location, and time of year the ads ran.

To test their theory further, they conducted an experiment with participants who were randomly assigned commercials featuring minority or white families. Those who saw ads with minority families said they were more likely to apply for refinancing from that lender.

“The long-standing disparity in the world of consumer finance makes this question more important.” — Zhenling Jiang

Three Reasons Why Minority Representation Matters in Marketing

Jiang and her co-authors think there are three reasons why minority representation works so well in marketing. First, minority consumers feel a sense of connection when they see themselves portrayed in commercials, although racial homophily doesn’t explain the uptake by white consumers. Second, the depiction of minorities reflects the brand’s inclusive values, which could explain why uptake among white consumers was highest for those with liberal-leaning beliefs. Third, it’s possible that ads with diversity stand out to viewers simply because they are less common.

“I don’t have proof for this, but I believe these three things work together to have an overall effect,” Jiang said.

She said the study shows that firms don’t have to overhaul their marketing campaigns or spend a lot more money to reap the benefits. Choosing minority actors instead of white actors costs similarly. Producing different versions of the same ad can also be cost-efficient.

“If you are keeping ad spending the same and shifting the minority share, you are getting a more effective ad,” she said. “From a practical perspective, that is the lever that companies can pull to increase the minority share in ads.”

More From Knowledge at Wharton

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principle  Provide multiple means of Representation

Learners differ in the ways that they perceive and comprehend information that is presented to them.  For example, those with sensory disabilities (e.g., blindness or deafness); learning disabilities (e.g., dyslexia); language or cultural differences, and so forth may all require different ways of approaching content. Others may simply grasp information quicker or more efficiently through visual or auditory means rather than printed text. Also learning, and transfer of learning, occurs when multiple representations are used, because they allow students to make connections within, as well as between, concepts. In short, there is not one means of representation that will be optimal for all learners ; providing options for representation is essential.

Representation | Guidelines & Checkpoints

Guideline 1 perception.

Interact with flexible content that doesn't depend on a single sense like sight, hearing, movement, or touch.

checkpoint 1.1 Offer ways of customizing the display of information

Checkpoint 1.2 offer alternatives for auditory information, checkpoint 1.3 offer alternatives for visual information, guideline 2 language & symbols.

Communicate through languages that create a shared understanding.

checkpoint 2.1 Clarify vocabulary and symbols

Checkpoint 2.2 clarify syntax and structure, checkpoint 2.3 support decoding of text, mathematical notation, and symbols, checkpoint 2.4 promote understanding across languages, checkpoint 2.5 illustrate through multiple media, guideline 3 comprehension.

Construct meaning and generate new understandings.

checkpoint 3.1 Activate or supply background knowledge

Checkpoint 3.2 highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships, checkpoint 3.3 guide information processing and visualization, checkpoint 3.4 maximize transfer and generalization, udl guidelines, provide multiple means of engagement, provide options for recruiting interest ( guideline 7), optimize individual choice and autonomy ( checkpoint 7.1), optimize relevance, value, and authenticity ( checkpoint 7.2), minimize threats and distractions ( checkpoint 7.3), provide options for sustaining effort & persistence ( guideline 8), heighten salience of goals and objectives ( checkpoint 8.1), vary demands and resources to optimize challenge ( checkpoint 8.2), foster collaboration and community ( checkpoint 8.3), increase mastery-oriented feedback ( checkpoint 8.4), provide options for self regulation ( guideline 9), promote expectations and beliefs that optimize motivation ( checkpoint 9.1), facilitate personal coping skills and strategies ( checkpoint 9.2), develop self-assessment and reflection ( checkpoint 9.3), provide multiple means of representation, provide options for perception ( guideline 1), offer ways of customizing the display of information ( checkpoint 1.1), offer alternatives for auditory information ( checkpoint 1.2), offer alternatives for visual information ( checkpoint 1.3), provide options for language & symbols ( guideline 2), clarify vocabulary and symbols ( checkpoint 2.1), clarify syntax and structure ( checkpoint 2.2), support decoding of text, mathematical notation, and symbols ( checkpoint 2.3), promote understanding across languages ( checkpoint 2.4), illustrate through multiple media ( checkpoint 2.5), provide options for comprehension ( guideline 3), activate or supply background knowledge ( checkpoint 3.1), highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships ( checkpoint 3.2), guide information processing and visualization ( checkpoint 3.3), maximize transfer and generalization ( checkpoint 3.4), provide multiple means of action & expression, provide options for physical action ( guideline 4), vary the methods for response and navigation ( checkpoint 4.1), optimize access to tools and assistive technologies ( checkpoint 4.2), provide options for expression & communication ( guideline 5), use multiple media for communication ( checkpoint 5.1), use multiple tools for construction and composition ( checkpoint 5.2), build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance ( checkpoint 5.3), provide options for executive functions ( guideline 6), guide appropriate goal-setting ( checkpoint 6.1), support planning and strategy development ( checkpoint 6.2), facilitate managing information and resources ( checkpoint 6.3), enhance capacity for monitoring progress ( checkpoint 6.4), expert learners who are…, purposeful & motivated, resourceful & knowledgeable, strategic & goal-directed.

• Conferences

Representation Learning – Complete Guide for Beginner

• By Vijaysinh Lendave
• Last Updated on May 20, 2024

Representation learning is a very important aspect of machine learning which automatically discovers the feature patterns in the data. When the machine is provided with the data, it learns the representation itself without any human intervention. The goal of representation learning is to train machine learning algorithms to learn useful representations, such as those that are interpretable, incorporate latent features, or can be used for transfer learning. In this article, we will discuss the concept of representation learning along with its need and different approaches. The major points to be covered in this article are listed below.

Let’s start the discussion by understanding what is the actual need for representation learning.

Need of Representation Learning

Assume you’re developing a machine-learning algorithm to predict dog breeds based on pictures. Because image data provides all of the answers, the engineer must rely heavily on it when developing the algorithm. Each observation or feature in the data describes the qualities of the dogs. The machine learning system that predicts the outcome must comprehend how each attribute interacts with other outcomes such as Pug, Golden Retriever, and so on.

As a result, if there is any noise or irregularity in the input, the result can be drastically different, which is a risk with most machine learning algorithms. The majority of machine learning algorithms have only a basic understanding of the data. So in such cases, the solution is to provide a more abstract representation of data. It’s impossible to tell which features should be extracted for many tasks. This is where the concept of representation learning takes shape.

What is Representation Learning?

Representation learning is a class of machine learning approaches that allow a system to discover the representations required for feature detection or classification from raw data. The requirement for manual feature engineering is reduced by allowing a machine to learn the features and apply them to a given activity.

In representation learning, data is sent into the machine, and it learns the representation on its own. It is a way of determining a data representation of the features, the distance function, and the similarity function that determines how the predictive model will perform. Representation learning works by reducing high-dimensional data to low-dimensional data, making it easier to discover patterns and anomalies while also providing a better understanding of the data’s overall behaviour.

Basically, Machine learning tasks such as classification frequently demand input that is mathematically and computationally convenient to process, which motivates representation learning. Real-world data, such as photos, video, and sensor data, has resisted attempts to define certain qualities algorithmically. An approach is to examine the data for such traits or representations rather than depending on explicit techniques.

Methods of Representation Learning

We must employ representation learning to ensure that the model provides invariant and untangled outcomes in order to increase its accuracy and performance. In this section, we’ll look at how representation learning can improve the model’s performance in three different learning frameworks: supervised learning, unsupervised learning.

1. Supervised Learning

This is referred to as supervised learning when the ML or DL model maps the input X to the output Y. The computer tries to correct itself by comparing model output to ground truth, and the learning process optimizes the mapping from input to output. This process is repeated until the optimization function reaches global minima.

Even when the optimization function reaches the global minima, new data does not always perform well, resulting in overfitting. While supervised learning does not necessitate a significant amount of data to learn the mapping from input to output, it does necessitate the learned features. The prediction accuracy can improve by up to 17 percent when the learned attributes are incorporated into the supervised learning algorithm.

Using labelled input data, features are learned in supervised feature learning. Supervised neural networks, multilayer perceptrons, and (supervised) dictionary learning are some examples.

2. Unsupervised Learning

Unsupervised learning is a sort of machine learning in which the labels are ignored in favour of the observation itself. Unsupervised learning isn’t used for classification or regression; instead, it’s used to uncover underlying patterns, cluster data, denoise it, detect outliers, and decompose data, among other things.

When working with data x, we must be very careful about whatever features z we use to ensure that the patterns produced are accurate. It has been observed that having more data does not always imply having better representations. We must be careful to develop a model that is both flexible and expressive so that the extracted features can convey critical information.

Unsupervised feature learning learns features from unlabeled input data by following the methods such as Dictionary learning, independent component analysis, autoencoders, matrix factorization, and various forms of clustering are among examples.

In the next section, we will see more about these methods and workflow, how they learn the representation in detail.

Supervised Learning Algorithms

1. supervised dictionary learning.

Dictionary learning creates a set of representative elements (dictionary) from the input data, allowing each data point to be represented as a weighted sum of the representative elements. By minimizing the average representation error (across the input data) and applying L1 regularization to the weights, the dictionary items and weights may be obtained i.e., the representation of each data point has only a few nonzero weights.

For optimizing dictionary elements, supervised dictionary learning takes advantage of both the structure underlying the input data and the labels. The supervised dictionary learning technique uses dictionary learning to solve classification issues by optimizing dictionary elements, data point weights, and classifier parameters based on the input data.

A minimization problem is formulated, with the objective function consisting of the classification error, the representation error, an L1 regularization on the representing weights for each data point (to enable sparse data representation), and an L2 regularization on the parameters of the classification algorithm.

2. Multi-Layer Perceptron

The perceptron is the most basic neural unit, consisting of a succession of inputs and weights that are compared to the ground truth. A multi-layer perceptron, or MLP, is a feed-forward neural network made up of layers of perceptron units. MLP is made up of three-node layers: an input, a hidden layer, and an output layer. MLP is commonly referred to as the vanilla neural network because it is a very basic artificial neural network.

This notion serves as a foundation for hidden variables and representation learning. Our goal in this theorem is to determine the variables or required weights that can represent the underlying distribution of the entire data so that when we plug those variables or required weights into unknown data, we receive results that are almost identical to the original data. In a word, artificial neural networks (ANN) assist us in extracting meaningful patterns from a dataset.

3. Neural Networks

Neural networks are a class of learning algorithms that employ a “network” of interconnected nodes in various layers. It’s based on the animal nervous system, with nodes resembling neurons and edges resembling synapses. The network establishes computational rules for passing input data from the network’s input layer to the network’s output layer, and each edge has an associated weight.

The relationship between the input and output layers, which is parameterized by the weights, is described by a network function associated with a neural network. Various learning tasks can be achieved by minimizing a cost function over the network function (w) with correctly defined network functions.

Unsupervised Learning Algorithms

Learning Representation from unlabeled data is referred to as unsupervised feature learning. Unsupervised Representation learning frequently seeks to uncover low-dimensional features that encapsulate some structure beneath the high-dimensional input data.

1. K-Means Clustering

K-means clustering is a vector quantization approach. An n-vector set is divided into k clusters (i.e. subsets) via K-means clustering, with each vector belonging to the cluster with the closest mean. Despite the use of inferior greedy techniques, the problem is computationally NP-hard.

K-means clustering divides an unlabeled collection of inputs into k groups before obtaining centroids-based features. These characteristics can be honed in a variety of ways. The simplest method is to add k binary features to each sample, with each feature j having a value of one of the k-means learned jth centroid is closest to the sample under consideration. Cluster distances can be used as features after being processed with a radial basis function.

2. Local Linear Embedding

LLE is a nonlinear learning strategy for constructing low-dimensional neighbour-preserving representations from high-dimensional (unlabeled) input. LLE’s main goal is to reconstruct high-dimensional data using lower-dimensional points while keeping some geometric elements of the original data set’s neighbours.

There are two major steps in LLE. The first step is “neighbour-preserving,” in which each input data point Xi is reconstructed as a weighted sum of K nearest neighbour data points, with the optimal weights determined by minimizing the average squared reconstruction error (i.e., the difference between an input point and its reconstruction) while keeping the weights associated with each point equal to one.

The second stage involves “dimension reduction,” which entails searching for vectors in a lower-dimensional space that reduce the representation error while still using the optimal weights from the previous step.

The weights are optimized given fixed data in the first stage, which can be solved as a least-squares problem. Lower-dimensional points are optimized with fixed weights in the second phase, which can be solved using sparse eigenvalue decomposition.

3. Unsupervised Dictionary Mining

For optimizing dictionary elements, unsupervised dictionary learning does not use data labels and instead relies on the structure underlying the data. Sparse coding, which seeks to learn basic functions (dictionary elements) for data representation from unlabeled input data, is an example of unsupervised dictionary learning.

When the number of vocabulary items exceeds the dimension of the input data, sparse coding can be used to learn overcomplete dictionaries. K-SVD is an algorithm for learning a dictionary of elements that allows for sparse representation.

4. Deep Architectures Methods

Deep learning architectures for feature learning are inspired by the hierarchical architecture of the biological brain system, which stacks numerous layers of learning nodes. The premise of distributed representation is typically used to construct these architectures: observable data is generated by the interactions of many diverse components at several levels.

5. Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBMs)

In multilayer learning frameworks, RBMs (restricted Boltzmann machines) are widely used as building blocks. An RBM is a bipartite undirected network having a set of binary hidden variables, visible variables, and edges connecting the hidden and visible nodes. It’s a variant of the more general Boltzmann machines, with the added constraint of no intra-node connections. In an RBM, each edge has a weight assigned to it. The connections and weights define an energy function that can be used to generate a combined distribution of visible and hidden nodes.

For unsupervised representation learning, an RBM can be thought of as a single-layer design. The visible variables, in particular, relate to the input data, whereas the hidden variables correspond to the feature detectors. Hinton’s contrastive divergence (CD) approach can be used to train the weights by maximizing the probability of visible variables.

6. Autoencoders

Deep network representations have been found to be insensitive to complex noise or data conflicts. This can be linked to the architecture to some extent. The employment of convolutional layers and max-pooling, for example, can be proven to produce transformation insensitivity.

Autoencoders are therefore neural networks that may be taught to do representation learning. Autoencoders seek to duplicate their input to their output using an encoder and a decoder. Autoencoders are typically trained via recirculation, a learning process that compares the activation of the input network to the activation of the reconstructed input.

Final Words

Unlike typical learning tasks like classification, which has the end goal of reducing misclassifications, representation learning is an intermediate goal of machine learning making it difficult to articulate a straight and obvious training target. In this post, we understood how to overcome such difficulties from scratch. From the starting, we have seen what was the actual need for this method and understood different methodologies in supervised, unsupervised, and some deep learning frameworks.

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Representational Art: Definition and Guide

Representational art is an artistic style in which the artist attempts to depict a representation of real-life subject matter, that is recognisable to the viewer. This is opposed to non-representational art , which does not depict subjects, objects or scenes from the real world.

Art described as representational can be realistic, or less realistic. As long as the artist is attempting to capture a true-to-life resemblance of their subject, it can be considered representational.

This art form dates back centuries, with some artworks dating back to ancient times. From early cave paintings to Renaissance depictions of Biblical scenes, representational art has been used to express ideas and communicate stories for thousands of years.

Genres of Representational Art

Representational art falls into several distinct genres. Landscape painting, for instance, has been popular since the Renaissance and is still widely practised today. Portraiture and figure drawing are other traditional genres and can range from realistic to stylised interpretations depending on the artist’s preference. Still-life paintings are also popular and can depict anything from a simple bowl of fruit to a complex arrangement of objects.

History of Art and Representation

The history of art is vast and varied. Ancient cultures used representational art to tell stories and document events, while more recent movements such as the Renaissance saw a greater emphasis on realism in painting and sculpture. In the 20th century, it saw a resurgence with the rise of movements such as Realism and Pop Art.

Art Movements: How Representational Art Has Evolved

Art has been a tool of expression for humans since antiquity, with each period of history bringing a new evolution in the approach and perception of representational art. The classical era of Greek sculpture is an ideal example of early representational art, where artists sought an idealised, perfect form rather than an exact reflection of reality. The human body was depicted in harmonious proportions, embodying the cultural values of balance, order and beauty.

Renaissance and the Pursuit of Realism

The High Renaissance brought a shift in perspective, with artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo placing an emphasis on Realism. This was a time of great scientific and cultural advancement, and artists sought to depict the world around them with as much authenticity as possible, meticulously observing and capturing minute details of light, shadow, and anatomy.

Representing Subjective Experience During the Post-Impressionist Movement

By the late 19th to early 20th century, the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements emerged. Artists like Van Gogh and Gauguin began to move away from faithfully representing the physical world. Instead, they sought to express their inner experiences and emotions through bold colours and distorted forms. Here, art began its journey towards abstraction, and representational art took on a new dimension, serving not just as a mirror to the world but also as a window into the artist’s mind.

Representational vs. Non-Representational Art

The difference between representational and non-representational art lies in the way that it is produced. Art that is representational is based on representations of reality, while abstract or non-representational art does not depict anything from the real world. Abstract artists can use geometric shapes, colour schemes, or any combination of shapes and lines that do not form recognisable objects. While representational art can have an emotional or symbolic purpose, it is still rooted in the world of everyday experience. Non-representational art, on the other hand, abstains from any obvious reference to reality or pictorial representation.

How Artists Represent Subjects in Art

Artists create representational, or ‘true to life’ art by observing the forms of the subjects and objects they wish to recreate, by drawing shapes , determining accurate proportions or perspective and using colours that emulate that of the reference. This process is often done slowly, in stages. The artist will begin by sketching the basic outline of their subject, to establish the proportions, then add details such as texture and shade to create the impression of the subject’s form.

Representational art is a rewarding endeavour that requires patience and skill. It takes time to learn how to accurately capture the nuances of light and shadow, but with practice, it can be achieved.

Mediums Used for Representational Art

Representational art can be used in any medium, from painting and drawing to sculpture and even digital media. It can be used to create powerful pieces of artwork or simply as a means of documenting an event or moment in time. While realistic art is often thought of as traditional, it can also be used in a more modern context to create unique and interesting pieces of artwork. It is up to the artist how they choose to interpret and use this style of art.

The Five Big Ideas - Representation and Structure

Discover how to use representation and structure – one of the Five Big Ideas in teaching for mastery – to improve maths teaching

In this Q&A, Dr Debbie Morgan, the NCETM’s Director for Primary, explains how teachers can use representation to support children’s understanding of mathematical structures. She highlights the key dos and don’ts to remember when using this tool in the primary classroom, and shares her advice for teachers and subject leaders.

What do we mean by representation and structure?

Representation and structure are central to successful teaching and are part of a teacher's toolkit. Maths is an abstract subject – it needs to be represented in a way that allows pupils to develop their understanding, and how it is represented either prevents or provides access to mathematical structures.

Why is it representation and structure?

When we represent, we are trying to reveal the structure within a concept – how and why the maths works. Maths is about relationships; for example, when we put two quantities together, we make a larger quantity.

If you’ve got three cakes and two cakes and you put them together, you make a larger group of five cakes – this is an additive structure. We sometimes call this the part-part-whole relationship, and it is often represented with circles shown in a triangular structure or ‘cherry model’.

This triangular structure represents the partitioning of the whole into two parts, and we can see that the quantities inside the two circles are part of the composition of the whole. We choose to use this particular structure as it helps children understand the relationship between those three numbers.

It's important to note that we're not putting five cakes in the whole and then putting three in one of the parts and two in the other part, because then that looks like we've got 10 cakes altogether! We use dynamic movement between those three circles to show the relationship between the parts and whole.

That's not the only structure we use to represent the part-part-whole relationship. In fact, at the early stages, we wouldn't want to show the ‘cherry model’ of three circles, because it is quite abstract. Teachers would need to use a real context, such as five ducks deciding which of the two ponds to swim in. We're still talking about the part-part-whole structure, but we’ve not formalised it into a cherry model.

Bar models are another great tool to use when we want to draw attention to the equivalence between the parts and the whole.

Teachers should select different models to draw out certain aspects of a concept. Where the cherry model illustrates partitioning, the bar model emphasises the equivalence of five to three and two.

• LISTEN: podcast episode Using number lines in Key Stage 2

How does it fit into the other Five Big Ideas in teaching for mastery?

With representation and structure, our main aim is to stimulate children's mathematical thinking and reasoning. It links to variation because a key aspect of variation is that we represent a concept in different ways to draw out essential structures, as we did with the models above. We carefully select and order representations in a coherent manner to build and make sense of concepts and their essential features. Fluency develops in the movement between representations and the ability to see the structure of the maths represented in different ways.

• LEARN: Mastery explained: Five Big Ideas in Teaching for Mastery

How should teachers use representation and structure in their maths lessons?

I recently watched a Year 3 lesson, which was planned using the NCETM PD materials. The focus was fractions, and this was the ninth lesson in the series.

The teacher showed six bricks and one of them was a different colour – she wanted to highlight that the whole is divided into six equal parts, one of them is yellow and each part is one sixth, including the yellow brick. 

Later in the lesson, the children used similar bricks to make what they called the ‘secret fraction’.

They were each given a card with a fraction on it, which they could not show to anybody else, and their task was to build a model with the bricks to represent their fraction, so their peers could guess their fraction. The children were excited about this activity, but most importantly, representing with a 3D model was helpful in deepening their understanding of the concept.

A CPA approach

Many teachers have heard of the concrete, pictorial and abstract (CPA) approach to maths, but one of the misconceptions is that it’s a linear model – we start working with the concrete, then we move onto pictorial, and finally we meet the abstract. But actually, the movement between those different representations is what is important. In this lesson, the children started working with the abstract then moved back to the concrete bricks, which gave them an opportunity to consolidate their understanding and see those links.

In this video from a Year 4 lesson, the children are exploring remainders using different representations:

• Concrete matchsticks to make shapes
• Stem sentences

The movement between these three models of representation, and the questions the teacher asks, embeds the learning.

The role of gesture

Schools involved in the Mastering Number Programme will be familiar with the power of gesture to secure children’s understanding. In Mastering Number at KS2, stamping is one of the key gestures we use to represent multiplicative relationships. In multiplication you have two factors which represent different things: one represents size of the unit and the other represents how many of those units there are.

For example, if we are thinking about three 50 pence pieces, the unit size is 50 and the number of units is three. We could represent it like this:

• Pretend one of your fists is a stamper
• Write 50 on the bottom of the stamper
• Stamp your fist three times whilst saying ‘50, 50, 50’.

This gesture emphasises the structure within the multiplication. From this, teachers are telling us that their pupils are easily able to draw three unitised counters of 50 and represent the maths with an expression or equation.

Here is this gesture in action:

• READ: ‘They can see it straight away’: the impact of Mastering Number

What is the positive impact of teachers using representation and structure?

There is enormous potential. How a teacher carefully selects and represents the maths can provide those magic ‘I get it!’ moments and, as a result, children will make better progress. They'll develop deeper understanding and the ability to connect ideas together. One key thing is that structures in maths do not change. The additive structure that we reveal through the part-part-whole model is the same in Year 2 as it is in Year 12, so providing access to those structures through representations is absolutely key to all children being successful.

What are your top tips for teachers who want to improve their use of representation and structure?

Do not use too many representations, or children get overloaded. It's not about variety, it’s about carefully selecting the right representation to draw out the mathematical structure. Any that you do use, make sure you explicitly make a connection between them so pupils can see it's the same concept.

Do plan for withdrawal of the representations, as there is a danger that some pupils will get stuck using concrete objects in every lesson to help them count or calculate. The representation should not be used to calculate, but to help them see the structure.

Do make sure the numbers are not too big when using a representation. We used five, three and two as an example above as this will not cause cognitive overload. The focus here is not on calculating, but seeing how those numbers relate to each other.

Do not let children choose which representation they want to use. A child is unlikely to think, ‘I'll select this representation because it's going to expose the mathematical structure in the best way’. They'll think, ‘I like this representation because it's red’, or ‘it's shiny and I like clicking it together’. It should be the teacher's decision and all children should have the same representation, so that the focus is tight in the lesson.

Do consider implementing a set of core representations across your school if you're a subject leader. For example, a tens frame can be used in Year 1, with each counter having a value of one, and as we get towards the end of KS2, each counter may represent one tenth. Representations act as vehicles for transferring key ideas from one year group to the next.

Do recognise that staff will probably need professional development to help them to select the most appropriate representations. The NCETM PD materials discuss types of representations teachers might use and provide examples within the slides. Another helpful document is the DfE Primary Mathematics Guidance , which uses a core set of representations throughout. Get in touch with your local Maths Hub , as they offer specific CPD programmes for teachers and teaching assistants at all phases.

Now watch the explainer video which summarises Debbie's top tips for using representation and structure:

Did you enjoy this?

Read our other Five Big Ideas feature to learn about variation. We will be unpicking the other Big Ideas in features like this one coming later this year.

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Knowledge Representation in First Order Logic

When we talk about knowledge representation, it’s like we’re creating a map of information for AI to use. First-order logic (FOL) acts like a special language that helps us build this map in a detailed and organized way. It’s important because it allows us to understand not only facts but also the relationships and connections between objects. In this article, we will discuss the fundamentals of Knowledge Representation in First-Order Logic

Table of Content

Knowledge Representation in First-Order Logic

Key components of first-order logic, syntax of first-order logic, semantics of first-order logic.

• Examples of Knowledge Representation in FOL¶

Example Knowledge Base in FOL

Applications of first-order logic in knowledge representation, challenges & limitations of first-order logic in knowledge representation.

First-order logic (FOL) , also known as predicate logic , is a powerful formalism used for knowledge representatio n in artificial intelligence and computer science. It extends propositional logic by allowing the use of quantifiers and predicates, enabling the representation of complex statements about objects and their relationships. Here are the key components and concepts of knowledge representation in first-order logic:

• Definition : Constants are symbols that represent specific objects in the domain.
• Examples : If  a ,  b , and  c  are constants, they might represent specific individuals like Alice, Bob, and Charlie.
• Definition : Variables are symbols that can represent any object in the domain.
• Examples : Variables such as  x ,  y , and  z  can represent any object in the domain.
• Definition : Predicates represent properties of objects or relationships between objects.
• Examples :  P(x)  could mean “x is a person”, while  Q(x, y)  could mean “x is friends with y”.
• Definition : Functions map objects to other objects.
• Examples :  f(x)  could represent a function that maps an object  x  to another object, like “the father of x”.
• Universal Quantifier (∀) : Indicates that a statement applies to all objects in the domain. For example,  ∀x P(x)  means “P(x) is true for all x”.
• Existential Quantifier (∃) : Indicates that there exists at least one object in the domain for which the statement is true. For example,  ∃x P(x)  means “There exists an x such that P(x) is true”.
• Definition : These include  ∧  (and),  ∨  (or),  ¬  (not),  →  (implies), and  ↔  (if and only if).
• Examples :  P(x) ∧ Q(x, y)  means “P(x) and Q(x, y) are both true”.
• Definition : States that two objects are the same.
• Examples :  x = y  asserts that  x  and  y  refer to the same object.

The syntax of FOL defines the rules for constructing well-formed formulas:

The semantics define the meaning of FOL statements:

• Domain : A non-empty set of objects over which the variables range.
• Interpretation : Assigns meanings to the constants, functions, and predicates, specifying which objects the constants refer to, which function the function symbols denote, and which relations the predicate symbols denote.
• Truth Assignment : Determines the truth value of each formula based on the interpretation.

Examples of Knowledge Representation in FOL ¶

• P(a)  (Object  a  has property  P ).
• Q(a, b)  (Objects  a  and  b  are related by  Q ).

Consider a knowledge base representing a simple family relationship:

• John, Mary
• Parent(x, y): x is a parent of y.
• Male(x): x is male.
• Female(x): x is female.
• Parent(John, Mary)
• Female(Mary)

• Expert Systems : FOL is used to represent expert knowledge in various domains such as medicine, finance, and engineering, enabling systems to reason and make decisions based on logical rules.
• Natural Language Processing : FOL provides a formal framework for representing the meaning of natural language sentences, facilitating semantic analysis and understanding in NLP tasks.
• Semantic Web : FOL is foundational to ontologies and knowledge graphs on the Semantic Web, enabling precise and machine-interpretable representations of knowledge.
• Robotics : FOL is employed in robotic systems to represent spatial relationships, object properties, and task constraints, aiding in robot planning, navigation, and manipulation.
• Database Systems : FOL-based query languages such as SQL enable expressive querying and manipulation of relational databases, allowing for complex data retrieval and manipulation.

Challenges of First-Order Logic in Knowledge Representation

• Complexity : Representing certain real-world domains accurately in FOL can lead to complex and unwieldy formulas, making reasoning and inference computationally expensive.
• Expressiveness Limitations : FOL has limitations in representing uncertainty, vagueness, and probabilistic relationships, which are common in many AI applications.
• Knowledge Acquisition : Encoding knowledge into FOL requires expertise and manual effort, making it challenging to scale and maintain large knowledge bases.
• Inference Scalability : Reasoning in FOL can be computationally intensive, especially in large knowledge bases, requiring efficient inference algorithms and optimization techniques.
• Handling Incomplete Information : FOL struggles with representing and reasoning with incomplete or uncertain information, which is common in real-world applications.

Limitations of First-Order Logic in Knowledge Representation

• Inability to Represent Recursive Structures : FOL cannot directly represent recursive structures, limiting its ability to model certain types of relationships and processes.
• Lack of Higher-Order Reasoning : FOL lacks support for higher-order logic, preventing it from representing and reasoning about properties of predicates or functions.
• Difficulty in Representing Context and Dynamics : FOL struggles with representing dynamic or context-dependent knowledge, such as temporal relationships or changes over time.
• Limited Representation of Non-binary Relations : FOL primarily deals with binary relations, making it less suitable for representing complex relationships involving multiple entities.
• Difficulty in Handling Non-monotonic Reasoning : FOL is not well-suited for non-monotonic reasoning, where new information can lead to retraction or modification of previously inferred conclusions.

Despite these challenges and limitations, FOL remains a fundamental tool in AI and knowledge representation, often used in combination with other formalisms and techniques to address complex real-world problems.

First-order logic is a robust and expressive language for knowledge representation, capable of encoding complex relationships and properties of objects in a formal, precise manner. Its use of quantifiers, predicates, and logical connectives allows for the detailed specification of knowledge, making it a fundamental tool in fields such as artificial intelligence, databases, and formal verification.

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Ohio legal weed launch a rare example of true representation being carried out in state government

For once, reasonable bipartisanship has prevailed over the machinations of gerrymandered extremists.

David DeWitt

May 16, 2024 4:30 am.

State Rep. Jamie Callender (R-Concord) speaks from the floor of the Ohio House. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish only with original article.)

In a rare example of Ohio government functioning representatively, legal adult-use marijuana is coming soon to store shelves, and reasonable bipartisanship has prevailed over the machinations of gerrymandered extremists.

This past November, 57% of Ohio voters approved a new law for adult-use marijuana in the Buckeye State for those 21 and over.

Even though marijuana is legal now, Ohio law has no system set up yet for people to legally buy it. That will soon change, with the news this week that the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review (JCARR) has approved regulations from the Division of Cannabis Control (DCC) , which means that medical dispensaries could start applying for a recreational license in the next few weeks.

Sales could begin as soon as mid-June, according to policymakers, the Division of Cannabis Control, and dispensary owners.

While gerrymandered extremists in the Ohio Senate passed a law to overhaul the voters’ wishes, it was mightily resisted by a bipartisan coalition in the Ohio House spearheaded by Republican state Rep. Jamie Callender, also the chair of JCARR.

Callender fought against changes that senators wanted to make, such as cutting down on home grow, limiting THC content, all but banning THC vapes, and reshuffling revenue from community, addiction, and business support toward law enforcement and the building of more jails.

In essence, the Ohio Senate Republican gerrymandered supermajority wanted to flout the voters’ will and take control over the new marijuana legalization for their own purposes instead of honoring the law that voters passed.

Callender and a bipartisan coalition in the Ohio House said, “No.”

For that, they can not be too much applauded.

The DCC has to file the rule in final form with JCARR, the Legislative Service Commission, and the Secretary of State’s office by May 22.

From there, applications will be available before June 7. These will be available for medical dispensaries wanting to expand to everyone, called a dual license, and for groups just wanting to sell recreationally.

The application process will be easy to become a dual facility since medical dispensaries already have a strenuous licensure process, Callender said. The applications could be approved in a week, he added .

Dual stores can start selling in mid-June, he anticipated. The DCC echoed those sentiments after the hearing.

As for how revenue will be handled under the law as passed by voters, here is the breakdown:

• 36% to the host community cannabis fund.
• 36% to the cannabis social equity and jobs fund.
• 12.5% of the substance abuse and addiction fund would go into Ohio’s 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline fund to administer the 988 system.
• 10% of the substance abuse and addiction fund would provide mental health and addiction services in county jails.
• 3% to the operations of the Division of Marijuana Control and Department of Taxation.
• 2.5% to the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to develop the state’s mental health workforce.

After the law was passed by Ohio voters, Gov. Mike DeWine expressed a desire to see additions to create protections for children around packaging and advertising. Those suggested protections are reasonable, appropriate, and good. Ohio would be smart to learn from the examples and mistakes of other states and do our best to make sure that everything is done safely, and I don’t see anything wrong in responsibly adding to the measures that voters passed — as opposed to insulting voters by overriding their will.

Whether that can be done without political extortion and gamesmanship, the way this lege operates, is a whole other question.

Callender appears to agree with DeWine and anticipates movement to address such safety concerns.

“Packaging, child safety — some of those things I think still need to be dealt with,” he said.

I guess I’m old fashioned, but few things in government give a boon to my jaded spirits like seeing rationality, reason, cooperation, respect for the voters, respect for democracy, and the representation of the voters’ expressed wishes prevail in the halls of power.

On one hand I look around at America in 2024 and I see the most unscrupulous creatures conducting themselves in the most vile ways — blatantly, openly, and repeatedly lying to the voters and the constituents they’ve sworn oaths on bibles to represent faithfully; peddling the most inane nonsense and ignorance; abusing the powers of their public offices for the sake of corruption, favoritism, spoils system appointments, and sweetheart lawmaking handouts on the public dime; scapegoating fellow Americans and inciting people to violence, hatred, and distrust of one another; constantly poisoning the wells of public discourse with toxic sludge, and debasing and degrading our nation amongst ourselves and before the eyes of the world.

But every so often, with squinting eyes, we can see shimmers of hope on the horizon: A functioning republic borne of reason and integrity and compromise and dutiful respect for the obligation of faithful representation of the people — by the people, for the people.

I’ll savor what’s sadly become a rare example of that here in Ohio.

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Ohio Capital Journal Editor-in-Chief and Opinion Columnist David DeWitt has been covering government, politics, and policy in Ohio since 2007, including education, health care, crime and the courts, poverty, state and local government, business, labor, energy, the environment, and social issues. He has worked for the National Journal, The New York Observer, and The Athens NEWS. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and is a board member of the E.W. Scripps Society of Alumni and Friends. He can be found on X @DC_DeWitt

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom , the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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Training various deep learning architectures to compute multiple abstract features reveals systematic biases in feature representation. These biases depend on extraneous properties like feature complexity, learning order, and feature distribution. Simpler or earlier-learned features are represented more strongly than complex or later-learned ones, even if all are learned equally well. Architectures, optimizers, and training regimes, such as transformers, also influence these biases. These findings characterize the inductive biases of gradient-based representation learning and highlight challenges in disentangling extraneous biases from computationally important aspects for interpretability and comparison with brain representations.

In this work, researchers trained deep learning models to compute multiple input features, revealing substantial biases in their representations. These biases depend on feature properties like complexity, learning order, dataset prevalence, and output sequence position. Representational biases may relate to implicit inductive biases in deep learning. Practically, these biases pose challenges for interpreting learned representations and comparing them across different systems in machine learning, cognitive science, and neuroscience.

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Mohammad Asjad

Asjad is an intern consultant at Marktechpost. He is persuing B.Tech in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Asjad is a Machine learning and deep learning enthusiast who is always researching the applications of machine learning in healthcare.

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Representations Concerning Private Permits in Namibia: A Step-by-Step Guide

Table of Contents

Hello everyone! I’m Sylvester, your dedicated blogger from Elidge.com . Today, I want to take you through a crucial part of the road transportation sector in Namibia: making representations concerning private permits. Whether you’re a business owner, a concerned citizen, or someone directly affected by private transportation operations, understanding this process is essential. Let’s dive in and explore how you can make your voice heard effectively.

What Are Representations Concerning Private Permits in Namibia?

Imagine your neighbour has applied for a private permit to operate a fleet of delivery trucks, and these trucks will be travelling through your quiet residential area. Representations allow you to express your concerns or support for this application. It’s a way for the community to provide input before any final decisions are made. Think of it as a public comment period for transportation-related decisions.

Why Are Representations Important?

Representations are vital because they ensure transparency and community involvement in transportation decisions. They give you, as a member of the community, a platform to voice your opinions, whether you’re supporting or opposing an application. This process helps balance individual business interests with community welfare.

How to Make Representations Concerning Private Permits in Namibia: A Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: stay informed.

The first step is to stay informed about permit applications that might affect you. The details of these applications are published in the Government Gazette. It’s like keeping an eye on community notice boards for any upcoming events or changes that might impact your daily life.

Step 2: Gather Your Thoughts

Before you make a representation, gather your thoughts and decide what you want to say. Are you supporting the application because it brings positive changes, or are you objecting because of potential issues? It’s important to be clear and concise. Think of this step as preparing a speech for that town hall meeting.

Step 3: Submit Your Representation

Once you’ve decided what to say, it’s time to submit your representation. Here’s how you can do it:

• Format : Your representation must be in writing.
• Delivery Methods : You can deliver it by hand, by registered post, or electronically via email to the transportation board.
• Deadline : Ensure you submit your representation before the application is considered by the board.

Submitting your representation is like sending a letter to your local council, making sure your voice is heard on matters that impact your community.

Step 4: What to Include in Representations Concerning Private Permits in Namibia

When writing your representation, include the following details to make it clear and effective:

• Your Name and Address : So the board knows who you are and where you’re coming from.
• Application Details : Refer to the specific application you’re commenting on.
• Your Position : Clearly state whether you’re supporting or objecting to the application.
• Reasons and Evidence : Provide reasons for your position and include any evidence that supports your case.

Think of this step as writing a persuasive essay, where you need to back up your arguments with facts and clear reasoning.

Step 5: Follow Up

After submitting your representation, keep track of the process. The board may consider your input during their decision-making process. Following up is like checking the results of that town hall meeting to see if your voice made a difference.

Tips for Effective Representations Concerning Private Permits in Namibia

Be clear and concise.

Make sure your representation is easy to read and understand. Avoid jargon and stick to the point. Imagine you’re explaining your position to a friend over coffee—keep it simple and direct.

Provide Evidence

Support your arguments with evidence. This could be data, personal experiences, or references to laws and regulations. Providing evidence is like bringing proof to support your claims in a debate.

Be Respectful

Even if you’re objecting to an application, be respectful in your language and tone. Constructive criticism is more likely to be taken seriously than angry rants. Think of it as having a polite but firm conversation with someone you disagree with.

Examples of Representations Concerning Private Permits in Namibia

Supporting a permit application.

Let’s say a new delivery service is being proposed that will make it easier for you to receive packages. Your representation might look something like this:

Subject: Support for Delivery Service Permit Application #12345

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to express my support for the proposed delivery service under application #12345. This new service will significantly improve convenience for residents in our community by ensuring timely delivery of goods and services.

As a resident who frequently shops online, I believe this service will enhance our daily lives by providing reliable and efficient delivery options. Additionally, it may reduce traffic congestion and emissions by consolidating deliveries into fewer trips.

Thank you for considering my support.

Sincerely, [Your Name] [Your Address]

Objecting to a Permit Application

Now, imagine a new heavy transport route is being proposed that might cause noise pollution in your neighbourhood. Your objection might look like this:

Subject: Objection to Heavy Transport Route Permit Application #67890

I am writing to formally object to the proposed heavy transport route under application #67890. The proposed route runs through residential areas, which will likely result in increased noise pollution and disrupt the peace and quiet of our neighbourhood.

As a parent of young children, I am concerned about the potential impact on our quality of life. Additionally, there are safety concerns due to the heavy vehicles that will be travelling through our streets, which are not designed for such traffic.

I urge the board to consider alternative routes that would not adversely affect residential areas.

Thank you for considering my objection.

Final Word on Representations Concerning Private Permits in Namibia

Making representations concerning private permits in Namibia is an essential part of maintaining transparency and fairness in the transportation sector. By staying informed and actively participating in the process, you can help shape decisions that impact your community.

Whether you’re supporting or objecting to a permit application, your voice matters. Remember to be clear, concise, and respectful, and back up your position with evidence. For more detailed information, you can check out the official Road Transportation Regulations here .

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need further guidance. I’m here to help make your journey as smooth as possible.

Happy transporting!

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Sylvester Muyeghu

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How to Apply for Additional Authority in Namibia: A Step-by-Step Guide

How to Amend a Public or Private Permit in Namibia: A Step-by-Step Guide

How to Apply for Transfer of a Public or Private Permit in Namibia: A Step-by-Step Guide

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