Collective representations are concepts, ideas, categories and beliefs that do not belong to isolated individuals, but are instead the product of a social collectivity. Durkheim originated the term collective representations to emphasise the way that many of the categories of everyday use–space, time, class, number etc–were in fact the product of collective human evolution: “Collective representations are the result of an immense co-operation, which stretches not only into space but into time as well”. Collective representations are generally slow-changing and backed by social authority, and can be seen as the product of self-referencing institutions.