The Sage Handbook of Social Constructionist Practice. Группа авторов
invitation throughout this volume to further innovation. Social constructionist ideas themselves, emphasize that meaning making is a continuous process of co-creating. For readers this means that the practices described and explained in this Handbook are not so much ‘how-to-do-it’ recipes for action, as invitations to borrow, hybridize and reformulate as needed in one's unique circumstances. Finally, the Handbook furnishes an historical marking of a period in which a significant shift in the intellectual world has been accompanied by a related watershed in social innovation.
We have embarked on this project realizing that there has been no single venue at present for scholars and practitioners to find a concise, clear and comprehensive description of social construction and its contributions to various fields of endeavour. Our hope is that the offerings in this volume remedy this void and provide rich and innovative resources that will assist the reader in orienting his/her own practice within a constructionist stance. We focus here on six domains of practice: Research, Therapeutic Professions, Organizational Development, Education, Healthcare and Community Practice. And, we feel confident that, embedded within each of these areas, those working within other professional fields such as governance, social justice, etc., will find inspiration for their own practice.
Organization and Content
The Handbook has benefited from the insights of an International Advisory Board. The Advisory Board members are senior authors, editors and practitioners who have contributed to the field of social construction. We wish to thank them for their insights, suggestions, and recommendations to us, as editors, in the development of this volume. Their names are listed in a special section at the beginning of this volume.
The Handbook begins with an introductory chapter by Kenneth J. Gergen, a major contributor to the field. This chapter provides the theoretical background and context for the subsequent chapters. As mentioned, chapters are clustered into six domains of practice, each one comprising a section of the book. Within each section there is a broad offering of resources. Authors address specific issues, contexts and professional positions, thereby providing rich resources for the reader. No template was given for the structure of the chapters; authors were asked to design their chapters according to their own intellectual and aesthetic preferences. This allows for a great deal of variety in the book, with their chapters designed to benefit its topic. Each of the sections was overseen by a Section Editor who shepherded the chapters from author invitation through various drafts and revisions. Our Section Editors are the handmaidens of this Handbook, and responsible, to a great extent, for the high quality of the chapters they supervised. As editors of this volume, we wish to publicly thank them for their commitment and creativity in providing such a bounty of practices. Section Editors also contributed an introduction to their sections, which elaborates the major themes of each chapter. We offer a short summary of each main section below.
Section 2: Research Practices (Mary Gergen, Section Editor)
Social constructionist ideas have raised significant epistemological, methodological and ethical issues and have inspired new ways of understanding and conducting research. Chapters in this part cover the topics of: innovation in research, collaborative action research, communities of inquiry/practice, research as performance, research as everyday life, dialogic research, and research focused on human–non-human relations. The naming of specific research practices may be distinguished from the naming of other such practices, however the reader will find all methods described in this section share commonalities in the form of collaboration, multivocality and connection to those whom the research is intended to support.
Section 3: Practices in Therapeutic Professions (Dan Wulff and Sally St. George, Section Editors)
Human challenges faced by the different caring professions have identified innovative solutions through reframing concepts such as diagnosis, intervention, treatment, cure and professional expertise. In this section of the book, chapters cover collaborative therapy, narrative therapy, generative dialogues, social therapeutics, family therapy, social work, group work, and community therapy. This section includes the work of psychologists, therapists and social workers.
Section 4: Practices in Organizational Development (Diana Whitney, Section Editor)
In a fast-changing world, organizations need to quickly adapt to remain relevant. Flexibility, creativity and innovation play a fundamental role in this process. Constructionist perspectives address these challenges through their emphasis on promoting relationships and engagement. In this section of the book, chapters address appreciative inquiry, dialogic organizational development, creativity and design, relational leading, relational coaching, relational ethics, conflict reduction, multi-party decision-making, and organizational consulting. Again, although in a wide variety of settings authors focus on different types of organizations, a great deal of overlap can be seen among the various practices, based on the social constructionist framework that guides their activities.
Section 5: Practices in Education (Thalia Dragonis, Section Editor)
Schools are powerful places to create learning communities that facilitate the development of all participants. Collaborative communities can be achieved by promoting conversational and relational practices in schools. In this section of the book, chapters treat such topics as collaborative and appreciative pedagogy, relational evaluation, school bullying, building school culture, school counselling, minority inclusion, whole systems change, youth at risk, critical education and action learning. The overall tone of these offerings is hopeful and full of potential for achieving innovations in schools, without great expense or overly elaborate interventions. Cultivating an orientation of possibility (as opposed to constraint), based on social constructionist viewpoints, serves as the springboard for progressive changes in a student's capacities for success in school.
Section 6: Practices in Healthcare (Murilo S. Moscheta, Section Editor)
The technological development of medicine, combined with the strengthening of biomedical discourse jeopardize the intrinsically relational character of healthcare. The constructionist emphasis on meaning, collaboration and appreciation adds promising possibilities for improving patients’ and health professionals’ quality of life. In this section of the book, chapters treat such topics as narrative medicine, collaborative healthcare, community action for health, appreciative healthcare, medical education, aging, sexual diversity, play, addiction and bereavement. This section of the book is vital to the efforts of the medical establishment today to reorient patient care so that it is centred on the patient's interests and values rather than on the expertise and power position of the medical authorities.
Section 7: Community Practices (Marie L. Hoskins, Section Editor)
Political disputes, polarization of ideas and various forms of conflict occur daily around the world. It is necessary to enhance the power of dialogue, to embrace differences, and to view conflict as an opportunity to construct new realities. In this section of the book, chapters discuss narrative mediation, inclusion practices, placemaking in communities, social welfare, community conferencing, transitional societies, intergenerativity in communities, and practices of religious communities. Scarcely anything in our political and social worlds right now is more important than creating practices for conflict reduction and mutual understanding. A social constructionist framework encourages forms of dialogue and interchange that facilitate the potential for finding peaceful resolutions to our persistent problems and conflicts.
As editors, our hope is that the enormous riches offered by this chorus of contributors will serve to advance social constructionist approaches to knowledge building and practice in the world. We dearly hope that readers of this volume, whom we envision as researchers, theorists and practitioners – students and professionals – will be inspired to further develop these ideas in a world that sorely needs new resources for creating more just and equitable societies and new potentials for saving the planet itself.