The Sage Handbook of Social Constructionist Practice. Группа авторов
Constructionist Theory and the Blossoming of Practice
Kenneth J. Gergen
The stunning growth of the natural sciences in the 20th century was accompanied by an unbridled optimism. It was just such optimism that also sparked the development of the ‘social sciences’. If inquiry in the natural sciences could lead to the eradication of disease, the harnessing of energy, air flight, and powerful weaponry, one could only imagine the potentials of the social sciences. Could we not cure mental illness, ensure effective education, create profitable organizations, eradicate war, and more? The logic for realizing such societal gains was based on a positivist model of science in which knowledge is established in the basic or pure sciences – such as chemistry, biology, and physics – and then made available to society for broad application. With increased knowledge of the brain, for example, new practices would be anticipated in medicine, education, aviation, athletics, and so on. Thus, in the social sciences, disciplines such as psychology, economics, and sociology could hope to generate fundamental knowledge of broad applicability. Little now remains of the early optimism. Neither the voluminous theoretical offerings nor the staggering accumulation of research findings in the social sciences have contributed significantly to societal well-being.
During the waning years of the 20th century, a range of conversations across the academic community began to challenge positivist assumptions about the nature of scientific truth, objectivity, and value-neutral knowledge. These dialogues ultimately gave rise to what is now characterized as a social constructionist (or constructivist)1 orientation to knowledge. As deliberations on this orientation have matured and made their way into circles of professional practice, the results have been astonishing. A spirited wave of innovation has swept across the professions, across many regions of the world, and its force has continued to the present. Early innovations in fields of therapy, education, and organizational development were soon followed by new practices in social work, law, counseling, cartography, practical theology, community building, and conflict reduction. These were followed by developments in social justice, healthcare, and welfare programs. Also noticeable were the ways in which innovations carried across borders of practice. New practices in law drew from developments in therapy; new welfare programs found resources in organizational development, and so on. Further, energizing dialogues between the communities of ‘knowledge makers’ and ‘practitioners’ emerged. The concept of ‘scholar practitioners’ is now a commonplace phrase.
How are we to understand this mutually enriching relationship between social constructionist ideas and the flowering of innovative practices? What is it about the constructionist dialogues that practitioners have found so inspiring? Can we anticipate a continuing harvest of such magnitude; are there forces that threaten a sustained prosperity? It is to just such questions that the remainder of this chapter is devoted.
Scanning the Contours of Constructionist Theory
To appreciate the dynamic relationship between constructionist theory and innovations in practice, let us briefly return to its origins in the late 20th century. More extensive accounts can be found in a variety of sources (Arbib and Hesse, 1986; Burr, 2004; Gergen, 1994; 2015; Hacking, 1999; Hjelm, 2014; Lock and Strong, 2010; McNamee and Hosking, 2012; Potter, 1996; Weinberg, 2014). However, it is this very variety that calls attention to constructionism as an unfolding dialogue as opposed to a fixed theory with credited authorship. In general, however, one may trace the more immediate roots to the intellectual tsunami of the late 20th century, variously termed postmodern or post-foundational. Placed in question were the promises of unlimited progress through science. Such promises depended largely on the belief that because of their reliance on systematic and unbiased observation, the sciences could provide objective and value-free knowledge of the world. Armed with such knowledge, humankind could thus move beyond armchair speculation and ideological bias to predict and control the forces of nature. The harnessing of electrical energy, the curing of deadly diseases, and the developing of air flight were among the many illustrations of potential success. Despite these gains, the power of the natural science approach was not without limitations. Three lines of broadly shared critique played a major role in the decline of faith in the natural science approach, and the development of a social constructionist consciousness.
The first movement centers around value critique, or the unmasking of claims to value-neutral knowledge. As argued, all descriptions and explanations of the world – including those of the sciences – are saturated with values. Whether acknowledged or not, there are social and political ramifications of all truth posits. For example, research that differentiates between male and female genders discriminates against gender fluid people; psychological research lends itself to an ideology of individualism; economic research emphasizes the importance of wealth; and the natural sciences themselves – lodged in the assumption of a material world – denigrate those whose lives are anchored by religious and spiritual beliefs. Within the scholarly world, such commentaries have played a major role, from early Marxist and feminist movements, to the work of Foucault (1979; 1980), and onward to include the critical voices of virtually every marginalized minority.
The second line of critique centers around language as representation. The positivist vision of science was largely committed to the view that language can function more or less like a picture or mirror to nature. With developments in semiotic theory in general and literary deconstruction in particular (Derrida, 1976), attention was variously drawn to the ways in which conventions of language precede all claims to knowledge. Whatever nature may be, its representation will inevitably be dominated by traditions of representation. For example, to describe the world in English language will demand the use of nouns. Regardless of the nature of the world, in relying on nouns the description will automatically segment the world into separate units (persons, places, or things). Or, to make a compelling description of events over time (for example, Darwinian theory, or an account of child development) will take the form of a narrative. Such proposals are also congenial with Wittgenstein's (1953) view of language as a social practice, with differing linguistic traditions reflecting different ways of life. Words are not maps or pictures of the world as it is, but ways of representing the world within particular communities. What we might commonly index as ‘a person’, might variously be described as a mammal, a living system, a father, a schizophrenic, or a sinner, depending on the language community from which one is drawing.
The third significant line of critique counters the philosophic claims to logical foundations of science with a social account of knowledge making. Of major importance here was the 1962 publication of Thomas Kuhn's The structure of scientific revolutions. Kuhn portrayed normal science as guided by paradigms – an array of assumptions and practices – shared by particular communities. What we view as progress in science, he proposed, is not the result of increasing accuracy in understanding of the world, but the product of shifting paradigms. In effect, we make progress not by ‘seeing better’ so much as ‘seeing differently’. This critique of foundational science was further buttressed by a welter of inquiries demonstrating the way in which what we take to be ‘facts’ are established through an elaborate and unsystematic process of social negotiation (see for example, Feyerabend, 1975; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Historians added to the argument by illuminating how the very concepts of objectivity and truth have emerged and changed across cultures and times (Daston and Galison, 2010; Shapin, 1995).
Together these three lines of reasoning converge toward a view of knowledge as socially constructed. Knowledge making is understood then, as a social process invariably reflecting the values, assumptions, and ways of life of the time and culture. Or more generally, what we take to be true as opposed to false, objective as opposed to subjective, scientific as opposed to mythological, rational as opposed to irrational, moral as opposed to immoral is brought into being by communal activity. This does not at all eliminate the importance of truth claims, but invites cognizance of the time, place, and communities for whom they have value (or not). When flying across the country, it is wise to trust the knowledge of the community of engineers who designed the plane, and to vilify anyone who intentionally falsifies their account of the aircraft's safely. Constructionist ideas invite, then, our replacing of the traditional image of a universal, value-free knowledge, with an orientation of reflective pragmatism. What we should ask of various