There is no such thing as a bare fact

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Social Constructionism Theoretical perspectives
from symbolic interactionism to postmodernism
There is no such thing as a bare fact facts
always come clothed in the wardrobe of social
assumptions D. L. and P. M. Ferguson 1989
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Introduction

• An example from my study.
• Social Constructionism.
• Theoretical perspectives from symbolic
• interactionism to postmodernism.
• The interpretive promise the voices and the
  reconstruction of disabled adulthood.

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Björg and her family
Björgs mother As soon as they handed her to me
I saw that something was the matter. I said it
aloud. They all heard me and the deliveryroom
grew instantly quiet....It hit like thunder...it
was just awful. The child was not normal... it
was a crisis.  
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Social Constructionism
1. Social constructivism 2. Social
constructionism
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Key suppositions of Social Constructionism
1.   The terms by which we account for the
world and ourselves are not dictated by
the stipulated objects of such accounts.   2.  
The terms and forms by which we achieve
understanding of the world and of ourselves
are social artifacts products of historically and
culturally situated interchange amongst
people.   3.   The degree to which a given
account of the world or self is sustained
across time is not dependent on the objective
validity of the account, but on the
vicissitudes (shifting and unforeseen) of social
processes.   4.   Language derives its
significance in human affairs from the way in
which it functions within patterns of
relationships.
From Gergen Realities and relationships
Soundings in Social Construction 1994)  
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Some perspectives self and society
Symbolic interactionism Relationships,
Perspective taking
Individual /Self
Society
Hermenutics Interpretivism
Phenomenology
History/ culture and society
Social constructionism Intersubjectivity/
communication A web of relationships-past and
pressent
Generations Individuals and groups
Cultural dissemination High modernity /risk
culture Risk society Gettho of
diversity, fragmentation and decentration Culture
making future different from the pressent
Postmodern interactionism/Social
constructionism Decentrated complex web of
relationships as social text Discourse
analysis
Satiated self Choice lifestyles Choice self End
of Individual or Individual moral choices
Poststructuralists Postmodernism sociology of
the postmodern
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•  
• Pantextualism everything is a text all texts
• are interrelated.
• Subjects, authors or speakers are irrelevant to
  the interpretation of texts.
• Meaning is unstable, never fixed, never
  determined, never
• representational.
• Deconstructionism is a post structuralistic
  strategy for
• reading texts that unmasks the supposed
  truth, or
• meaning of text by undoing, reversing or
  replacing taken for granted binary oppositions
  that structure texts.
• (Giddens 1991)
•  

Poststructuralism claims
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Some perspectives self and society
Symbolic interactionism Relationships,
Perspective taking
Individual /Self
Society
Hermenutics Interpretivism
Phenomenology
History/ culture and society
Social constructionism Intersubjectivity/
communication A web of relationships-past and
pressent
Generations Individuals and groups
Cultural dissemination High modernity /risk
culture Risk society Gettho of
diversity, fragmentation and decentration Culture
making future different from the pressent
Postmodern interactionism/Social
constructionism Decentrated complex web of
relationships as social text Discourse
analysis
Satiated self Choice lifestyles Choice self End
of Individual or Individual moral choices
Poststructuralists Postmodernism sociology of
the postmodern
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Conclusion
The importance of voices