Can social constructionism go too far?

1
Can social constructionism go too far?

• OR
• Like a good red wine!
• Social constructionism has legs but can go too
  far!

2

• Different from my paper at inaugural AHRC
• 2006 paper broader 2007 narrower but more depth
• More detailed analysis of the social
  constructionist approach
• Responds to a recent defence of aspects of social
  constructionism

3

• Outline
• Necessity to identify something of the origins of
  social constructionism
• Identify four strands
• Conclude has enormous potential
• Ask Can versions of it go too far?
• Outline defence of Ingrid Sahlin

4

• Argument
• Considered eclectically, social constructionism
  is a valid approach
• Critical approach undermines mantras
• Should be more of it used more often
• In its stronger version it can bend back on
  itself, undermine itself
• Ingrid Sahlin highlights the problems with some
  aspects of the stronger position but problems
  identified

5

• Origins
• Berger and Luckman Social Construction of
  Reality (1971)
• Externalisation
• Objectivation
• Reification

6

• There is an objective social world
• Social world internalised as subjectively real
• Social world constructed in the interplay, the
  reciprocal relationship, between active human
  agents and broader objective social world
• Result a common sense, intersubjective
  understanding of social world with similarities
  and differences
• Objective here does not mean that it is
  experienced as homogenous (eg Bergers identity)

7

• As applied to housing
• Housing policies and practices socially
  constructed no other authority
• As such they do not have absolute or objective
  status
• Reifications, considered normal, neutral and
  unchallengeable
• But they have no authority outside of various
  (vested) interests

8

• Four strands
• Discourse analysis
• Examination of the language of housing causation,
  definitions, policies, practices
• Examples
• -language used to manage tenants Haworth and
  Manzi (1999)

9

• The sociology of power
• Emphasis on the diffuse, ubiquitous nature of
  power
• Influence of Foucault power not (only)
  hierarchical
• Example Gurneys (1999) study of the way
  homeownership reinforces notions of what is
  normal and what is not and how owners and renters
  are part of the normalisation process

10

• Social Problems and Policy Narrative approach
• Defining Problems is claims-making
• Example
• Jacobs et al (2003) The social processes by
  which lone parents and anti-social behaviour
  are demonised
• Jacobs (2006) How social problem of
  miscreant tenants explained in terms of
  residualist explanations rather than other more
  structural factors
• How this explanation justifies certain forms of
  intervention

11

• Symbolic interaction
• Very little research using this strand Kemeny
  absence
• Sometimes regarded as micro-Sociology
• But more about how symbols of everyday
  interaction are understood intersubjectively and
  reflect power relationships
• Example Paul Willis (1977) Learning to Labour
• Example from Adelaide use of Foucault's
  technologies of domination and the self to
  explore structure and agency among women who were
  homeless

12

• Social construction has enormous potential
• The dominant discourses about social problems
  are merely claims that have no validity outside
  the perspective of those who are sufficiently
  powerful to make them
• It can render problematic (problematise) those
  policies and practices, attitudes and actions,
  that are taken for granted
• Thus, social constructionism provides the
  opportunity to dismantle the dominant discourses,
  to deconstructe them, to put them in their place
  as one explanatory discourse amongst many

13

• But can social constructionism go too far?
• Not in the actual research
• But in the theory of knowledge which underpins it
• Most vulnerable in the strong version
• Everything is socially constructed
• If everything is socially constructed then so is
  social construction. Everything it says about
  contingent nature of claims applies to itself
  (reflexivity)
• What criteria can it use to expose the policies
  and practices that are contributing to the
  disadvantage of households?
• On what basis can it make policy recommendations
  if they are merely claims?

14

• Ingrid Sahlins defence
• Response
• A response to the ontological gerrymandering
  critique
• A defence about the missing time aspect in the
  criticism of relativism
• The defence that the universal-relativity
  argument attacks social constructionism from an
  alien discourse
• A defence that social constructionism exposes
  claims and may facilitate change (Sahlin, 2006
  178)
• A restatement of the constructionist credo that
  we cannot know for sure and its implications
  (Sahlin, 2006 179). In the following each of
  these is outlined and addressed in turn

15

• A response to the ontological gerrymandering
  critique
• Manipulates boundaries of what is real and not
• Say everything is a claim and then elevate some
  as real or treat them as objective
• Weak constructionists deny this position
• Sahlin - seems to argue all facts are socially
  constructed?

16

• A defence about the missing time aspect in
  the criticism of relativism
• possible to assume something temporarily, agree
  about something for the time being, in order to
  play the scientific game without attributing the
  status of eternal truth to the premise (Sahlin,
  2006 178).
• Agreed
• But what does this imply?
• Why play the game?
• What does playing the game presuppose?
• Even a momentary agreement is elevating claim
  others

17

• The defence that the universal-relativity
  argument attacks social constructionism from an
  alien discourse
• Should social construction be exempt from
  external analysis?
• Sahlin advocates selective realism
• Necessity to bracket
• But on what basis will some claims be selected or
  bracketed in or out?
• What does the selection and bracketing presuppose
  even for a moment?

18

• A defence that social constructionism can
  challenge and facilitate change
• Agreed
• But what does this presuppose?
• Criteria to challenge and advocate change?
• Elevating some claims above others and
  correctly

19

• A restatement of the constructionist credo
  that we cannot know for sure and its
  implications
• Again agreed
• But how far can this be pushed without it
  rebounding back with devastating consequences
• Cant we know that certain claims are socially
  regarded as absolute and eternal?
  Constructionists judge that they are contingent
  but thats not how they are regarded socially or
  by those who have the power to impose them.
• Cant we know that the resultant policies
  distribute their burdens and benefits inequitably
  - and the consequence?
• Are we unable to find some criteria by which we
  can judge and denounce this unequal distribution?
  

20

• The weak version
• Since critics of social constructionism have
  claimed that it denies the existence of an
  objective material world, it is important from
  the outset to make clear that there is no attempt
  in this edited collection to advance such
  arguments. Instead the claim advanced is that our
  access to the material world is mediated through
  language and discourse.
• Jacobs et al (2004 3)