Social Constructionism: Knowledge is a Creation Based on Social Interests

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Social Constructionism Knowledge is a Creation
Based on Social Interests

• Science is not the objective accumulation
  of facts, because facts are answers to
  questions framed in incommensurable theoretical
  frameworks (paradigms)
• Epistemological Relativism knowledge varies in
  conceptual schemes with different criteria for
  justification, truth, rationality
• Communal interests determine how to evaluate
  different paradigms

Thomas Kuhn
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The Gendered Character of Knowledge

• Feminine characterizations of knowledge aim at
  explanation and understanding instead
  of an adversarial determination of
  facts removed from their contexts
• This does not imply that women are naturally
  different from men (e.g., more sensitive or less
  objective) such essentialism ignores how even
  gender is a social construct
• What is knowable is determined by relations
  of power in a discipline

Lorraine Code
Michel Foucault
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Constructivist Confusions Alan Sokal

• To say that physical reality is a social
  and linguistic construct is to confuse
• objects in the world with what we say about
  them
• how we get knowledge with its reliability
• knowledge about the world with social, political,
  or ethical uses of such knowledge
• Reply objective/subjective distinctions are
  naïve, unjustified, and even dangerous