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AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

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 SOCIAL RESEARCH REPORTS
ISSN: 2066-6861 (print), ISSN: 2067-5941 (electronic)

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

Alexandra GALBIN
Social Research Reports, 2014, vol. 26, pp. 82-92
The online version of this article can be found at:
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 SOCIAL RESEARCH REPORTS – VOLUME 26 - DECEMBER 2014

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIONISM
Alexandra GALBIN1

Abstract

The social constructionism perspective says that we never know what universal
true or false is, what is good or bad, right or wrong; we know only stories about
true, false, good, bad, right or wrong. The social constructionism abandons the
idea of constructivist that individual’s mind represents a mirror of reality. The
constructionism is focused on relations and sustains the individual’s role in social
construction of realities. „Maps for the same territory” seems to be the essence of
constructivist. The social constructionism is not interested to create maps; it
surprises the processes that maps form. Our maps are formed from our experience
and how we perceive them. All our maps are differing maps of the same world.
Each of us creates our own worlds from our perceptions of the actual world. The
social constructionism sees the language, the communication and the speech as
having the central role of the interactive process through which we understand the
world and ourselves.

Keywords: social reality, constructionism, constructivist, epistemology.

What is Social Constructionism?

Social Constructionism or the social construction of reality is a theory of
knowledge of sociology and communication that examines the development
jointly constructed understanding of the world. Social constructionism may be
defined as a perspective which believes that a great deal of human life exists as it
does due to social and interpersonal influences (Gergen, 1985, p. 265). Although
genetically inherited factors and social factors are at work at the same time, social
constructionism does not deny the influence of genetic inheritance, but decides to
concentrate on investigating the social influences on communal and individual
life. The subjects that social constructionism is interested in are those to do with
what anthropologists call culture, and sociologists call society: the shared social

1
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Iasi,
ROMANIA. E-mail: [email protected]

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 SOCIAL RESEARCH REPORTS – VOLUME 26 - DECEMBER 2014

aspects of all that is psychological. There are several versions of social

constructionism with different writers making different emphases. Two distin-
guishing marks of social constructionism include the rejection of assumptions
about the nature of mind and theories of causality, and placing an emphasis on the
complexity and interrelatedness of the many facets of individuals within their
communities. Causality may exist within specific cultures but much work needs
to be done before these connections can be described with any certainty (Owen,
1995, p.15). Social constructionism involves challenging most of our common-
sense knowledge of ourselves and the world we live in. This means that it does not
just offer a new analysis of topics such as ‘personality’ or ‘attitudes’ which can
simply be slotted into our existing framework of understanding. The framework
itself has to change, and with it our understanding of every aspect of social and
psychological life (Burr, 1995, p. 12).
Social constructionism is closely related to social constructionism in the sense
that people are working together to construct artifacts. However, there is an
important difference: social constructionism focuses on the artifacts that are
created through the social interactions of a group, while social constructionism
focuses on an individual’s learning that takes place because of their interactions in
a group. According to constructionism, particular radical constructionism, the
child functions in relation to its environment, constructing, modifying and inter-
preting the information s/he encounters in his/her relationship with the world
(von Glaserfeld, 1995, p. 5). The individual’s capacity to construct his/her own
understanding of the world is connected with thinking and with the fact that the
individual is able to construct. The constructionism is a semiotic paradigm which
begins from the interpretative axiom according to the map through the reality is
read, is nothing but a continuous negotiation. Any type of speech is interpreted as
a social construction reality from a cultural consensus. The meanings of the
concepts under them are taken from scientific language in cultural discourse, is a
paradigmatic model, relatively independent of the scientific comes from. The
cultural derivation of the meaning underlines the semantic convergence of any
socio-cultural paradigms. In the mental plan produces the most profound re-
organization, by passing from the understanding of the objective world to the
model of a plurality of worlds whose indeterminacy is theoretically (Sandu, Ponea,
2011; Cojocaru, Bragaru, & Ciuchi, 2012). As an author sustains the construc-
tionism abandons the idea according that the individual’s mind represent the
mirror of reality. The constructionism is based on relations and sustains the role of
individual in the social construction of realities (Cojocaru, 2005; Cojocaru, 2013).
According to McLeod (1997), there are several features of social constructionism.
First, social constructionists reject the traditional positivistic approaches to know-
ledge that are basically no reflexive in nature. Second, social constructionists take
a critical stance in relation to taken-for-granted assumptions about the social
world, which are seen as reinforcing the interests of dominant social groups.
Third, social constructionists uphold the belief that the way we understand the
world is a product of a historical process of interaction and negotiation between
groups of people. Fourth, social constructionists maintain that the goal of research
and scholarship is not to produce knowledge that is fixed and universally valid,
but to open up an appreciation of what is possible. Finally, social constructionism

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represents a movement toward redefining psychological constructs such as the

“mind,” “self,” and “emotion” as social constructed processes that are not intrinsic
to the individual but produced by social discourse. An integration of the existing
literature on social constructionism (e.g., Gergen & Davis, 1985; McNamee &
Gergen, 1992) shows that there are several cardinal principles emphasized in
social constructionism. These include: realities are socially constructed; realities
are constituted through language; knowledge is sustained by social processes; and
reflexivity in human beings is emphasized. Society is viewed as existing both as
a subjective and objective reality. Social constructionism focuses on meaning and
power. Meaning is not a property of the objects and events themselves, but a
construction. Meaning is the product of the prevailing cultural frame of social,
linguistic, discursive and symbolic practices (Cojocaru, & Bragaru, 2012). Persons
and groups interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or
mental representations of each other’s actions. These concepts eventually become
habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. The
roles are made available to other member of society to enter into and play out, the
reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized (Cojocaru, 2010). In this
process of this institutionalization meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge
and people’s conception (and belief) of what reality is become embedded in the
institutional fabric of society (Berger and Luckman, 1996 pp. 75-77). Social
constructionism can be described as part of the movement in postmodernism in
that it attempts to “replace the objectivist ideal with a broad tradition of ongoing
criticism in which all productions of the human mind are concerned” (Hoffman,
1991, p. 1) and is inextricably linked to postmodernism as a set of lenses that
enforces an awareness of the way in which we perceive and experience the world.
In essence, social constructionism is the claim and viewpoint that the content of
our consciousness, and the mode of relating we have to other, is taught by our
culture and society; all the metaphysical quantities we take for granted are learned
from others around us (Owen, 1995, p. 186). From a social constructionist per-
spective, language is more than just a way of connecting people. People ‘exist’ in
language. Consequently the focus is not on the individual person but rather on the
social interaction, in which language is generated, sustained, and abandoned
(Gergen & Gergen, 1991). Furthermore, Berger and Luckman (cited in Speed,
1991, p. 400) state that people socially construct reality by their use of agreed and
shared meaning communicated through language. Thus, our beliefs about the
world are social inventions. Anderson and Goolishian (1988) concur that from the
social constructionist perspective there are no ‘real’ external entities that can be
accurately mapped or apprehended. We are thereby forced to resign our cherished
position as ‘knowers’ and our assumptions that there are ‘facts’ that we can come
to know. These ‘facts’, along with other ideas and assumptions, are social con-
structions, artifact of socially mediated discourse. However, this does not mean
that anything goes (Gergen, 1985). Knowledge and systems are inherently de-
pendent upon communities of shared intelligibility and vice versa. They are,
therefore, governed to a large degree by normative rules that are historically and
culturally situated. As a result, social constructionists do not claim to provide the
‘truth’. Gergen (1999) claims that in numerous instances, the criteria, which are
invoked to identify ‘behaviours’, ‘events’ or ‘entities’, are largely circumscribed

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by culture, history and social context. Therefore, a social constructionist per-

spective, as opposed to a constructivist perspective, “locates meaning in an
understanding of how ideas and attitudes are developed over time within a social,
community context” (Dickerson & Zimmerman, 1996, p. 80). Hoffman (1991, p.
5) states that all knowledge evolves in the space between people, in the realm of
the ‘common world’ or the ‘common dance’. Only through the on-going con-
versation with intimates does the individual develop a sense of identity or an
inner voice. Anderson and Goolishian (cited in Hart, 1995, p. 184), add that “we
live with each other in a world of conversational narrative, and we understand
ourselves and each other through changing stories and self descriptions”.
Social constructionism regards individuals as integral with cultural, political
and historical evolution, in specific times and places, and so resituates psycho-
logical processes cross-culturally, in social and temporal contexts. Apart from the
inherited and developmental aspects of humanity, social constructionism hypo-
thesizes that all other aspects of humanity are created, maintained and destroyed
in our interactions with others through time. The social practices of all life begin,
are recreated in the present and eventually end. For psychotherapy, this view
emphasizes the importance of the acquisition, creation and change of emotional
behavior, therapeutic ability and ways of interpreting things and people. Because
the genetic material of each race and region is different, as well as the cultural
practice, then we say right from the start that there is no universal human nature.
What social constructionism shows to be important are the ways in which so-
cialization and enculturation, amongst the people we have known, plus the current
influence of those whom we now know, are the most active in shaping our mutual
existence with others (Owen, 1995, p. 161). Social constructionism argues that
true objectivity is absent in the human sciences because all methods require one
set of subjective humans to rate another set of subjective humans. So, “the tool for
knowing” is inevitably subjective people themselves. As regards the community
of human scientists, until a truth-claim is acceptably demonstrated to be a uni-
versal or local truth, then it must be held separate and used only with caution.
However, many human scientists throw caution to the wind and put their belief
and life force into provisional claims which are not shared by the whole commu-
nity of workers.
Social construction talk is all the rage. But what does it mean and what is its
point? The core idea seems clear enough. „To say of something that it is socially
constructed is to emphasize its dependence on contingent aspects of our social
selves. It is to say: This thing could not have existed had we not built it; and we
need not have built it at all, at least not in its present form. Had we been a different
kind of society, had we had different needs, values, or interests, we might well
have built a different kind of thing, or built this one differently” (Boghossian,
2001). The inevitable contrast is with a naturally existing object, something that
exists independently of us and which we did not have a hand in shaping. There are
certainly many things, and facts about them, that are socially constructed in the
sense specified by this core idea: money, citizenship and newspapers, for example.
None of these things could have existed without society; and each of them could
have been constructed differently had we so chosen (Boghossian, 2001). As Ian

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Hacking rightly observes, however, in his recent monograph, The Social

Construction of What? (1999), social construction talk is often applied not only to
worldly items – things, kinds and facts – but to our beliefs about them. Consider
Helene Moussa’s The Social Construction of Women Refugees (1992). „Clearly,
the intent is not to insist on the obvious fact that certain women come to be
refugees as a consequence of social events. Rather, the idea is to expose the way
in which a particular belief has been shaped by social forces: the belief that there
is a particular kind of person – he woman refugee – deserving of being singled out
for special attention” (Boghossian, 2001, p.6).

Varieties of Constructionism
What is social constructionism? Sometimes called a movement, at other times
a position, a theory, a theoretical orientation, an approach; psychologists remain
unsure of its status. At its most general it serves as a label denoting a series of
positions that have come to be articulated after the publication of Berger and
Luckmann’s influential work in 1966 but that have been influenced, modified and
refined by other intellectual movements such as ethno methodology, social studies
of science, feminism, post structuralism, narrative philosophy and psychology,
post-foundational philosophy and post-positivist philosophy of science, and more
(see Burr, 1995). That there is no single social constructionist position is now
more obvious than ever, and that positions that have never labeled or identified
themselves as social constructionism are sometimes labeled in this way simply
adds to the confusion. Like the term ‘postmodernism’, social constructionism is
not a single target (for its critics) or a single movement (for its enthusiasts)
(Henderikus, 2001, p. 294). The frequent conflation of postmodernism with social
constructionism adds to the confusion, since the former is even more ambiguous
a label, not to mention that in many respects social constructionism is thoroughly
and respectably modernist in intent and practice. Of course, having said all this, it
is not out of the question that a list could be drawn up with appropriate similarities
and some key set of defining features found that many could agree do function as
central to the enterprise called ‘social constructionism’. But this is beside the
point. What counts as constructionism is often dependent on the author’s or
critic’s aims. For what seems important to many of our authors is to critique a
particular version, namely that associated with Ken Gergen. One of the more
interesting phenomena has been the reluctance among some of our authors to
tackle more than what was represented by Gergen’s writings. This is fair enough
insofar as an author may choose whatever target is deemed crucial to the author’s
purposes. Nonetheless, the focus on a single position sometimes lapses into a
version of a historicism, ignoring the rich traditions that have led the social
sciences to choose something like ‘social constructionism’ at the start of the 21st
century. For what is at play here are not just competing claims for intellectual
priorities and changes, shifting academic fashions and the repudiation of the
scientism that reigned so long in the form of positivism: the emergence of social
constructionism also coincides with the coming of age of a generation of scholars
whose academic tutelage was colored by political activism and the rapid growth

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of post-war universities, followed by their recent and equally dramatic restruc-

turing as branch plants of the corporate world (Henderikus, 2001, p. 295).

History and development

Social constructionism has many roots - some are in existential-phenomenolo-
gical psychology, social history, hermeneutics and social psychology (Watzlawick
1984). Several of its major themes have occurred in the writings of authors at
different times and places. Giambattista Vico, Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx
have all made constructionist and constructivist remarks. The disciplines of the
history of ideas and the sociology of knowledge also have much in common with
social constructionism. In Britain, two leading social constructionists are Rom
Harre at the University of Oxford and Michael Billig and his team at Lough-
borough University. Michael Billig’s Arguing and Thinking (1987) concludes that
attitudes are features of rhetoric. Rom Harre has written on the social construction
of personality and emotional behavior which has touched on some of the more
important implications for the theory and practice of therapy (1984). Harre has
also produced a series of works on the body, individuality, social life and mo-
tivation. Harre takes the work of Bakhurst on the Russian cultural-historical school
of Vygotsky, Leontiev, Luria, Voloshinov, Bakhtin and Ilyenkov, as being parti-
cularly social constructionist. For instance, Bakhurst describes a view of mind
that regards the capacity to think as the ability to live in a meaningful world
(Bakhurst, 1991). These views challenge the orthodoxy of current individualistic
psychology and the assumptions which it holds dear. Social constructionism
wonders to what degree people are individual and collective, the same as others or
different from them. Just because we can each say “I” and have separate bodies
does not mean that thoughts and emotions are located solely within individuals.
Rather, these exist between individuals. Humans are part of shared collective
aims, values and experiences.
A recent influence within social constructionism is to investigate the ways in
which events, processes and qualities are presented and modeled in language, the
discursive, which could be called linguistic analysis, as it concentrates on how
descriptions of what is real are made, passed on and change through time (Edwards
& Potter 1992, Grace 1987). The role language plays in memory has also been
tackled. But the study of appropriate language games does not reflect the interre-
lation of the non-verbal relationships of humanity in connection with the possible
ways of verbalizing them. The currently acceptable ways of talking about the
mind show the linguistic representation of ontological assumptions about the
nature of the mind. For instance, the mind in itself does not exist and never has or
ever will. The mind, like any other concept, is created by talk from professionals
and lay people as to what the mind is. The mind, as it is usually assumed to be is
the receptacle for “individuality” and “thoughts”. “Individuality” is a Western
assumption that people are separate and unique and fully self-responsible in all
aspects of their life, from catching a cold, to having children who become delin-
quents, or their career going into decline (Owen, 1995, p. 164).

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Social constructionism as it is now infiltrating British and North American

psychology and social psychology cannot be traced to a single source. It has
emerged from the combined influences of a number of North American, British
and continental writers dating back more than thirty years. I shall give here what
may be considered an outline of its history and major influences, bearing in mind
that his history itself is only one possible constructions of the events (Burr, 1995,
p. 6). Many of the fundamental assumptions of social constructionism have been
alive and well living in sociology for guide some time. Sixty years ago Mead
(1934), writing in USA, founded ‘symbolic interactionism’ with his book Mind,
self and society. Fundamental to symbolic interactionism is the view that as
people we construct our own and each other’s identities through our everyday
encounters with each other in social interaction. In line with this way of thinking,
the sub discipline of etnometodology, this grew up in North America in the 1950s
and 1960s, tried to understand the processes by which ordinary people construct
social life and make sense of it to themselves and each other. But the major social
constructionist contribution from sociology is usually taken to be Berger and
Luckmann’s (1996) book The Social Construction of Reality. Berger and Luck-
mann’s anti-essentialist account of social life argues that human beings together
create and sustain all social phenomena through social practices. They see three
fundamental processes as responsible for this: externalization, objectivation and
internalization. People externalise when they act on their world, creating some
artifact or practice. For example, they may have an idea ( such as the idea that the
sun revolves around the earth) and externalise it by telling a story or writing a
book. But this then enters into the social realm; other people re-tell the story or
read the book, and once in this social realm the story or books begin to take on a
life of its own. The idea is expresses has become an object of consciousness for
people in that society (objectivation) and has developed a kind of factual existence
of truth; it seems to be out there, an objective feature of the world which appears
as natural, issuing from the nature of the world itself rather than dependent upon
the constructive work and interactions of human beings. Finally, because future
generations are born into a world where this idea already exists, they internalize
is as part of their consciousness, as part of their understanding of the nature of the
world. Berger and Luckmann’s account shows how the world can be socially
constructed by the social practices of people, but at the same time by experienced
by them as if the nature of their world is pre-given and fixed. We could say that
social constructionism itself has now achieved the status of an object. “In writing
this book and ostensibly describing it I am contributing to its objectivation in the
world. And in the future, students who will read this ad other books about social
constructionism will tend to think of it as an area of knowledge that has been
discovered rather as an effect to social processes. In writing this book, then I am
contributing to what might be called “the social construction of social con-
structionism” (Burr, 1995, p. 7).

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A Postmodern Approach to Knowledge

Social constructionism can be seen as a source of the postmodern movement,
and has been influential in the field of cultural studies. Some have gone so far as
to attribute the rise of cultural studies (the cultural turn) to social constructionism.
Within the social constructionist strand of postmodernism, the concept of socially
constructed reality stresses the ongoing mass-building of world views by indi-
viduals in dialectical interaction with society at a time. The numerous realities so
formed comprise, according to this view, the imagined worlds of human social
existence and activity, gradually crystallized by habit into institutions propped up
by language conventions, given ongoing legitimacy by mythology, religion and
philosophy, maintained by therapies and socialization, and subjectively inter-
nalized by upbringing and education to become part of the identity of social
citizens. In the book “The Reality of Social Construction” the British sociologist
Dave Elder-Vass (2012) places the development of social constructionism as one
outcome of the legacy of postmodernism. He writes “Perhaps the most widespread
and influential product of this process [coming to terms with the legacy of
postmodernism] is social constructionism, which has been booming [within the
domain of social theory] since the 1980s’” (Elder-Vass, 2012, p. 12).
Social constructionism is a theoretical movement that brings an alternative
philosophical assumption regarding reality construction and knowledge produc-
tion. It is concerned with the ways in which knowledge is historically situated and
embedded in cultural values and practices. According to this approach, meanings
are socially constructed via the coordination of people in their various encounters;
therefore, it is always fluid and dynamic (Gergen & Gergen, 2012). In the last few
decades, social constructionism has been presented and embraced in different
areas of knowledge in the international literature. As a field of interest about the
constructed nature of reality, it has been influenced by different psychological,
philosophical, and social perspectives, such as the analytical philosophy, the
sociology of the knowledge, and the rhetoric (Gergen, 1994). Centering on the
process of the social construction of reality, social constructionist perspectives
have been used to support a variety of practices in the fields of education, health
care, community work, conflict resolution, and organizations. Although it cannot
be translated into a clear-cut set of guidelines, given the nature of its episte-
mological proposal, it has enriched a vari-ety of research and professional prac-
tices from different fields of knowledge with a generative vocabulary, allowing
innovative practices to emerge (Gergen & Gergen, 2012). Some of these practices
include a focus on strengths and what is already working well instead of on
problems and how to fix them, an emphasis on a diversity of perspectives instead
of on commonalities of ideas, transdisciplinary teams, decentralized decision
making, and increased flexibil-ity in terms of approaches and policies, all of
which are informed, in turn, by an appreciation for a multicultural and polyphonic
environment. Having a postmodern intelligibility, social constructionism invites a
review of some modern assumptions about knowledge production, such as (a)
individual rationality, (b) empirical evaluation, (c) language as representation,
and (d) the narrative of progress (McNamee & Hosking, 2012). In a constructionist
perspective, individual rationality is not conceived of as an attribute of individual

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thinking but as a consequence of cultural convention. It is through the coordinated

actions with each other that the meaning of rationality is eventually reached. This
constructionist statement invites other forms of evaluating knowledge production,
which goes beyond a focus on individual rationality, and moves to relationality
and creativity with the ability to generate involvement and to promote change. In
the same way, the empirical method is not understood as conveying the correct
knowledge about reality, but as being a phenomenon defined and studied by a
specific theory and its methods. The results of the systematic observation of
reality are a priori circumscribed by the theory used. The constructionist invitation
is to comprehend how aspects of the world that are taken for granted are socially
constructed, thereby opening up space for a variety of alternative intelligibilities.
Methodologically, the challenge is not to prove and persuade the other about the
correct interpretation of the phenomenon, but to broaden the possibilities of
understanding. This fluid and dynamic approach has helped to foster commu-
nication, dialogue, and integration of perspectives.
Language, a fundamental aspect for the process of knowledge production, is
not conceived of as describing and representing the world, but as a way of
constructing it, being a form of social action. Language gains its meaning from its
use in context (Burr, 2003; Gergen, 1994; McNamee, 2004). The constructionist
approach emphasizes the ability to create realities through language, in its varied
forms of presenta-tion, stimulating a process of continuous creation.
Considering the critique of individual rationality, empir-ical evaluation, and
the representational view of language, there is a questioning of the narrative of
progress in science. Historical analysis of the recent developments of scientific
knowledge shows that it does not have a linear and cumulative nature that neither
has making achieved the control of nature yet, as it was intended by the modern
researchers, or science has led society to a life free of suffering. This analysis
helps to prevent the naive acceptance of scientific authoritative claims and me-
thods, and it also invites us to take scientific knowledge as an intelligibility that
may guide our actions depending on its contextual value. The constructionist
review of modern assumptions has important consequences for knowledge pro-
duction in the organizational field. First, it favors processes of deconstruction by
stimulating a reflexive stance in the production of the knowledge that allows a
critique of traditional practices in the society and its cultural implications. Second,
it promotes theoretical and practical reconstructions through generative theories
(Gergen, 1978) that can contribute to social transformation and promote the
approach between institutions as well as academia. Also, it invites openness to
alternative ways of producing and presenting knowledge, which goes beyond
traditional scientific texts, moving toward lively expressions of language that
capture the imagination of people (Watkins, Mohr, & Kelly, 2011). There is room
for narratives, social poetics, images, and videos in knowledge production and
expression. Knowledge, in this approach, is meant to offer new intelligibilities
and creatively construct new realities. Finally, it emphasizes the contextual value
of knowledge production and its practices, strengthening the liasion between
research and intervention, claiming the need of involvement and collaboration of
those who will use the knowledge in its production. It creates the scenario for an

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enhanced sense of democratization, which sustains the primacy of utility, parti-

cipation, and social transformation in the assessment and use of knowledge, rather
than an adequate representation of reality.
The constructionist theory is very sensitive to changes generating new forms
of practices and behaviors. In times of rapid transformation in the world, social
constructionism can be a useful approach to address and embrace changes in
context, pointing to new possibilities of doing research and intervention. Besides
this, the option for the constructionist alternative has ethical implications. It is a
way of thinking and doing that moves away from expertise-based, rational,
hierarchical, and result-focused models going toward more participatory, co-
creative, and process-centered ones.

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