The A-Z of Social Research

Constructionism, social

Contributors: Robert L. Miller & John D. Brewer

Print Pub. Date: 2003
Online Pub. Date:
Print ISBN: 9780761971320
Online ISBN: 9780857020024
DOI: 10.4135/9780857020024
Print pages: 42-44
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the
pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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The social constructionist perspective within the social sciences is part of a much wider
tradition which has been labelled constructionist or constructivist. Constructionism
argues that knowledge arises from social processes and interaction in principle social
scientific knowledge is no different from everyday knowledge. Constructionists believe
that people make their own reality and that there are no universal laws external to
human interaction waiting to be discovered.
Constructionist assumptions have methodological implications in that social researchers
are not distinct from their subject matter they cannot study social life as scientists
might do in a laboratory. Instead their interaction with their subjects is itself a key part
of the sociological enterprise. Thus there is no sharp distinction between sociological
knowledge and social reality. In the views of some constructionists drawing on the work
of Weber and others, this does not make the social sciences any less scientific than
science that deals with non-human subjects or inanimate objects. Rather sociologists
as human beings use the common capacities they share with their subjects to provide a
deeper understanding and interpretation of social life.
Categories such as gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, class, nationality are
social constructs which may vary across time and culture depending on the specific
circumstances, processes and forms of interaction. Constructionists are sceptical
that there are natural, essential or unchanging human traits which are rooted in
biology, psychology or other natural characteristics. They argue, for example, that
ideas of masculinity and femininity vary considerably across societies and historical
periods. Definitions of womanhood current in middle class Victorian society involved
exclusion from paid work, physical delicacy and muted sexual feeling. Women in many
contemporary African societies, the other hand, may be breadwinners, physically
robust and sexually confident. In other words, constructionists would argue that there
is no necessary connection between male or female bodies and particular gender
characteristics.

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Origins and development

[p. 42 ] The origins of social constructionism are deeply rooted in the history of the
social science disciplines. While Marx, Weber and Durkheim are not constructionists
in a modern sense, there are constructionist dimensions to their thought. Marx, for
example, in some of his earlier writings, emphasises the way in which people shape
their own circumstances and produce the ideas, ideologies or conventional wisdom
which pervade their societies at particular historical junctures. Weber's actor-oriented
sociology focuses on the way in which social meaning is created through interaction.
Even Durkheim, often deemed to lean towards naturalism and positivism, sees a social
fact like religion as a product of human activity.
The more immediate foundations of constructionism are to be found in the
phenomenology of Alfred Schutz and the Chicago School of the early twentieth century
including the work of W. I. Thomas. The latter's oft-quoted statement when people
define situations as real, they become real in their consequences is an early example
of social constructionism. Symbolic interactionism with its roots in the work of G.H.
Mead, Herbert Blumer and Erving Goffman is constructionist in that it emphasises how
meaning, identity and culture are created in the process of interaction. It emphasises
the context-bound, fluid and open-ended nature of social relationships. Symbolic
interactionism underwent a revival with a rejection of the dominant paradigm of
structural functionalism and the influence of Goffman's dramaturgical sociology
and labelling theory in the study of crime, deviance and sexuality. The most formal
statement of sociological constructionism in the 1960s was Berger and Luckmann's
(1967) Social Construction of Reality.
Constructionism was further developed through the influence of Michel Foucault
and other post-structuralists. Here discourse was moved to the centre of analysis
drawing attention to the way in which the expert discourses of professionals and
power-holders of all kinds privilege certain ways of seeing and doing while repressing
others. There is an emphasis here on the task of deconstructing or decoding
dominant discourses. The development of postmodernism questioned the existence of
a dominant ideology or way of seeing the world. It rejected the notion of grand societal
or theoretical narratives and underlined the existence of a plurality of narratives or ways
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of seeing in all societies. Constructionism has been a powerful influence on recent

developments in cultural studies, communication theory and theories of identity. It fuses
with postmodernism in underlining the existence of plural narratives, identities and
cultures in any given society.
In its contemporary manifestations, constructionism encourages reflexivity the truth
claims of social scientific investigation are not privileged with respect to other existing
truth claims advanced by other groups. The social scientist is very much part of the
life-world being studied and acts as an interpreter, mediator or communicator in this
world. This form of sociological engagement is quite different from that of the positivist
who gathers objective facts, looks for general explanations and seeks to inform public
policy from an external position based on specialist expertise. Critics of contemporary
constructionism have questioned whether its relativism is intellectually coherent and
whether it is equipped to analyse the more enduring power structures in society.
Authors such as Bhaskar[p. 43 ] (1989) and Layder (1998) have sought to develop
a critical or reflexive realism which accommodates the analysis of both structure and
discourse.
LIAM O'DOWD

10.4135/9780857020024.n16
Suggested further reading
and Luckmann, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality: a Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge . Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Berger, P.

References
(1989) Reclaiming Reality: a Critical Introduction to Contemporary
Philosophy . London: Verso.
Bhaskar, R.

Layder, D.

(1998) Sociological Practice: Linking Theory and Social Research . London:

Sage.

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