Re:Constructivism & Social Constructionism

Hi Pamela,

Constructivism had its roots in a Russian art movement in the early 20th century. The central theme was
the embodiment of the spirit of technology and revolutionary change. Human beings actively construct
their environment rather than just shifting around existing things.

The movement reached into psychology, where it became associated with Piaget's theories of child
development where mental categories are not considered innate but are constructed during childhood in
response to interaction with the environment. This stems at least in part from the Kantian view that we have to organize our knowledge into categories because we don't have direct access to objective reality as such, and also relates to Darwin's theory that the form and function of biological organisms arises through adaptation to particular environments
over history.

Social constructionism comes originally from Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky's view in the 1920's that
the mind does not reside in an individual but in individuals within a web of social interactions. It is a theory of knowledge that "reality" (at least as we comprehend it) is not objective but is constructed differently by different people at different times through their social interactions in particular, according to historical events, ideologies, and cultural biases. That
gives it a particular slant that is not found in psychological constructivism or the constructivist art movement.

The two movements are related, but also easily confused. One big problem is that the interpretation of "reality" varies greatly, from something akin to worldview at one end to actual physical laws of nature at the other end. Therefore in application, social constructionism largely becomes a form of social criticism for raising consciousness about certain kinds of issues, such as gender, race, and mental illness, rather than strictly being an application of a social subset of
psychological constructivism. The main thread in social constructionist critiques is usually to oppose the _inevitability_ of something by showing how we have constructed it, and therefore could have constructed it differently. Psychological constructivism does not generally lead to any such argument about the inevitability of concepts as a whole, only that they have to be constructed by the *individual* somehow during development and learning.

To add to the confusion, in political science, social constructionism is sometimes called social constructivism, which causes a lot of confusion between the different theories.

Social constructionism becomes an issue in political science because, simplistically put, if the world in some sense shifts according to the way we construct it, then it can be argued that pluralism and democratic processes are required to deal with the shifting contingencies. To the extent that there is a single, fixed world with fixed rules that can be discovered, flexibility and pluralism become less important and fixed ideologies can be argued to apply more universally. Therefore, social constructionism often becomes associated with leftist politics and left-leaning highbrow academia, including facets of feminist studies.

An important classic of social constructionism is Berger and Luckmann's "The Social Construction of Reality," (1966)
which mainly argues that our view of the world is formed by society. This also reflects a basic principle in the sociology of knowledge.

There are some scathing critiques of social constructionism and its sometimes awful excesses in science and philosophy
literature. Prime examples are in the work of Norm Levitt and Paul Gross ("Higher Superstition" and others), and also
Alan Sokal ("Fashionable Nonsense"). These critical works address the sociological aspects much more than
the overlap with psychological constructivism, showing that the two ideas are very much separable in practice.

The most balanced account of social constructionism I have found, incorporating both its pluses and minuses, is in Ian
Hacking's book, "The Social Construction of What ?" from Harvard Press, 1999.

I hope this helps.

kind regards,

Todd

Replies:

Re:Constructivism & Social Constructionism, by Theresa, 03/15/04

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.