Social Constructivism

Varieties of Constructivism

All forms of social constructivism emphasize the constructed nature of the social world. However, there are different ways of unpacking constructivism, and we should distinguish between them. Although it is tempting to think of each type of constructivism as an account of society as a whole, each of them might apply to some (but not all) of our concepts.

A general version of constructivism insists that we make parts of the social world by our intentional actions. People act for reasons that they adopt in the light of beliefs and tacit knowledge that they acquire in part through processes of socialization. For example, when shopkeepers price goods, they make an aspect of the social world in accord with their beliefs about how to make a profit and their perhaps tacit concepts of market economics and fair exchange. Other aspects of the social world then arise as the unintended consequences of such intentional actions. For example, if a shopkeeper prices her goods higher than her competitors, and if potential customers buy goods at the lower prices available elsewhere, she will go bankrupt irrespective of whether or not anybody intended or foresaw that outcome.

All kinds of social scientists allow that we make the world through our intentional actions. Often they seek to explain actions in terms of allegedly social or natural facts about institutions, social class, gender, or a universal human rationality. In contrast, constructivists usually argue that the intentions of actors derive in part from traditions, discourses, or systems of knowledge that are also social constructs. This linguistic social constructivism implies not only that we make the social world by acting on certain beliefs and meanings, but also that we make the very beliefs and meanings upon which we act. In this view, our concepts are contingent products of particular discourses and practices; they are not natural or inevitable ways of conceiving and classifying objects. Again, our concepts are the artificial inventions of a particular language, culture, and society; they are not a universal vocabulary that picks out natural kinds in the world. Constructivism thus implies that varied traditions or cultures can categorize objects differently. For example, it is a commonplace that Eskimos have many words for the different types of snow or that the people of the Kalahari Desert have words that pick out various shades of red. Therefore, linguistic social constructivism consists of what is called antiessentialism. It asserts that our concepts do not refer to essences: Our concepts do not pick out core, intrinsic properties that are common to all the things to which we might apply them and that also explain the other facets and behavior of those things. It is certainly possible that none of our social concepts refer to essences, especially if we define a social concept as one that cannot be unpacked solely in terms of our bodies, their movements, and their reactions. However, to say that our social concepts do not refer to essences is not to say that they do not refer to anything at all. We should distinguish between pragmatic, critical, and antirealist forms of constructivism.

...