Can social constructionism go too far?

1. Can social constructionism go too far? OR Like a good red wine! Social constructionism has legs but can go too far!

2. Different from my paper at inaugural AHRC • 2006 paper broader; 2007 narrower but more depth • More detailed analysis of the social constructionist approach • Responds to a recent defence of aspects of social constructionism

3. Outline • Necessity to identify something of the origins of social constructionism • Identify four strands • Conclude: has enormous potential • Ask: Can versions of it go too far? • Outline defence of Ingrid Sahlin

4. Argument • Considered eclectically, social constructionism is a valid approach • Critical approach – undermines mantras • Should be more of it; used more often • In its ‘stronger version’ it can bend back on itself, undermine itself • Ingrid Sahlin highlights the problems with some aspects of the stronger position – but problems identified

5. Origins • Berger and Luckman: Social Construction of Reality (1971) • Externalisation • Objectivation • Reification

6. There is an ‘objective’ social world • Social world internalised as ‘subjectively’ real • Social world constructed in the interplay, the reciprocal relationship, between active human agents and broader objective social world • Result a common sense, intersubjective understanding of social world with similarities and differences • Objective here does not mean that it is experienced as homogenous (eg Berger’s identity)

7. As applied to housing • Housing policies and practices socially constructed – no other authority • As such they do not have absolute or objective status • Reifications, considered normal, neutral and unchallengeable • But they have no authority outside of various (vested) interests

8. Four strands Discourse analysis • Examination of the language of housing causation, definitions, policies, practices • Examples: -language used to ‘manage’ tenants Haworth and Manzi (1999)

9. The sociology of power • Emphasis on the diffuse, ubiquitous nature of power • Influence of Foucault – power not (only) hierarchical • Example: Gurney’s (1999) study of the way homeownership reinforces notions of what is normal and what is not and how owners and renters are part of the normalisation process

10. Social Problems and Policy Narrative approach • Defining ‘Problems’ is claims-making • Example Jacobs et al (2003) The social processes by which lone parents and ‘anti-social behaviour’ are demonised Jacobs (2006) How ‘social problem’ of ‘miscreant’ tenants explained in terms of residualist explanations rather than other more structural factors How this explanation justifies certain forms of intervention

11. Symbolic interaction • Very little research using this strand; Kemeny ‘absence’ • Sometimes regarded as micro-Sociology • But more about how symbols of everyday interaction are understood intersubjectively and reflect power relationships • Example Paul Willis’ (1977) Learning to Labour • Example from Adelaide – use of Foucault's technologies of domination and the self to explore structure and agency among women who were homeless

12. Social construction has enormous potential • The dominant discourses about ‘social problems’ are merely claims that have no validity outside the perspective of those who are sufficiently powerful to make them • It can render problematic (problematise) those policies and practices, attitudes and actions, that are taken for granted • Thus, social constructionism provides the opportunity to dismantle the dominant discourses, to deconstructe them, to put them in their place as one explanatory discourse amongst many

13. But can social constructionism go too far? • Not in the actual research • But in the theory of knowledge which underpins it • Most vulnerable in the ‘strong’ version: Everything is socially constructed • If everything is socially constructed then so is social construction. Everything it says about contingent nature of claims applies to itself (reflexivity) • What criteria can it use to expose the policies and practices that are contributing to the disadvantage of households? • On what basis can it make policy recommendations if they are merely claims?

14. Ingrid Sahlin’s ‘defence’ Response • A response to the ‘ontological gerrymandering’ critique • A defence about the missing ‘time aspect’ in the criticism of relativism • The defence that the ‘universal-relativity’ argument … attacks social constructionism from an ‘“alien” discourse’ • A defence that social constructionism exposes claims and may ‘facilitate change’ (Sahlin, 2006: 178) • A restatement of the constructionist ‘credo’ that ‘we cannot know for sure’ and its implications (Sahlin, 2006: 179). In the following each of these is outlined and addressed in turn

15. A response to the ‘ontological gerrymandering’ critique • Manipulates boundaries of what is real and not • Say everything is a claim and then elevate some as ‘real’ or treat them as ‘objective’ • ‘Weak’ constructionists deny this position • Sahlin - seems to argue ‘all facts are socially constructed?’

16. A defence about the missing ‘time aspect’ in the criticism of relativism • ‘possible to assume something temporarily, agree about something for the time being, in order to play the scientific game without attributing the status of eternal truth to the premise’ (Sahlin, 2006: 178). • Agreed • But what does this imply? • Why play the game? • What does playing the game presuppose? • Even a momentary agreement is elevating claim others

17. The defence that the ‘universal-relativity’ argument … attacks social constructionism from an ‘“alien” discourse’ • Should social construction be exempt from external analysis? • Sahlin advocates ‘selective realism’ • Necessity to ‘bracket’ • But on what basis will some claims be selected or bracketed in or out? • What does the selection and bracketing presuppose even for a moment?

18. A defence that social constructionism can challenge and ‘facilitate change’ • Agreed • But what does this presuppose? • Criteria to challenge and advocate change? • Elevating some claims above others – and correctly

19. A restatement of the constructionist ‘credo’ that ‘we cannot know for sure’ and its implications • Again agreed • But how far can this be pushed without it rebounding back with devastating consequences • Can’t we know that certain claims are socially regarded as ‘absolute’ and ‘eternal’? Constructionists judge that they are contingent but that’s not how they are regarded socially or by those who have the power to impose them. • Can’t we know that the resultant policies distribute their burdens and benefits inequitably - and the consequence? • Are we unable to find some criteria by which we can judge and denounce this unequal distribution?

20. The weak version ‘Since critics of social constructionism have claimed that it denies the existence of an objective material world, it is important from the outset to make clear that there is no attempt in this edited collection to advance such arguments. Instead the claim advanced is that our access to the material world is mediated through language and discourse.’ Jacobs et al (2004: 3)