Abstract
From the sub-title, I anticipated a general overview of recent social constructionist research, hoping for a handy student primer, and to some extent Weinberg does provide this, ably covering topics such as the body, identity and social problems. However, the main thrust of the book is a defence of social constructionism (hereafter SocCon) against some common criticisms and an argument for a specific understanding of the term. This roams into deepish philosophical and theoretical territory that, although perhaps un-avoidable, goes beyond ‘themes’, especially given that, as Weinberg acknowledges, his account is selective in its treatment. To advocate a particular version of SocCon is a rather different exercise from reviewing research and surrounding debates.
It’s that matter of selectivity. Of course, as SocCon-ists have assiduously documented, selectivity is a seemingly inevitable feature of social life and its representation. The lifeworld is built from typifications; so, we are all selective. Weinberg provides a very useful outline of the development of this perspective, linking it to the sociology of knowledge and charting its trajectory from early statements of the classical social theorists, through Mannheim, critical theory, and phenomenological sociologies, to Berger and Luckmann’s coinage of the term. Here, I am in full agreement that it is fundamental to sociological thought, tantamount indeed to sociological common sense. As such, it is tempting to agree also with his acceptance of the argument made by Strong Programmers in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) that SocCon is simply the furtherance of the modern project of science in application to that specific feature of the social world we call ‘knowledge’.
But here is where the trouble begins: the methodological horrors; or as Weinberg puts it, the ‘bane’ of ‘radical relativism’. Knowledge, almost by definition for the modern sensibility, invokes ‘science’ and, far from furthering this, SocCon, especially SSK, has been viewed as its negation. In defence, Weinberg brings in some philosophical heavyweights, providing an admirably concise account of SocCon’s epistemological-cred in post-Wittgensteinian philosophy of science, hermeneutics and standpoint theory, while countering the intellectual laziness that conflates it with deconstructionism and postmodernism.
But it’s that matter of selectivity. To counter what he sees as ‘linguistic reductionism’, Weinberg draws on pragmatism to argue that ‘[o]ur lives are not only linguistically meaningful; more fundamentally, they are meaningful at the level of our embodied and pre-discursive practical engagements and activities’ (p. 55). On this ground – what I will call practical embodied foundationalist fundamentalism (PEFF) – Weinberg advocates a notion of ‘objectivism’ that is historically and socially contextual, as a matter of practical and situated judgement, with the fully accepted implication that there are no universal criteria transcendent of time and place. ‘Objectivity’ shifts and changes with immediate collective concerns; but this does not mean there is no objectivity, just that what it is taken to mean varies with the socially relevant criteria applied in any given situation.
With this, Weinberg seeks to advance an understanding of SocCon deflecting that relativistic ‘bane’ and compatible with the general project of science. He also sees it as nurturing inclusive dialogue accommodating multiple versions of reality, enabling their assessment through force of better argument. A mainstay of his discussion here is Pollner’s dissection of mundane reasoning, but whilst it is most welcome to see this given such attention, I find Weinberg’s discussion of reflexivity wanting. Pollner (1991: 372) did not just distinguish ‘endogenous’ and ‘referential reflexivity’, but also ‘radical referential reflexivity’, a form, as I understand it, that includes the analyst’s construction of ‘reflexivity’.
In this, I find Weinberg unpersuasive. For, although he disputes the ‘social realism’ of SSK-ers like Collins and Yearley, he himself employs the rhetoric of realism in support of PEFF. But PEFF is a version; a representation of social reality – and any analytical construct of members’ practical embodied action in a specific situation describes that action in analytical language. To do social science, at least as currently institutionalized, requires using discursive constructs. But though we may be doomed to representation, to call this a ‘bane’ sits ill with the appeal to inclusive dialogue.
And so to selectivity. Notably absent from Weinberg’s account of SSK is the York School (as was), especially Gilbert and Mulkay’s critique of ‘social interests’ as the ‘cause’ of knowledge claims on the grounds that scientists already refer to them in their own practical sociological reasoning. In short, SocCon is a members’ method with the upshot that a fully reflexive social science recognizes its own accounts of social reality, however construed, are versions amidst versions with no way to decide definitively between their validity and those of members. Perhaps nature does prevail over nurture; SocCon may put the contrary case, but we cannot know with certainty, however much we may insist. This is our dilemma and I do not see that PEFF resolves it. But, of course, it’s an argument!