Abstract
In the introduction to a book titled Politics of Constructionism, the two editors begin by claiming that a characteristic feature of the human sciences is that they eagerly respond to conceptual and linguistic innovations and new terminologies, and that new terminologies and their underlying theoretical presuppositions are in constant movement across both time and disciplinary boundaries (Velody and Williams, 1998: 1). They note that sometimes such innovations attract few users and their influence remains only local, whereas others have longer periods of popularity and gain sufficiently strong hold to last for more than a decade or so, and also attract scholarly interest from a variety of differing human science enterprises (Velody and Williams, 1998).
Constructionism clearly is one fairly recent innovation in the social science, although by no means for philosophy with its long history of debating constructivism. (This is the term that philosophers use [see, for example, Kukla, 2000; Stam, 2014], whereas constructionism has been the term in the social sciences. Both are frequently used interchangeably.)
Since the 1980s at the latest, the popularity of (social) constructionism has grown enormously in the social sciences and there are no signs today that its growth is set to diminish, despite simultaneous increase of critical discussion. Social constructionism has become a near transcendent perspective that appears in a variety of disciplines from sociology and psychology to geography, political science, and more.
As to the social study of childhood, it is hard not to see that social constructionism has been exceptionally successful here. This can be evidenced simply by noting the numerous recurrence of social construct(ion), as a verb or noun, in the articles published in this journal. Take any recent number, for example, Childhood 21(4), and you will find that its eight articles mention the noun or verb form of construct(ion), sometimes accompanied by the epithet social, altogether 60 times. A search on all the issues of Childhood available online in turn will show altogether more than 400 mentions of social construct(ion) in the pages of the journal, their number increasing volume by volume. 1 Also reading across the broader childhood study literature easily gives one the impression that the social study of childhood, ever since its “birth,” has been based on social constructionism. Michael Wyness (2015), for example, in his newly published textbook on childhood, notes that so much has been said in childhood studies about the socially constructed nature of childhood that social constructionism has in fact become its “theoretical orthodoxy” (p. 19).
Why has the social constructionist perspective been so attractive in childhood studies?
First, it has presented a novel way of understanding children’s (and their others’) lives and perceptions, and that these lives and perceptions can be changed. Social constructionism suggests that changes do not occur as a result of biological or natural processes; instead, it is a result of the differing ways in which meanings are constructed and reconstructed through people’s histories as they interact with each other, in their experiencing the world and in their making sense of the world. The social constructionist sees these primarily as the product of social and cultural processes.
A further incitement toward adopting a social constructionist perspective has surely come from recognizing the political component that there is in social constructionism. As Smith (2010: 120–121) writes, sociologists have generally been attracted by the ironic form of analysis that the constructionist perspective engenders. Most interesting and influential sociological works, he writes, are those that show that something previously understood in one way is best really understood quite differently. For instance, we previously thought that large psychiatric hospitals were institutions provided by humane societies to care for their psychologically impaired members, until Erving Goffman showed us that they were equivalent to totalitarian concentration camps. Social constructionism thus provides sociologists a powerful analytical tool to perform the assumption-upending ironic twists that make for interesting storytelling. For sociologists of childhood, parallel instances are provided by the historical work of Philippe Ariès and many anthropologists on the diversity of lived childhoods across time and place.
Social constructionism appeals to many sociologists also because of its unmasking of the seemingly natural as contingently constructed. This opens up possibilities for intentional personal and social change toward greater justice, freedom, equality, and human fulfillment. “Facts” are not neutral and not simply out there to be discovered. Rather, they are “constructed” in the various fields of social life. Also, when such “facts” are worked up into ideas, they may well benefit some people while disempowering others. In so far as questions of children’s “voice,” rights, and empowerment (or agency) have become a special concern, especially for researchers and professionals in the education and welfare fields, the constructionist perspective opens up avenues for changing the situation of the disempowered. Social life then does not have to be the way it seems to be; social constructionism thus tends strongly to be “against inevitability.”
With this much of argument for the benefits of adopting a social constructionist research agenda, are we and should we all be social constructionists now? (cf. Best, 2008: 56).
Or is Nathalie Heinich (2010) perhaps right in her assertion that the two words—“social construction”—were once illuminating but are in fact blinding us today? 2 The first problem with “social construction,” she writes, is that “it has become much more than a mere conception: an ideological flag, a slogan, aimed primarily at rallying supporters in the struggle between clans that organizes the intellectual world. Say ‘socially constructed’ and you’ll be part of the in-crowd.”
I do recognize her provocation. As a reader and an editor of this journal, I read more often than I would wish that “childhood is a social construct(ion).” Such announcements, when not followed by any further reflection on possible implications, conceptual, methodological, or otherwise, tend to remain kind of “confessions,” of self-declarations of being a member in the field (the in-crowd): social constructionism as an entry ticket to the field of childhood studies? Beyond the somewhat disappointing individual instances of such assurances, they tell me more about the degree of childhood studies’ critical self-understanding, than of the individual scholars whom this journal welcomes to participate in developing the field, both theoretically and empirically, and always critically.
A second problem in today’s social constructionism in sociology, in Heinich’s (2010) view, is that as it became more radical, it also became “more stupid”: the pretension that everything is “socially constructed” reduces experience to a single dimension. Against this, she wants to argue that instead of a resource, social construction should become a research topic for sociologists. Other scholars agree: as social constructionists hold that since social reality is a social construction, the only thing worth investigating is how this construction is carried out. This has profound consequences in that it leads to antitheoretical tendencies, such as descriptivism and to a reduction to the individual level of analysis (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009: 37).
Even a third problem of social constructionism is briefly discussed by Heinich (2010). This conception, which pretends to be anti-naturalistic, is in fact profoundly naturalistic, since it is underpinned by a critique of artificialism: the world is “only” built (i.e. constructed), which means unnecessary, hence changeable. Such a view arises from a naturalism in reverse, confusing “natural” with necessity and “social” with contingency, and this is what for Heinich points at a high degree of sociological blindness (Heinich, 2010). Proposals for “post-constructionism” that have recently come up are particularly concerned with this problem (e.g. Lykke, 2010; Wehling, 2006).
I have addressed here only a few concerns over social constructionism and mainly by way of just one brief assessment of social constructionism in sociology (Heinich, 2010). There are many more. According to Lynch (writing in 1998), in the social sciences, it has been virtually impossible to remain indifferent to constructivism, as colleagues, students, and more distant critics all challenge us to take up positions in the debates about it (p. 13). The origins of contemporary social constructionism are multiple and may be traced to the origins of social sciences themselves; contemporary social constructionism also comprises a wide range of only partially overlapping research agendas (Weinberg, 2015: xi), so there are positions to be taken in relation to constructionism. Cavanagh and Dennis (2010) assert that in many cases, the invocation of “social construction” does not in fact represent adherence to a theoretical position or show that a category or criterion has been applied to a set of social phenomena (pp. 121–122). Instead, it allows the writer to carry on with “business as usual.” This is because “social construction” does not require definition; consequently, it can be used to facilitate evidence-free assertions. A putative “theoretical contradiction”—“discovered” and described by the author—is “solved” by claiming that a category of social phenomena is “socially constructed” (Cavanagh and Dennis, 2010).
This is a brief and without question very partial treatment of the worth but mainly of the problems of social constructionism as it has come into use in the social study of childhood—problems that will hardly be resolved by simply taking sides with a “weak” vs “strong” version, a “light” vs “heavy” version, a “dark” vs “light” version, or any other of the typologies proposed in the now extensive literature on social constructionism. In his somewhat finer analysis, Wenneberg (2002) distinguishes between as many as 10 variants of social constructionism. The least pretentious and the most common of them is what he calls “the critical perspective”—a position of simply taking a critical stance toward all things “natural” and taken-for-granted, the task being one of finding the “real” pattern of things behind, or below, the “false” surface (Wenneberg, 2002: 8). The weak point in adopting this variant is of course the problem of what counts as real—is it not also always socially constructed? At the other end of Wennerberg’s (2002) axis of variants is a “total social constructionism” in which not only does the social create the social, but we—researchers—too are fully immersed in the social in that not only is our praxis social but so is also our thinking, through and through (p. 9). Thus, the social constructionism that we adopt has far-reaching consequences for the authority of scientific knowledge. Wenneberg moreover argues that we can now understand better why so many young researchers become avowed social constructionists. He explains how the many existing constructionisms in conjunction constitute a “slide” with three interconnected runs and no points at which to drop out. You start at the top of the slide, with the “merely” critical perspective that questions things that are considered natural or results of natural development. Traveling down this first run leads to ontological positions which take reality, and not only our knowledge of it, as socially constructed. The third run finally takes you down to a further position where knowledge about social reality is constructed through the creation of social facts, and the critical social constructionist has ended his or her journey as a fully blown epistemological relativist (Wenneberg, 2002: 9–11)—a “total” social constructionist. (See also Kukla [2000: Chapter 10] on the infinite regress of construction.)
Weinberg (2015) puts into words the same danger that we face in the careless use of the “c-word” that Wenneberg wants to highlight with his slide metaphor. Social constructionists, Weinberg (2015: 23) writes, are usually noted not for any particular philosophical pedigree but rather for a steadfast refusal to philosophically privilege knowledge of any kind, including our own. Constructionist research has always been, and will very likely continue to be, heavily influenced by philosophers and philosophical debate (Weinberg, 2015), and therefore, neglecting these commitments can only foster misunderstandings, impede productive dialogue, and restrain the progress we surely wish to see in the social study of childhood.