Abstract
Dave Elder-Vass’ work is well known within critical realist circles. He is recognized for his contributions to social theory, but also for his lucid writing style, through which he communicates critical realism to non-specialist audiences. In these respects, his new book, The Reality of Social Construction, is no different. It can be considered an extension of his earlier ideas, particularly his concept of ‘norm circles’, through which the term ‘social structure’ is replaced (Elder-Vass, 2010). In his new book, ‘norm circles’ move to the centre of Elder-Vass’ social ontology and become a realist explanatory device for all social phenomena. This move is framed within the book’s prima facie concern with making realism and social constructionism compatible. Both projects are ambitious but make an important contribution to social theory, particularly to two key realist debates: the autonomy (or not) of the cultural product, and the status of truth and knowledge. This review will consider the broad implications of Elder-Vass’ new book, before focusing on these two aspects.
It is necessary to contextualize Elder-Vass’ earlier work. In The Causal Power of Social Structures (2010), Elder-Vass brings together theories of supervenience and relational emergency to discern the relationship between structure and agency in realist terms. In a deceptively simple manner, Elder-Vass (2010: 23) argues that social structures can be understood as social groups or ‘norm circles’. Such groups are entities with people as their parts, and because these people interact with one another (through norms, values and beliefs) they have the casual power to produce a normative tendency in individuals to follow standardized practices. It is this quest for ‘ontological rigour’ (2010: 64) that translates over into his new book. Elder-Vass takes the term ‘social structure’ to be rather ‘vague’ and, in an attempt to be clearer, he equates it with those social entities that have a causal power (2012: 21–2, 254). The intention is laudable. Elder-Vass wishes to locate the autonomous causal power of agency without reducing social structures to facts about individual activities (methodological individualism). What his new book provides, then, is an extension to this project as human agency is seen to contribute to and operate in a context that includes the construction of social structures (read norm circles) as causal forces (2012: 21).
In the broadest sense, his new book can be seen as a reaction to, and reconciliation of, these themes within a wider critique of postmodernism. From early on, Elder-Vass (p. 4) is clear: ‘In the twenty-first century postmodernism, at least, is dead’; and much of his book is dedicated to rescuing social constructionism from its radical, postmodernist proponents. Elder-Vass’ realist approach is set against this postmodernism as he seeks to substantiate the critical realist argument that social scientists can be both realists and social constructionists (e.g. Bhaskar, 1993, cited in Elder-Vass, 2012: 3). In many respects his book is an excursion into the territories where realism and social life (‘social realism’) meet, as he searches for the most ‘tenable version’ of social constructionism. This is not strictly a new project. Other critical realists have made the two positions work together for empirical ends (Carter and New, 2004). However, Elder-Vass' approach is much more theoretical, as he exercises his repertoire of social theory to the fullest extent. He engages with a whole range of thinkers as he seeks to clarify the dominant assumptions that we should be working with as social realists. In particular, he re-appropriates two sociological classics, Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1971 [1966]) and John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality (1995), and re-arranges their titles to reflect his central thesis: that
‘social construction is both a real process and a process whose products are real: real, in both contexts, in just the sorts of way that critical realism would lead us to expect’ (2012: 7; emphasis added).
What is ambitious about Elder-Vass’ latest work is that he uses norm circles as the primary building blocks to secure this position. He argues that these are the social entities that underpin the real processes of social construction. To show this, Elder-Vass (2012: 15) examines the ontology of a range of normatively based phenomena – culture, language, discourse and knowledge – and argues that each of these are constructs of the intentional relations and representations of norm circles. What this means is that how one acts in conformity to a certain norm, and the (positive or negative) feedback that they receive, creates a situation in which individuals assimilate the rules of behaviour into their own practical rationality. They face what Elder-Vass (2012: 33) calls a ‘normative environment’ – a mechanism of the norm circle – that gives the norm circle the causal power to increase the tendency of people to conform to the norm. This power hinges on the observation of action not our internal representations of norms: It is the ability that multiple individuals have to recognise the same action as conforming with a norm circle or not that makes it possible for them to be part of the same norm circle … This is not to say that words or rules are irrelevant: increasingly, they are used to inform us about norms. But these verbal forms only describe norms, they do not constitute them. (p. 255)
So the ways in which norm circles function are affected by the practice(s) they govern. From here, each norm circle constructs a wide range of cultural, linguistic and epistemic social behaviour(s). Elder-Vass (p. 253) examines each of these normative structures in turn, leaving us with a number of ontological categorizations (of real social entities) based on different types of norm circle, He accepts that these are abstractions (or ‘retroductions’) from the complexities of the social world. I will limit myself to two of these abstractions, culture and knowledge (Chapters 3 and 11, respectively), as I feel that his discussions are noteworthy for anyone working within social theory.
As social actors, argues Elder-Vass, we exist in a normative environment where there is an expectation of certain kinds of behaviour in certain social contexts. This is how all culture exists: as an essentially normative phenomenon that is the product of norm circles (p. 31). Culture, he suggests, has both an individual (subjective) moment – the belief that a certain practice is appropriate – and a collective (objective) moment – the existence of a group that endorses or enforces that practice. The point is that we know how to act differently when queuing in a shop as opposed to queuing at a bar because we have representations of these kinds of behaviour. If we breach these representations, in either case, through our actions, then the group, at that objective moment, reinforces what is expected of us synchronically. This then has an impact on our subsequent enactments of practices in that social context: a rule has been set and this rule regarding norm circles reproduces those practices diachronically. Culture is a socially endorsed belief and that social endorsement can only be brought about by groups, i.e. norm circles.
This leaves Elder-Vass with a concept of culture quite different from that of critical realist Margaret Archer (1988). The two recently debated their differences in this journal (Archer and Elder-Vass, 2012) and the essence of that debate is captured in Elder-Vass’ chapter on culture. Here, he challenges Archer’s understanding of the autonomy of the cultural product. As he understands it, culture cannot take on a form that is both external to individuals and also able to influence their beliefs (Elder-Vass, 2012: 54). To shorten the debate, what Elder-Vass rejects is the Popperian notion of objective (World ‘3’) knowledge, that is, ‘knowledge that exists in the archive of human ideational products’ (2012: 255). For Elder-Vass, ideas – the context of culture – cannot exist in some objective form external to individual human belief. For example, when we read a book, we are not accessing some autonomous range of ideas, rather, we are only representing the ideas of an individual author: Such representations merely create the potential for a person with appropriate linguistic skills to re-generate something like the idea that was held by the original author or the idea that is read from the same artifact by some other reader. (p. 255)
At first glance, there appears to be some purchase to this argument. We are, after all, taught through language how to construct meaning, and books provide a good example of this point. They are conduits for language, teaching us how to access representations of the intended ideas of their authors. This communication can convey a normative influence on us: what we ‘think’ about the social world is strongly influenced by our socio-cultural interactions. There is a danger to this, however, one which Elder-Vass does not explicitly address. In suggesting that ideas only exist at the level of socio-cultural interaction, Elder-Vass is in danger of eliding ‘what we can know’ – ideas as lived experiences – into ‘what is’ – ideas that are yet to be known or cannot be known at this time. What Elder-Vass is doing is depriving ideas of potentiality. For example, it is unclear how he would explain the existence of ideas that remain unrealized or continue to exist but are absent in works lost.
As Archer suggests, this potential is something real; it is that which is both intelligible and yet remains an unexercised ‘property’ of a text or artifact (Archer and Elder-Vass, 2012: 102). Of course, it is in making this property intelligible that ideas become causally efficacious, though this does not deny their existence in the first place. The same can be said for ideas that are passed along in history. It is unclear from Elder-Vass’ persuasive synchronic account of norm circles how ideas, once founded but forgotten in history, are re-activated again. How do ideas lost but archived diachronically re-emerge? It is unclear how an idea can exist at the level of socio-cultural interaction that is, maintained through norm circles and, yet, exist unexercised over thousands of years.
Unfortunately, Elder-Vass’ chapter on knowledge does little to answer these concerns. Here, he argues that, if we are to be realist about knowledge, we must recognize that it is most accurately characterized, not as ‘justified true belief’, but as ‘socially authorised’ beliefs (2012: 209, 213–14).
‘These are beliefs that we can reasonably take to be justified either because the belief itself is socially authorised or because the belief has been obtained by a method that is socially authorised’ (p.257).
I find this to be a curious position for someone who also denies the ontological status of ideas and culture. It seems as if Elder-Vass would explain the (re-)emergence of ideas as representations that have been (re-)authorized through ‘epistemological circles’. Ideas once lost (or never realized) re-emerge in the form of socially authorized beliefs about particular representations of a text or artifact. This knowledge is then offered up for scrutiny against various and competing epistemological standards to secure the status of reliable, approximate truth (p. 232). Yet, this still fails to explain how ideas exist, unexercised, in the archive. Why not reflect upon the potentiality of ideas to exist within the real, if you also insist on the ontological nature of truth? It is unclear, in this respect, where Elder-Vass draws his distinction between ‘what can be’ and ‘what is’.
Both chapters left me wondering whether Elder-Vass recognizes the existence of a social world beyond what human beings are doing. The micro-emergent character of his account tends towards the idea that everything comes from human action. This (over-) emphasis on intentional agency sees Elder-Vass move away from an understanding of objectivity (as anterior social structures) in favor of (objective) intersubjectivity through normative interaction(s). Culture is shared, for ideas exist within human interaction(s) only. Some may question whether this position is realist.
In closing, I found Elder-Vass’ new book to be both clear and engaging. He offers a straightforward way in to key debates within social theory. This is no easy task and Elder-Vass should be praised for the way in which he communicates many competing social theories through different threads of argument. More than that, what Elder-Vass offers is a way of thinking about (certain types) of realism and social constructionism as homogenous. His book explains the philosophy that makes such a cogent statement possible. There is also much to take from Elder-Vass’ account of norm circles, which he uses to offer an incisive explanation of the relationship between agent and structure; a relationship that is as much about how we construct the social world as it is about the causal effects it has on us. However, in exploring the chapters on culture and knowledge, it appears to this reviewer that his social ontology requires more work. In particular, it requires a way of explaining how ideas (as culture) exist over time. He does not give this the full attention it deserves and it does not appear that his account of ‘institutional reality’ (2012: 55–74) captures this either. With everything depending on norm circles, it is difficult to see how long-standing social structures maintain themselves beyond the synchronic moment – beyond the endorsement or enforcement of the norm.
These concerns are not eased by the absence of any substantive empirical research. Elder-Vass’ circles need retrodictive explanation(s), if only as a means to test his persuasive model of reality. Unfortunately, it is clear from the conclusion of his new book that this is not his intended path. This leaves the reviewer to make a much broader point. It is apparent after reading both of Elder-Vass’ books that he is positioning himself as the philosopher of science, as someone who is focused primarily on the architecture of the social world. This is a laudable project that is not unlike that of Roy Bhaskar’s. However, what is different between them is Elder-Vass’ quest for ontological rigour, which now appears as quite a taxonomic affair. His approach, of ever defining and establishing conceptual parameters, seems more akin to the theoretical sociologist, who is searching for concepts as a way to explain specific cases and events. This is quite a different path to the philosopher who wishes to remain ‘intentionally abstract and incomplete’ (2012: 253).
Elder-Vass’ new book makes a valuable contribution to social theory and I recommend it as a text that communicates difficult ideas in a thought-provoking and well-written way.