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The Foundations of Social

Research
Michael Crotty
Chapter Three: Constructionism-The Making of
Meaning
The Foundations of Social Research
 In the Constructionist View, meaning is not
discovered but constructed.
 The world and the objects in the world are
indeterminate. They may be pregnant with
potential meaning, but actual meaning
emerges only when consciousness engages
with them.
 How can there be meaning without a mind?
The Foundations of Social Research
Tree
Would it be a tree, with
that same meaning
whether anyone knew
of its existence or not?
What does tree mean in
logging town, artist’s
settlement, urban slum?
The Foundations of Social Research
 Humphrey quote, p. 43
 Worldstuff, substances, materiality
 There is a difference between constructing
meaning and creating meaning which
separates subjectivists from constructionists.
 The “worldstuff” is the substance out of
which we build meaning. We have something
to work with.
The Foundations of Social Research
 The world is ‘always already there.’
 The world and the objects in the world may
be in and of themselves meaningless; yet they
are our partners in the generation of meaning
and need to be taken seriously.
 Objectivity and subjectivity need to be
brought together and held together
indissolubly.
Foundations of Social Research
 Intentionality
 Constructionism mirrors intentionality
 In Intentionality all mental phenomena are
described as having reference to a content,
direction toward an object. Consciousness in
other words is always consciousness of
something.
The Foundations of Social Research
 Distinguish ‘purpose’ or ‘intention’ from ‘to
tend,’ moving towards, directing oneself to,
reaching out into
 Referentiality, relatedness, directedness,
‘aboutness’
 Intentionality is a radical interdependence of
subject and the world
 Subject and object are always united
The Foundations of Social Research
 What is the significance of Stanley Fish’s
story about his two classes on pp. 45-47?
The Foundations of Social Research
 What constructionism drives home
unambiguously is that there is no ‘true’ or
‘valid’ interpretation. There are useful
interpretations, to be sure. There are
liberating forms of interpretation, fulfilling
and rewarding ones as well as their opposites,
but no ‘true’ or ‘valid’ interpretations.
The Foundations of Social Research
 What is Theodore Adorno’s concept of ‘exact
fantasy’ and why is it important methodologically,
especially if one wants to do constructionist based
research?
 See p. 48, par. 2
 What is the difference between Denzin & Lincoln’s
interpretation of a bricoleur and Crotty’s
interpretation of a bricoleur? Why does Crotty argue
that Levi-Strauss was actually outlining a
constructionist approach rather than a subjectivist
approach?
The Foundations of Social Research
 In the making of meaning, humans have to
contend with the social origin of meaning and
its social character.
 Fish argues that while objects are made rather
than discovered, the means by which they are
made are social and conventional, These
means are institutions which precede us and
in which we are already embedded.
The Foundations of Social Research
 Fish adds that only by inhabiting these social
institutions or being inhabited by them, do we
have access to the public and conventional
senses that they make. Functioning as ‘a
publicly available system of intelligibility,’
these institutions are the source of the
interpretive strategies whereby we construct
meaning.
The Foundations of Social Research
 Clifford Geertz: A system of significant
symbols or ‘culture.’
 The meaningful symbols that constitute
culture are an indispensable guide to human
behavior.
 What does Geertz claim we would be without
culture? What then does that say about
culture?
The Foundations of Social Research
 Why is it best to view culture as the source
rather than the outcome of human thought and
action?
 Geertz emphasizes that from the point of view
of any particular individual, ‘such symbols
are largely given.’ They are already current in
the community when the individual is born
and remain in circulation with some changes.
The Foundations of Social Research
 Humans are already born into a world of meaning
 We enter a social milieu in which a system of
intelligibility prevails
 We inherit a system of significant symbols.
 It is also not just our thoughts that are constructed
for us, but our emotions as well.
 Social constructionism embraces the whole gambit
of meaningful reality. All reality, as meaningful
reality, is socially constructed. There is no
exception.
The Foundations of Social Research
 How does Crotty distinguish between the
social construction of social reality as a social
constructionist stance and the social
construction of all reality as a social
constructionist stance, using the example of
the chair?
 Hint: p. 54
The Foundations of Social Research
 What does author Ann Oakley mean when
she says, “A way of seeing, is a way of not
seeing.”
 Anthony Giddens and the problem of the
“double hermeneutic.” What can natural
scientists do that social scientists cannot do?
 Hint: has to do with archimedean point, meta-
language and the notion of tabula rasa
The Foundations of Social Research
 Constructivism v. constructionism
 Meaning making activity of the individual
mind v. collective generation and
transmission of meaning.
 Constructivism resists the critical spirit while
constructionism tends to foster it. How so?
The Foundations of Social Research
 Reification: Taking the sense we make of things as
the way things are. Potential for tyranny of the
familiar
 Sedimentation: Layers of interpretation get placed
on each other like levels of mineral deposit in the
formation of rock. Building upon interpretations
already in place, we get further and further removed
from realities, our sedimented cultural meanings
serving as a barrier between us and them (also
referred to as imbrication)
The Foundations of Social Research
 The term ‘constructionism’ and particularly
‘social constructionism’ derives largely from
the work of Karl Mannheim and from Berger
and Luckmann
 Critical origins in Hegel and Marx
 Phenomenology Brentano, Husserl,
Heidegger (next chapter)
The Foundations of Social Research
 American Pragmatism
 William James, John Dewey, Charles Sanders
Pierce
 Optimistic and progressive in terms of
compromise
 Pragmatism accused of being too
accommodating and not critical enough.
The Foundations of Social Research
 George Herbert Mead
 Father of symbolic interactionism
 Pragmatism in sociological attire
 Every person is a social construction
 We come to be persons in and out of interaction with our
society.
 Emphasis on intersubjectivity, interaction, community
and communication, in and out of which we come to be
persons and to live as persons.
The Foundations of Social Research
 What does it mean for our research to be
constructivist and constructionist?
 What implications does being
constructionist/constructivist hold?
 How do we do this research? What methods
might we use or not use?

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