Social constructionism is typically positioned in opposition to essentialism, which sees phenomena in terms of inherent, transhistorical essences independent of human judgment.[2]
A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in
which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their
perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways social phenomena
are created, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by
humans. The social construction of reality is an ongoing, dynamic
process that is (and must be) reproduced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge
of it. Because social constructs as facets of reality and objects of
knowledge are not "given" by nature, they must be constantly maintained
and re-affirmed in order to persist. This process also introduces the
possibility of change: what "justice" is and what it means shifts from
one generation to the next.
Under the influence of this doctrine, and of Phenomenology, the Hungarian-born German sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) gave impetus to the growth of the sociology of knowledge with his Ideologie und Utopie (1929, translated and extended in 1936 as Ideology and Utopia),
although the term had been introduced five years earlier by the
co-founder of the movement, the German philosopher, phenomenologist and
social theorist Max Scheler (1874–1928), in Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens (1924, Attempts at a Sociology of Knowledge).
Mannheim feared that this interpretation could be seen to claim that
all knowledge and beliefs are the products of socio-political forces
since this form of relativism
is self-defeating (if it is true, then it too is merely a product of
socio-political forces and has no claim to truth and no persuasive
force). Mannheim believed that relativism
was a strange mixture of modern and ancient beliefs in that it
contained within itself a belief in an absolute truth which was true for
all times and places (the ancient view most often associated with Plato) and condemned other truth claims because they could not achieve this level of objectivity (an idea gleaned from Marx). Mannheim sought to escape this problem with the idea of 'relationism'. This is the idea that certain things are true only in certain times and places (a view influenced by pragmatism)
however, this does not make them less true. Mannheim felt that a
stratum of free-floating intellectuals (who he claimed were only loosely
anchored to the class structure of society) could most perfectly
realize this form of truth by creating a "dynamic synthesis" of the
ideologies of other groups.
The Dialogic Imagination (first published as a whole in 1975) is a compilation of four essays concerning language and the novel: "Epic and Novel"
(1941), "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse" (1940), "Forms of
Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" (1937–1938), and "Discourse in
the Novel" (1934–1935). It is through the essays contained within The Dialogic Imagination that Bakhtin introduces the concepts of heteroglossia, dialogism and chronotope, making a significant contribution to the realm of literary scholarship.[19]
Bakhtin explains the generation of meaning through the "primacy of
context over text" (heteroglossia), the hybrid nature of language (polyglossia) and the relation between utterances (intertextuality).[20][21] Heteroglossia is "the base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance."[21][22] To make an utterance means to "appropriate the words of others and populate them with one's own intention."[21][23]
Bakhtin's deep insights on dialogicality represent a substantive shift
from views on the nature of language and knowledge by major thinkers as Ferdinand de Saussure and Immanuel Kant.[24][25]
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
notes from 8.28
social constructionism - tension: dialogue - power
atmosim - notion of social organization - individual's autonomy as opposed to the social
Always the tension - enlightenment vs. more religious eras
Foucault, these ideas bleed - not "neat"
overdetermination?
- constructivism - (trivial ) dominant mode? - transmission mode more dominant!
epistemic functions - rhetoric - linguistic turn away from objectivism change in way we think of things
way of framing work - how people exist in a social network
postmodernism
Vygostky - approach to human development - mediated activity - tools (language as tool)
Disciplinary Boundaries: different ways of constructing knowledge - biology vs. humanities
how the individual operates in society
De Certeau
- tension between the individual and the social
- obscure background of social activity
-rational inquiry
- lab is artificial - when dealing with world - power tied to loss of competence when the expert encounters everyday language - lose power
Issues of mass communication - DO we matter as individuals? Do we have a place of "importance'?
(myth - individual matters - discourse)
His point -
Common man does matter - center our inquiry there
strategy vs. tactics
issues of consumption - becomes the object of study
consumers becomes a main theme
constructivism
facts are out there - what individuals do with that (they consume, but construct)
reductive? tools/ rules/ roles?
complicated notion of "making" - hidden - basing structure on consumerism
tactics - outside but inside - look at everyday practice to subvert - Spanish colonizers
Vygostsky only a tool when a tool in use
Choice - embrace and do it -- or develop arguments against that position
stasis theory - not discussing certain things at certain times
1. existence - did he steal my bike?
2. definition - I borrowed it
3. quality - extenuating circumstances - I took it to help someone
can start to see these patterns within scientific journals
p. 19 -
speech acts, reading, writing - places us in "strategy" and "tactic" world - ambivelent
discourse communities used to maintain power
force expert into world with common knowledge - break down power boundaries
Language is way to fight against power.
xix
trajectory
strategy - (activity) generates relations with others distinct from it
tactics - (action) insinuates into other place - poaching - place and time (waiting for opportunity)/ pervert system to get what you need - not institutionalized - course of action
At end - trajectory going off track in a homogeneous manner
atmosim - notion of social organization - individual's autonomy as opposed to the social
Always the tension - enlightenment vs. more religious eras
Foucault, these ideas bleed - not "neat"
overdetermination?
- constructivism - (trivial ) dominant mode? - transmission mode more dominant!
epistemic functions - rhetoric - linguistic turn away from objectivism change in way we think of things
way of framing work - how people exist in a social network
postmodernism
Vygostky - approach to human development - mediated activity - tools (language as tool)
Disciplinary Boundaries: different ways of constructing knowledge - biology vs. humanities
how the individual operates in society
De Certeau
- tension between the individual and the social
- obscure background of social activity
-rational inquiry
- lab is artificial - when dealing with world - power tied to loss of competence when the expert encounters everyday language - lose power
Issues of mass communication - DO we matter as individuals? Do we have a place of "importance'?
(myth - individual matters - discourse)
His point -
Common man does matter - center our inquiry there
strategy vs. tactics
issues of consumption - becomes the object of study
consumers becomes a main theme
constructivism
facts are out there - what individuals do with that (they consume, but construct)
reductive? tools/ rules/ roles?
complicated notion of "making" - hidden - basing structure on consumerism
tactics - outside but inside - look at everyday practice to subvert - Spanish colonizers
Vygostsky only a tool when a tool in use
Choice - embrace and do it -- or develop arguments against that position
stasis theory - not discussing certain things at certain times
1. existence - did he steal my bike?
2. definition - I borrowed it
3. quality - extenuating circumstances - I took it to help someone
can start to see these patterns within scientific journals
p. 19 -
speech acts, reading, writing - places us in "strategy" and "tactic" world - ambivelent
discourse communities used to maintain power
force expert into world with common knowledge - break down power boundaries
Language is way to fight against power.
xix
trajectory
strategy - (activity) generates relations with others distinct from it
tactics - (action) insinuates into other place - poaching - place and time (waiting for opportunity)/ pervert system to get what you need - not institutionalized - course of action
At end - trajectory going off track in a homogeneous manner
de Certeau
de Certeau:
"To date, Certeau's most well-known and influential work in the United States has been The Practice of Everyday Life. In it, he combined his disparate scholarly interests to develop a theory of the productive and consumptive activity inherent in everyday life. According to Certeau, everyday life is distinctive from other practices of daily existence because it is repetitive and unconscious. In this context, Certeau’s study of everyday life is neither the study of “popular culture”, nor is it necessarily the study of everyday resistances to regimes of power. Instead, Certeau attempts to outline the way individuals unconsciously navigate everything from city streets to literary texts"
"
Perhaps the most influential aspect of The Practice of Everyday Life has emerged from scholarly interest in Certeau’s distinction between the concepts of strategy and tactics. Certeau links "strategies" with institutions and structures of power who are the "producers", while individuals are "consumers" acting in environments defined by strategies by using "tactics". In the influential chapter "Walking in the City", Certeau asserts that "the city" is generated by the strategies of governments, corporations, and other institutional bodies who produce things like maps that describe the city as a unified whole. Certeau uses the vantage from the World Trade Center in New York to illustrate the idea of a synoptic, unified view. By contrast, the walker at street level moves in ways that are tactical and never fully determined by the plans of organizing bodies, taking shortcuts in spite of the strategic grid of the streets. This concretely illustrates Certeau's argument that everyday life works by a process of poaching on the territory of others, using the rules and products that already exist in culture in a way that is influenced, but never wholly determined, by those rules and products.
According to Andrew Blauvelt who relies on the work of Certeau in his essay on design and everyday life:[2]
"Certeau's investigations into the realm of routine practices, or the "arts of doing" such as walking, talking, reading, dwelling, and cooking, were guided by his belief that despite repressive aspects of modern society, there exists an element of creative resistance to these strictures enacted by ordinary people. In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau outlines an important critical distinction between strategies and tactics in this battle of repression and expression."
xii
- tension between the individual and the society (Reminds me of Halliday - meaning making potential as couched within a particular system)
systems that help to describe this tension
"poaching" concept (what does that term do?)
intricacies of the "production" - not as easy to define
xiii
Native American subversion - Spanish culture
Strength/ Power/ procedures of "consumption"
"Using" difference between makers and users - analyze manipulation
Speaking as representation - many uses
xiv
consumers, bases, effects and possibilities
Foucault:
looks at things that take strength away from institutions
Very small moves (microbial?)
"Silent technologies"
what works to "evade" discipline?
What ways are individuals "reappropriating"?
dispersed tactics-everyday life
xv -
anti discipline
meaning making
marginality of a majority
loss of language - meaning?
xvii
marginal group - becomes the new majority
though not homogenous
products as an obligatory language
Different people react differently (sounds like stereotyping the immigrant)
cultural impacts on the "superior force
tensions - balances
2. tactics of practice
3 concerns
xviii
consumers - to what extent do they create their own "path" = composed with tools from society "the trajectories trace out ruses of other interests and desires that are neither determined nor captured by the systems in which they develop"
tough to count these tragectories
xix
tactics and strategies - distinction
strategy - subject seperated from environment
tactic - manipulate, opportunity (time) - seizes opportunities
weak/ strong language
xx
doesn't that pretty much cover everything?
"tricks and imitations of plants and fishes" - ecological
"continuity and permanence in these tactics" - like the transcendent eyeball
rhetoric - how to sustain power
xxi
reading - as consumer
reading - passivity
silent production
how do you "appropriate" reading?
xxii
texts as production
"productivist technochracy"
different than oral
xxiii
tactics - epistemologies of science
xxiv
small pleasures?
Ch. 1
push out to frontier, back to everyday life
science - modernity
gap - science reveals "artifice" of language
expert and philosopher
expert - competence & social authority - rise of expert - power via "function of socio-economic power"-- issues of maintaining competence
Philosopher - skeptic
9
loss of rights of philosopher
return language to everyday use
10
Wittgenstein-science/ language
double erosion
histiography
"According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise when language is forced from its proper home into a metaphysical environment, where all the familiar and necessary landmarks and contextual clues are removed. He describes this metaphysical environment as like being on frictionless ice: where the conditions are apparently perfect for a philosophically and logically perfect language, all philosophical problems can be solved without the muddying effects of everyday contexts; but where, precisely because of the lack of friction, language can in fact do no work at all.[155] Wittgenstein argues that philosophers must leave the frictionless ice and return to the "rough ground" of ordinary language in use."
11
issues with science language?
12 difficulty of looking at common language
13
Wittgenstein 'exactingness but not its mastery"
27
folktales - structure within which one can be creative
"To date, Certeau's most well-known and influential work in the United States has been The Practice of Everyday Life. In it, he combined his disparate scholarly interests to develop a theory of the productive and consumptive activity inherent in everyday life. According to Certeau, everyday life is distinctive from other practices of daily existence because it is repetitive and unconscious. In this context, Certeau’s study of everyday life is neither the study of “popular culture”, nor is it necessarily the study of everyday resistances to regimes of power. Instead, Certeau attempts to outline the way individuals unconsciously navigate everything from city streets to literary texts"
"
Perhaps the most influential aspect of The Practice of Everyday Life has emerged from scholarly interest in Certeau’s distinction between the concepts of strategy and tactics. Certeau links "strategies" with institutions and structures of power who are the "producers", while individuals are "consumers" acting in environments defined by strategies by using "tactics". In the influential chapter "Walking in the City", Certeau asserts that "the city" is generated by the strategies of governments, corporations, and other institutional bodies who produce things like maps that describe the city as a unified whole. Certeau uses the vantage from the World Trade Center in New York to illustrate the idea of a synoptic, unified view. By contrast, the walker at street level moves in ways that are tactical and never fully determined by the plans of organizing bodies, taking shortcuts in spite of the strategic grid of the streets. This concretely illustrates Certeau's argument that everyday life works by a process of poaching on the territory of others, using the rules and products that already exist in culture in a way that is influenced, but never wholly determined, by those rules and products.
According to Andrew Blauvelt who relies on the work of Certeau in his essay on design and everyday life:[2]
"Certeau's investigations into the realm of routine practices, or the "arts of doing" such as walking, talking, reading, dwelling, and cooking, were guided by his belief that despite repressive aspects of modern society, there exists an element of creative resistance to these strictures enacted by ordinary people. In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau outlines an important critical distinction between strategies and tactics in this battle of repression and expression."
xii
- tension between the individual and the society (Reminds me of Halliday - meaning making potential as couched within a particular system)
systems that help to describe this tension
"poaching" concept (what does that term do?)
intricacies of the "production" - not as easy to define
xiii
Native American subversion - Spanish culture
Strength/ Power/ procedures of "consumption"
"Using" difference between makers and users - analyze manipulation
Speaking as representation - many uses
xiv
consumers, bases, effects and possibilities
Foucault:
looks at things that take strength away from institutions
Very small moves (microbial?)
"Silent technologies"
what works to "evade" discipline?
What ways are individuals "reappropriating"?
dispersed tactics-everyday life
xv -
anti discipline
meaning making
marginality of a majority
loss of language - meaning?
xvii
marginal group - becomes the new majority
though not homogenous
products as an obligatory language
Different people react differently (sounds like stereotyping the immigrant)
cultural impacts on the "superior force
tensions - balances
2. tactics of practice
3 concerns
xviii
consumers - to what extent do they create their own "path" = composed with tools from society "the trajectories trace out ruses of other interests and desires that are neither determined nor captured by the systems in which they develop"
tough to count these tragectories
xix
tactics and strategies - distinction
strategy - subject seperated from environment
tactic - manipulate, opportunity (time) - seizes opportunities
weak/ strong language
xx
doesn't that pretty much cover everything?
"tricks and imitations of plants and fishes" - ecological
"continuity and permanence in these tactics" - like the transcendent eyeball
rhetoric - how to sustain power
xxi
reading - as consumer
reading - passivity
silent production
how do you "appropriate" reading?
xxii
texts as production
"productivist technochracy"
different than oral
xxiii
tactics - epistemologies of science
xxiv
small pleasures?
Ch. 1
push out to frontier, back to everyday life
science - modernity
gap - science reveals "artifice" of language
expert and philosopher
expert - competence & social authority - rise of expert - power via "function of socio-economic power"-- issues of maintaining competence
Philosopher - skeptic
9
loss of rights of philosopher
return language to everyday use
10
Wittgenstein-science/ language
double erosion
histiography
"According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise when language is forced from its proper home into a metaphysical environment, where all the familiar and necessary landmarks and contextual clues are removed. He describes this metaphysical environment as like being on frictionless ice: where the conditions are apparently perfect for a philosophically and logically perfect language, all philosophical problems can be solved without the muddying effects of everyday contexts; but where, precisely because of the lack of friction, language can in fact do no work at all.[155] Wittgenstein argues that philosophers must leave the frictionless ice and return to the "rough ground" of ordinary language in use."
11
issues with science language?
12 difficulty of looking at common language
13
Wittgenstein 'exactingness but not its mastery"
27
folktales - structure within which one can be creative
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