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]
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