Unravelling social constructionism

Edley, N ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0892-8917, 2001. Unravelling social constructionism. Theory and Psychology, 11 (3), pp. 433-441. ISSN 0959-3543

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Abstract

Social constructionist research is an area of rapidly expanding influence that has brought together theorists from a range of different disciplines. At the same time, however, it has fuelled the development of a new set of divisions. There would appear to be an increasing uneasiness about the implications of a thoroughgoing constructionism, with some regarding it as both theoretically parasitic and politically paralysing. In this paper I review these debates and clarify some of the issues involved. My main argument is that social constructionism is not best understood as a unitary paradigm and that one very important difference is between what Edwards (1997) calls its ontological and epistemic forms. I argue that an appreciation of this distinction not only exhausts many of the disputes that currently divide the constructionist community, but also takes away from the apparent radicalism of much of this work.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Theory and Psychology
Creators:	Edley, N.
Publisher:	Sage
Place of Publication:	London
Date:	2001
Volume:	11
Number:	3
ISSN:	0959-3543
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1177/0959354301113008 DOI
Rights:	Copyright 2001 by Sage Publications. All rights reserved. No portion of the contents may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Arts and Humanities
Record created by:	EPrints Services
Date Added:	09 Oct 2015 09:41
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2017 13:08
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/1242

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