an organization that uses social constructionist and related dialogues to explore ways of enriching relationships that support the generation of just and sustainable futures. In addition to several journal publications and book chapters, recent books include: Transforming Social Work: Social Constructionist Perspectives on Contemporary and Enduring Issues (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Narrating Social Work Through Autoethnography (Columbia University Press, 2014) and Social Construction and Social Work Practice: Interpretations and Innovations (Columbia University Press, 2011). Presently, Stanley lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his spouse, Frannie, and their precocious dog, Pekoe.Dan Wulffis a Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary and has served as a Family Therapist and Clinical Supervisor at the Calgary Family Therapy Centre for the past 12 years. He has recently incorporated the examination of societal discourses and the impacts of material life conditions into his work with families. Dan also serves on the Boards of Directors for the Taos Institute and the Global Partnership for Transformative Social Work as well as serving as a Co-Editor of The Qualitative Report. Dan teaches graduate-level social work practice and research courses and has taught post-structural family therapy at Blue Quills College and Grande Prairie Regional College, both in northern Alberta.Danielle P. Zandeeis Professor of Sustainable Organizational Development at Nyenrode Business Universiteit in the Netherlands. She obtained her PhD in Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. As a scholar-practitioner, Danielle facilitates change and conducts action research for social innovation in settings like Dutch healthcare organizations, municipalities and the fire service. She does so from a critical appreciative stance with a keen interest in the micro-dynamics of change. Danielle has published about appreciative inquiry as action research, organizational discourse and institutional change, and about how organization development can help handle the grand challenges of our time. Danielle is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and the Journal of Management Inquiry. She is an active member of the Academy of Management and Past Chair of its Organization Development & Change Division.
Editors’ Introduction
Dialogues on the social construction of knowledge, beliefs and values have played a catalytic role in scholarly life for over 50 years. They have represented a liberation from a narrow scientism, a sensitizing to the ideological dimensions of scholarly work, and an invitation to boundary-breaking exploration. However, the reach of constructionist ideas has extended far beyond the halls of academia, and indeed, stirred the interests of professionals and lay persons around the world. New dialogues have sprung to life within and across such professions as psychotherapy, education, organizational consulting, and medicine. Inspiration has been added by groups engaged in community building, civic governance and conflict reduction. Most important, these dialogues have yielded a massive harvest of innovative practices for enhancing human well-being. Such practices are the focus of the present Handbook.
Our purposes are several. At the outset, we aim to offer an array of conceptually related and innovative practices to practitioners, scholars and the public in diverse fields across the world. The hope is not only to provide information, but to offer resources that may enrich existing activities and initiatives in both professional and daily life. Further, readers will find an implicit invitation throughout this volume to further innovation. Social constructionist ideas themselves, emphasize that meaning making is a continuous process of co-creating. For readers this means that the practices described and explained in this Handbook are not so much ‘how-to-do-it’ recipes for action, as invitations to borrow, hybridize and reformulate as needed in one's unique circumstances. Finally, the Handbook furnishes an historical marking of a period in which a significant shift in the intellectual world has been accompanied by a related watershed in social innovation.
We have embarked on this project realizing that there has been no single venue at present for scholars and practitioners to find a concise, clear and comprehensive description of social construction and its contributions to various fields of endeavour. Our hope is that the offerings in this volume remedy this void and provide rich and innovative resources that will assist the reader in orienting his/her own practice within a constructionist stance. We focus here on six domains of practice: Research, Therapeutic Professions, Organizational Development, Education, Healthcare and Community Practice. And, we feel confident that, embedded within each of these areas, those working within other professional fields such as governance, social justice, etc., will find inspiration for their own practice.
Organization and Content
The Handbook has benefited from the insights of an International Advisory Board. The Advisory Board members are senior authors, editors and practitioners who have contributed to the field of social construction. We wish to thank them for their insights, suggestions, and recommendations to us, as editors, in the development of this volume. Their names are listed in a special section at the beginning of this volume.
The Handbook begins with an introductory chapter by Kenneth J. Gergen, a major contributor to the field. This chapter provides the theoretical background and context for the subsequent chapters. As mentioned, chapters are clustered into six domains of practice, each one comprising a section of the book. Within each section there is a broad offering of resources. Authors address specific issues, contexts and professional positions, thereby providing rich resources for the reader. No template was given for the structure of the chapters; authors were asked to design their chapters according to their own intellectual and aesthetic preferences. This allows for a great deal of variety in the book, with their chapters designed to benefit its topic. Each of the sections was overseen by a Section Editor who shepherded the chapters from author invitation through various drafts and revisions. Our Section Editors are the handmaidens of this Handbook, and responsible, to a great extent, for the high quality of the chapters they supervised. As editors of this volume, we wish to publicly thank them for their commitment and creativity in providing such a bounty of practices. Section Editors also contributed an introduction to their sections, which elaborates the major themes of each chapter. We offer a short summary of each main section below.
Section 2: Research Practices (Mary Gergen, Section Editor)
Social constructionist ideas have raised significant epistemological, methodological and ethical issues and have inspired new ways of understanding and conducting research. Chapters in this part cover the topics of: innovation in research, collaborative action research, communities of inquiry/practice, research as performance, research as everyday life, dialogic research, and research focused on human–non-human relations. The naming of specific research practices may be distinguished from the naming of other such practices, however the reader will find all methods described in this section share commonalities in the form of collaboration, multivocality and connection to those whom the research is intended to support.
Section 3: Practices in Therapeutic Professions (Dan Wulff and Sally St. George, Section Editors)
Human challenges faced by the different caring professions have identified innovative solutions through reframing concepts such as diagnosis, intervention, treatment, cure and professional expertise. In this section of the book, chapters cover collaborative therapy, narrative therapy, generative dialogues, social therapeutics, family therapy, social work, group work, and community therapy. This section includes the work of psychologists, therapists and social workers.
Section 4: Practices in Organizational Development (Diana Whitney, Section Editor)
In a fast-changing world, organizations need to quickly adapt to remain relevant. Flexibility, creativity and innovation play a fundamental role in this process. Constructionist perspectives address these challenges through their emphasis on promoting relationships and engagement. In this section of the book, chapters address appreciative inquiry, dialogic organizational development,
