discipline torn between rival camps aligning themselves epistemologically either to the natural sciences or the humanities’ (ibid.: 4). These camps are located in different philosophies of science. Those leaning towards humanities favour constructivism and logical induction, while those looking to the natural sciences align with positivism and the deductive method. Academic journals tend to be seen as focusing on subjects that lean towards quantitative or qualitative work, and this unintentionally reinforces already entrenched positions. However, Schwemmer and Wieczorek’s study also found evidence of this divide in their sample of the more generalist sociology journals between 1995 and 2017. Hence, in spite of more recent trends in mixing research methods from across the divide, this paper suggests that longstanding issues concerned with the scientific status of the discipline remain embedded within the structures of sociological discourse.
References and Further Reading
Benton, T., and Craib, I. (2010) Philosophy of Social Science: The Philosophical Foundations of Social Thought (2nd edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Chalmers, A. F. (1999) What is this Thing Called Science? (3rd edn, Maidenhead: Open University Press).
Feyerabend, P. (1975) Against Method (London: New Left Books).
Fuller, S. (1998) Science (Buckingham: Open University Press).
Kuhn, T. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Schwemmer, C., and Wieczorek, O. (2020) ‘The Methodological Divide of Sociology: Evidence from Two Decades of Journal Publications’, Sociology, 54(1): 3–21.
Social Constructionism
Working Definition
An approach to sociology which is agnostic towards the reality of social phenomena, preferring to investigate the way that these are produced within social relationships.
Origins of the Concept
The origins of social constructionism can be traced back to the ‘social problems’ perspective of the early 1970s, which saw social problems as claims on people’s attention and the state’s resources. In a competitive claims environment where there are always too many claims for the available resources, this perspective analysed how some claims are able to rise to prominence while others are neglected. However, constructionism today also draws on ideas from the sociology of scientific knowledge (known as SSK), which studies the social processes underlying knowledge production. SSK sees science as itself a form of social activity which must therefore be amenable to sociological investigation. Scientific theories are products of their society, and SSK has often questioned their apparently ‘universal’ validity.
The coming together of these two strands has led to a general and widespread social constructionism in sociology. This general perspective has been used to analyse a variety of phenomena, from the social construction of Europe to serial homicide, dementia, sexuality and even the ocean. The common theme in all of these studies is an attempt to raise questions about the ‘natural’ or ‘objective’ status of their objects of inquiry. Social constructionist arguments have also been useful for social movements, such as feminism and disabled people’s movements, which challenge the seemingly ‘natural’ status quo that disadvantages women and disabled people respectively.
Meaning and Interpretation
Social constructionism is very widely adopted in sociology and involves piecing together all the elements which have brought about a specific social phenomenon, such as gender or crime. Constructionism challenges conventional wisdom and common-sense ideas in so far as these accept the existence of, say, gender and crime as natural or normal. For social constructionists, gender and crime are created through historical social processes and social interactions. Of course, this means that gender and crime are not fixed and can be shown to have changed, in both meaning and form, over time and across societies. In this way, social constructionism is rooted in the idea that society and its institutions are always in process, and the task of sociology is to investigate this constant process.
Not all constructionist approaches are the same, and a basic distinction has been made between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms, a distinction lifted from SSK. However, recently this distinction has been reframed as a contrast between ‘strict’ and ‘contextual’ constructionism, which appears to be more neutral. Strict constructionists argue that neither nature nor society presents itself in unmediated form. All phenomena are accessible only through human concepts and theories, and these are open to change – sometimes quite radical change. Strict constructionists are a small minority of constructionists. The vast majority of constructionist studies are happy to acknowledge that there is a reality that is external to sociologists’ discourse, but what is at issue is how we gain access to it. Contextual constructionists have much to say about social and environmental problems and the claims that social groups make about them, pointing out that what cannot be accepted at face value is the existing hierarchy of social problems. Some problems seem very urgent and in need of attention, but others appear relatively trivial and can be safely ignored. Contextual constructionists take the present ordering of social problems as the starting point. Does this ordering actually reflect the seriousness of society’s problems? Sociology can perform a useful role in investigating the arguments made by ‘claims-makers’ and ‘claimsdeniers’, and sociologists can thereby ensure that all the information needed for a rational evaluation can be put into the public domain.
A good example of how constructionists work is Hannigan’s (2014) study of the environmental problem of biodiversity loss, which rose rapidly to prominence in the 1980s. Biodiversity loss had been known about since at least 1911, evidenced by numerous legislative attempts to protect threatened birds and animals. But no international institutions existed to give such concerns a political focus. What changed in the 1980s was the involvement of multinational business looking to patent genetic resources – such as species within rainforests – the creation of a new ‘crisis’ discipline of conservation biology, the establishment of a United Nations infrastructure that gave the necessary political focus, and a raft of legislation to preserve species. In short, a much more effective range of ‘claims-makers’ had an interest in making this demand, and their combination brought the subject to the top of the environmental problems agenda. Of course, there were also some claims-deniers, but on this occasion the claims-makers proved too strong and well organized. Only a constructionist account which pays attention to the historical construction of this claim is able to show clearly how and why it was successful.
Critical Points
Interesting though many constructionist accounts may be, critics object to their ‘agnosticism’. Hannigan’s study of biodiversity, for instance, is missing something important. Is biodiversity loss an increasingly serious social and environmental problem? This question is not addressed and cannot be addressed by social constructionism. To do this we need the expert knowledge of biologists, natural historians and environmental scientists. Very few sociologists have the expert knowledge required to engage in detailed debates about biodiversity or many other problems. For some, such as critical realists, without including this expertise in the analysis, sociology gets reduced to a series of discourse studies looking at statements, documents and texts without ever getting to the bottom of the real issue at hand.
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