Unfolding Social Constructionism

Throughout the 20th century, psychology generally and social psychology in particular has been dominated by individualism. It has focused on the subject as ultimately biological to the neglect of the subject as a social being. In the late 1960's, this emphasis led to the eruption of a "crisis" in social psychology, a crisis which has yet to be resolved.The most significant response to this crisis has been the development of social constructionism. This approach emphasizes the historicity, context-dependence, and socio-linguistically constituted character of all matters bearing on human activity. Many versions extend this emphasis to the conceptual and methodological practices of psychologists and to the epistemological assumptions which ground these practices, to the "meta-issues" of the discipline. It is these versions of social constructionism which this book addresses, that is, social constructionism as an epistemology (as an alternative to positivism and realism) as well as a theory of the social character of human activity.