Abstract
Constructionist perspectives on social problems have remained a fairly encapsulated subfield of sociology, frequently seen as hostile to notions of objective reality. Interactions surrounding a 40-year retrospective panel discussion of its originating text, Spector and Kitsuse’s (1977) Constructing Social Problems (CSP), at the 2017 the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) meetings demonstrate that many of the same debates that CSP kicked off from its inception in 1977 continue to repeat themselves—unresolved—today. Arguments from 1993 about whether and how constructionist scholars should engage critical scholars are repeating unchanged in 2018, offering an example of Pollner’s reality disjunctures. Like the current debates in public politics, camps have drawn sides and declared the other illegitimate. There seems to be a tendency in the practice of sociology (perhaps academia more widely?) toward epistemological encampment (my term) – to view only one’s own epistemological leanings as valid. Rather than addressing theories of power or politics, this paper addresses the internal politics of sociological practices of epistemological encampment and argues there is no need to remain so encamped. Importantly, nothing in constructionism prevents its adherents from recognizing the effects of construction processes on material life. Further, recognizing CSP as a claims-making document extends a fully reflexive understanding of science in seeing the claims-making nature of all epistemological approaches. Instead of taking up camps, by engaging epistemology sociologists might focus on epistemic gain--what can be learned by viewing a social phenomenon via various epistemological lenses. If epistemologies are viewed as analytical tools rather than anointed ontological truths, a multi-epistemology approach could increase the relevance of constructionism to sociologists beyond the small camp of self-identified constructionists as well as deciphering constructionism’s uses to a larger public.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The book also has been called an ethnocentric document reflecting Western, democratic biases (Ibarra and Adorjan 2018).
Of course, there are several scholars using constructionism to discuss urgent, practical, and applied topics—dare I say, “problems”—such as domestic violence (Loseke 1992), hate crimes (Jenness and Broad 1997), terrorism (Jenkins 2003) definitions of insanity (Holstein 1993), mass media and the culture of fear (Altheide 2002) among many others, including most of the life’s work of Joel Best on a range of topics. Much of this work might fall under the constructionist rubric of “contextual constructionism.” Still this work has tended to be collected for publication by a small cabal of sociologists who mostly engage with each other and whose work is often overlooked by structural realists. My goal here is not to valorize or critique any particular school of thought, but rather to point out the very effect that sociologists have tended to develop distinct and bounded audiences for each school of thought.
I want to thank Darin Weinberg for introducing the concept of epistemic gain in a graduate seminar at University of Florida. The fortune opportunity to study with Darin has always been one of the happy accidents of my intellectual journey.
References
Adkins, L., & Lury, C. (2009). Introduction: What is the empirical? European Journal of Social Theory, 12, 5–20.
Adorjan, M. C. (2013). Igniting constructionist imaginations: Social Constructionism's absence and potential contribution to public sociology. American Sociologist, 44, 1–22.
Agger, B. (1993). The problem with social problems: From social construction to critical theory. In J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Reconsidering Social Constructionism: Debates in Social Problems Theory (pp. 281–300). New York: Aldine deGruyter.
Alanen, L. (2015). Editorial: Are we all constructionists now? Childhood, 22, 149–153.
Altheide, D. L. (2002). Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Barad, K. (2008). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. In M. Feminisms (Ed.), Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (pp. 120–154). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.
Best, J. (1993). “But Seriously Folks: The Limitations of the Strict Constructionist Intepretation of Social Problems.” Pp. 129-150 in Reconsidering Social Constructionism: Debates in Social Problems Theory, edited by James A. Holstein and Gale Miller. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Best, J. (2002). Constructing the sociology of social problems: Spector and Kitsuse twenty-five years later. Sociological Forum, 17, 699–706.
Best, Joel. 2003. “Staying alive: Prospects for constructionist theory.” Pp. 133–152 in Challenges & Choices: Constructionist Perspectives on Social Problems. New York: Aldine deGruyter.
Best, J. (2015). Beyond case studies: Expanding the constructionist framework for social problems research. Qualitative Sociology Review XI, 18–33.
Blumer, H. (1971). Social problems as collective behavior. Social Problems, 18, 298–306.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Calhoun, C. (1995). Critical social theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Calhoun, C., & VanAntwerpen, J. (2007). Orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and hierarchy: ‘Mainstream’ sociology and its challengers. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Sociology in America: a History (pp. 367–410). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Connell, R. (1987). Gender and power: Society, the person, and sexual politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Crotty, M. (2015). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. Los Angeles: Sage.
Dean, M. (1998). “Questions of Method.” Pp. 182-99 in The Politics of Constructionism, edited by Irving Velody and Robin Williams. London: Sage Publications.
Dello Buono, R. A. (2013). Time to change the subject: A new sociology of praxis. Critical Sociology, 39, 795–799.
Firestone, S. (1970). The dialectic of sex: The case for feminist revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Fuller, S. (1998). “The Reflexive Politics of Constructivism Revisited.” Pp. 83-99 in The Politics of Constructionism, edited by Irving Velody and Robin Williams. London: Sage Publications.
Gannon, S., & Davies, B. (2006). Postmodern, Poststructural, and critical theories. In S. N. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis (pp. 71–106). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Gergen, K. J. (2002). Beyond the empiricist/constructionist divide in social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 188–191.
Gergen, M., & Gergen, K. J. (2005). “Introduction.” pp. 2–7 in Social Construction: A Reader, edited by Mary Gergen and Kenneth J. Gergen. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Goldthorpe, J. H. (2000). On sociology: Numbers, narratives, and the integration of research and theory. NY: Oxford University Press.
Gordon, A. (1993). Twenty-two theses on social constructionism: A feminist response to Ibarra and Kitsuse’s ‘Proposal for the study of social problems’. In J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Reconsidering social constructionism: debates in social problems theory (pp. 301–326). Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter.
Gubrium, J. F. (1993). For a cautious naturalism. In J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Reconsidering social constructionism: debates in social problems theory (pp. 89–102). Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter.
Gubrium, J. F., & Holstein, J. A. (2008). The constructionist mosaic. In J. A. Holstein & J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Handbook of constructionist research (pp. 3–12). New York: Guilford Press.
Hacking. (1998). On being more literal about constructionism. In I. Velody & R. Williams (Eds.), The politics of constructionism (pp. 49–68). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Hammersley, M. (2008). Questioning qualitative inquiry: Critical essays. Los Angeles: Sage.
Harding, S. (2004). Rethinking standpoint epistemology: What is ‘Strong Objectivity’? In S. Harding (Ed.), The feminist standpoint theory reader (pp. 127–140). New York: Routledge.
Hart, R., & McKinnon, A. (2010). Sociological epistemology: Durkheim’s paradox and Dorothy E. Smith’s actuality. Sociology, 44, 1038–1054.
Hartcock, N. C. M. (2004). The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In S. Harding (Ed.), The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader (pp. 35–54). New York: Routledge.
Hazelrigg, L. (1985). Were it not for words. Social Problems, 32, 234–237.
Hazelrigg, L. E. (1993). Constructionism and practices of objectivity. In J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Reconsidering social constructionism: debates in social problems theory (pp. 485–500). Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter.
Hewitt, J. P. (2001). Review essay: The social construction of social construction. Qualitative Sociology, 24, 417–423.
Holstein, J. A. (1993). Court-ordered insanity: Interpretive practice and involuntary commitment. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Holstein, J. A., & Miller, G. (1993). Reconsidering social constructionism: debates in social problems theory. New York: Aldine deGruyter.
Holstein, J. A., & Miller, G. (Eds.). (2003a). Challenges and choices: constructionist perspectives on social problems. New York: Aldine deGruyter.
Holstein, J. A., & Miller, G. (2003b). A fork in the road: Challenges and choices in social constructionism. In J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Challenges & choices: constructionist perspectives on social problems (pp. 1–16). New York: Aldine deGruyter.
Ibarra, P. R. (2008). Strict and contextual constructionism in the sociology of deviance and social problems. In J. A. Holstein & J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Handbook of constructionist research (pp. 355–369). New York: Guilford Press.
Ibarra, P. R., & Adorjan, M. (2018). Social constructionism. In A. Javier Treviño (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of social problems (Vol. 1, pp. 279–300). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ibarra, P., & Kitsuse, J. (1993). Vernacular constituents of moral discourse: an interactionist proposal for the study of social problems. In J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Reconsidering social constructionism: debates in social problems theory (pp. 25–28). Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter.
Jenkins, P. (2003). Images of terror: What we can and Can't know about terrorism. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.
Jenness, V., & Broad, K. (1997). Hate crimes: New social movements and the politics of violence. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Lock, A., & Strong, T. (2010). Social constructionism: Sources and stirrings in theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Loseke, D. R. (1992). The battered woman and shelters: the social construction of wife abuse. Albany: The State University of New York, Albany Press.
Loseke, D. R. (2003). Thinking about social problems: An introduction to constructionist perspectives (2nd ed.). Hawthorne: Aldine DeGruyter.
Loseke, D. R. (2017). Methodological thinking: Basic principles of social research design (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage.
Lynch, M. (1998). Towards a constructivist genealogy of social constructivism. pp. 13–32 in The politics of constructionism,” edited by Irving Velody and Robin Williams. London: Sage Publications.
Mauss, A. L., & Jenness, V. (2000). Social Problems. In E. F. Borgatta & R. J. V. Montgomery (Eds.), Encyclopedia of sociology (pp. 2759–2766). New York: MacMillan Reference USA.
Messerschmidt, J. W., Martin, P. Y., Messner, M. A., & Connell, R. (Eds.). (2018). Gender reckonings: New social theory and research. New York: NYU Press.
Miller, G., & Holstein, J. A. (1993a). Constructionist Controversies: Issues in social problems theory. New York: Aldine deGruyter.
Miller, G., & Holstein, J. A. (1993b). Reconsidering social constructionism. In J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Reconsidering social constructionism: debates in social problems theory (pp. 5–24). Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter.
Moses, J. W., & Knutsen, T. L. (2012). Ways of knowing: competing methodologies in social and political research, 2nd edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nichols, L. T. (2015). Contextual understading in constructionism: a holistic, dialogical model. Qualitative Sociology Review, XI, 76–92.
Pfohl, S. (1985). Toward a sociological deconstruction of social problems. Social Problems, 32, 228–232.
Pollner, M. (1987). Mundane reason: Reality in everyday and sociological discourse. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Pollner, M. (1991). Left of ethnomethodology: The rise and decline of radical reflexivity. American Sociological Review, 56(3), 370–380.
Rafter, N. H. (1992). Some consequences of strict constructionism. Social Problems, 39, 38–39.
Reed, I., & Alexander, J. (2009). Social science as Reading and performance: A cultural-sociological understanding of epistemology. European Journal of Social Theory, 12, 21–41.
Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. Signs, 5(4), 631–660.
Rubin, G. (1975). The traffic in women: Notes on the political economy of sex. In Pp. 157–210 in Toward an Anthropology of Women. New York: Monthly Review.
Rubin, G. S. (1984). Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In Pp. in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, edited by Carol S. Vance. Boston: Routledge & K. Paul.
Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2007). The coming crisis of empirical sociology. Sociology, 41, 885–899.
Sayer, A. (1997). Essentialism, social constructionism, and beyond. The Sociological Review, 45, 453–487.
Schneider, J. (1985a). Defining the definitional perspective on social problems. Social Problems, 32, 232–234.
Schneider, J. (1985b). Social problems theory: The constructionist view. Annual Review of Sociology, 11, 209–229 Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc.
Schneider, Joseph. 2018. The challenges of conceptualizing social problems. Pp. 3–21 in Cambridge handbook of social problems, Volume 1, edited by A. Javier Treviño. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Shakespeare, T. (1998). Social constructionism as a political strategy. In I. Velody & R. Williams (Eds.), The politics of constructionism (pp. 168–181). Los Angeles: Sage.
Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: a feminist sociology. Boston: Northeaster University Press.
Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional Ethnography. Lanham: AltaMira.
Spector, M. (2018). Constructing Social Problems forty years later. The American Sociologist. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-018-9391-3.
Spector, M., & Kitsuse, J. I. (1977/1987). Constructing Social Problems. Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter.
Steinmetz, G. (1998). Critical realism and historical sociology: A review article. Comparative Studies in Sociology and History, 40, 170–186.
Steinmetz, G. (2005). Introduction: Positivism and its others in the social sciences. In G. Steinmetz (Ed.), The politics of method in the human sciences: positivism and its epistemological others (pp. 1–58). Durham: Duke University.
Stones, R. (2017). Sociology’s unspoken weakness: Bringing epistemology Back in. Journal of Sociology, 53, 730–752.
Thibodeaux, J. (2014). Three versions of constructionism and their reliance on social conditions. Sociology, 48, 829–837.
Troyer, R. J. (1992). Some consequences of contextual constructionism. Social Problems, 39, 35–37.
Turner, S. (2009). The future of social theory. In B. S. Turner (Ed.), The new blackwell companion to social theory (pp. 551–566). Malden: John Wiley & Sons.
Velody, I., & Williams, R. (1998). Introduction. In I. Velody & R. Williams (Eds.), The politics of constructionism (pp. 1–12). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Wang, B. (2016). The social and historical construction of social constructionism: Prof. KJ Gergen in Dialogue. Culture & Psychology, 22, 565–573.
Weinberg, D. (2008). The philosophical foundations of constructionist research. In J. A. Holstein & J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Handbook of constructionist research (pp. 13–40). New York: Guilford Press.
Weinberg, D. (2014). Contemporary social constructionism: Key themes. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing Gender. Gender & Society, 1(2), 125–151.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Woolgar, S., & Pawluch, D. (1985). Ontological gerrymandering: The anatomy of social problems explanations. Social Problems, 32, 214–227.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Crawley, S.L. Reality Disjunctures and Epistemological Encampment: Addressing Relevance in Constructionist Perspectives on Social Problems. Am Soc 50, 255–270 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-018-9398-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-018-9398-9