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Construction in Contention
Toward Consequential Resolutions
Kenneth J. Gergen
Swarthmore College, kgergen1{at}swarthmore.edu
The present critiques are framed within a tradition that views argumentation as a pathway to truth, objectivity and purity of reason. The constructionist dialogues substantially refigure these criterial concepts, conceptualizing them as artifacts of historically and culturally situated communities. Troubles begin when any particular community begins to declare alterior realities null and void. The constructionist dialogues invite us to replace questions of truth in all worlds with communal deliberation on the future outcomes—both for psychology and global cultures—of varying forms of intelligibility. In this respect, constructionist discourse harbors the potential for enormous gains in creative collaboration, a condition I find far more promising than the bounded worlds of realism and rationalism favored by these critiques. A liberal constructionism would not abandon the traditions from which these critiques emerge, while the unbridled expansion of any of these traditions would eliminate all save its own.
Key Words: pragmatics • realism • self-contradiction • social construction
Theory & Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 3,
419-432 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354301113007
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