Reconstructing social constructionism
November 22nd, 2009
"Three identities" by by jacobrendell via Flickr
This post looks at how social constructionist theory. Primarily it pulls from the Open University text, but I’ve also been reading up on some insider social constructionist criticism. I’ll admit at the outset that I’m biased in favor of the theory and think, as far as the main theories of identity formation go, it explains things the best. Primarily the section looked at psychosocial and social identity theories as well, but I found myself most taken with constuctionist arguments. This post also delves some into identity formation specifically among people with disabilities, which is what the Open University course material uses to provide examples and case studies. The post may be a bit jumbled, and is basically a cobbling together of what I have in my notebook, something I plan to do in this blog from time to time.
While I do champion social constructionist theory here, it’s not without reservations. I have a problem with how untethered social constructionism is from the material world, and as a person leaning heavily toward evolutionary explanations for psychological phenomenon (though not entirely) I think that social constructionist theory contains rather gaping holes in need of filling. I’ve brought along on this journey a paper written by some social constructionist revisionists looking to fill that gap. Read the rest of this entry »