BOUNDED ENTITIES, CONSTRUCTIVIST REVISIONS, AND RADICAL RE-CONSTRUCTIONS

Written by Dian Marie HOSKING on 15 December 2006. Posted in Special issue: Making Sense Of Social Reality, Guest Editor: Petru L. CURŞEU, Volume IX, Nr. 4

Abstract:

This article seeks clearly to distinguish constructivism and constructionism and to give the reader a more extended and detailed knowledge of the latter. It does so by outlining three different discourses: entitative, constructivism and critical relational constructionism (CRC). In the first, relations are storied as 'going on' between independently existing entities in Subject-Object (S-O) relation. The second involves a shift from naÃ¯ve to (some sort of) critical realism and so blurs some S-O constructions. The third discourse (CRC) is the least well known. It is the only one that reflexively treats its own themes and assumptions and those of 'science' as constructions that could be otherwise - hence the term "critical". CRC is presented as a different language game. Instead of centring relatively stable entities, minds and 'real' reality, CRC centres ongoing relational processes as they construct and re-construct multiple Self - Other relations - as relational realities.

Keywords: critical relational constructionism, constructivism