Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction

by Kenneth J. Gergen

Overview

Recent attempts to challenge the primacy of reason—and its realization in foundationalist accounts of knowledge and cognitive formulations of human action—have focused on processes of discourse. Drawing from social and literary accounts of discourse, Kenneth Gergen considers these challenges to empiricism under the banner of “social construction.” His aim is to outline the major elements of a social constructionist perspective, to illustrate its potential, and to initiate debate on the future of constructionist pursuits in the human sciences generally and psychology in particular.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674749313
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/30/1997
Series:	Conversations in Social Construction Se
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Kenneth J. Gergen is Senior Research Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College. He is the author of The Saturated Self and Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge.

Table of Contents

Preface

From Individual Knowledge to Communal Construction

The Impasse of Individual Knowledge

Crisis in Representation and the Emergence of Social Construction

Constructionism in Question

Social Construction and Moral Orders

Criticism and Consequence

Social Psychology and the Wrong Revolution

The Cultural Consequences of Deficit Discourse

Objectivity as Rhetorical Achievement

From Self to Relationship

Self-Narration in Social Life

Emotion as Relationship

Transcending Narrative in the Therapeutic Context

The Communal Origins of Meaning

Deceit: From Conscience to Community

Notes

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

Jaan Valsiner

A true landmark in the development of constructionist perspectives, Gergen's book is a powerful tour de force through the existing mindscape of psychology and the other human sciences. It is by far the best exposure of readers to the intellectual world of constructionism in the literature so far.
— Jaan Valsiner, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Editorial Reviews

A true landmark in the development of constructionist perspectives, Gergen’s book is a powerful tour de force through the existing mindscape of psychology and the other human sciences. It is by far the best exposure of readers to the intellectual world of constructionism in the literature so far.

Jaan Valsiner

Critics and supporters alike of social constructionism will find Gergen’s volume an important contribution. It provides a cogent and powerfully rendered statement of the assumptions and claimed potentials of social constructionism...Realities and Relationships will likely emerge as a classic that will be cited widely for some time to come.

Contemporary Psychology - Leslie A. Baxter

Critics and supporters alike of social constructionism will find Gergen's volume an important contribution. It provides a cogent and powerfully rendered statement of the assumptions and claimed potentials of social constructionism...Realities and Relationships will likely emerge as a classic that will be cited widely for some time to come.
— Leslie A. Baxter

Contemporary Psychology

Western culture has traditionally celebrated the individual mind as the locus of reason and, thus, of knowledge. According to Gergen (psychology, Swarthmore College), meaning derives less from the single mind than from interdependent relationships. Revisiting standard areas of inquiry in psychology, he examines what forms of theory, research, and practice result when the human sciences are guided by a constructionist perspective. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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