EDITORIAL

Kenneth J. Gergen and Social Constructionism

Girishwar Misra & Anand Prakash

Published online: 14 April 2012# National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2012

Aaano bhadrah kratavo yantu vishvatah.Let noble thoughts come from all directions.

-A Vedic saying

The intellect acquires critical acumen by familiarity withdifferent traditions. How much does one really under-stand by merely following one’s own reasoning only?

-Bhartr�hari (Vākyapadīya 2.484)

Constructionism opens the door to multiple ways ofseeing the world; it is an invitation to creativity, and itasks the researcher to think carefully about what isbeing contributed to the culture and the world.

-Kenneth J. Gergen (Interview in this issue)

This special issue ofPsychological Studies (PS) is in honourof Kenneth J. Gergen’s seminal work on social construction.During the last four decades he has been leading debatesthrough which he has reoriented the theory and practice ofpsychology. Indeed Ken has inspired a large body of researchand application which has crossed disciplinary and nationalboundaries. This issue of PS offers a state-of-the art collectionof articles reflecting on Ken’s work and the growth of socialconstructionism in different domains. The idea to bring out thisspecial issue germinated in December 2009 when Ken and hiswife Mary visited Delhi University and shared constructionistideas with a cross section of the community of present andfuture Indian psychologists. The day he lectured here, we also

celebrated his 75th birthday. We also decided then to organizethis issue of the journal to present an account of themultifacetedgrowth of social constructionism over the years. We invited arange of scholars who have ventured to use social construction-ism to give first hand accounts. Our request was enthusiasticallyresponded to and the result is this issue of PsychologicalStudies. The issue begins with an interview of Ken and con-cludes with Mary’s personal reflections about the making ofKen. Other contributions reflect and relate to Ken and con-structionism. We hope the contributions to this issue will invitethe readers to engage dialogically with social constructionismand the challenges faced in our contemporary world.

As a social psychologist trained at the Universities of Yaleand Duke, Ken completed his doctoral work with Edward E.Jones in 1962 and started his professional life at Harvard asAssistant Professor in the Department of Social Relations. In1967 he came to Swarthmore College in Philadelphia wherehe is currently a Senior Research Professor. He has been onvisiting assignments to the Universities of Heidelberg, Sor-bonne, Rome, and Kyoto. He has widely travelled in differentparts of the world and has collaborated with scholars frompsychology and many allied fields of human inquiry. In 1993,he and his colleagues launched the Taos Institute as a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing constructionist ideastogether with societal practices. The Institute now offers con-ferences, workshops, a Ph.D. program, certificates, publica-tions, and on-line resources. Ken is serving as its President. Heis also an adjunct professor at Tilburg University.

As a warm, considerate, and engaging person, Ken isvery generous with his ideas. In his academic journey hehas been coherent with his social construction theory andmaintained his course while at the same time continuallyrevising, expanding and evolving his contributions. Duringhis long career, Ken has tirelessly concentrated on reflection

G. Misra (*) :A. PrakashDepartment of Psychology, Arts Faculty Extension Building,University of Delhi,Delhi 110007, Indiae-mail: misragirishwar@gmail.com

A. Prakashe-mail: anandp0001@yahoo.com

Psychol Stud (April–June 2012) 57(2):121–125DOI 10.1007/s12646-012-0151-0

and action using interpretation and construction as key tools.He has now become an institution in himself.

Going beyond the insular orientation of psychology, Kenhas often been crossing the disciplinary boundaries to createbridges and searching for shared spaces to foster dialogue.Building on developments in contemporary discourses in thephilosophy of science, cultural studies, and interpretive inqui-ry, Ken has widened the net of psychological exploration andsituated it in a culturally informed dynamic intellectual space.He has critically addressed many concepts and assumptionsthat are taken for granted by those who are educated in thepositivist mould of knowledge creation, which has beeninforming the mainstream psychological investigations.

The constructionist turn has been controversial. It has metwith resistance and contested by those who, like physicalscientists, subscribe to an essentialist view of reality and claimlegitimacy for the scientifically produced and represented‘objective’ knowledge. Positioned in such a scenario, Kenhas indefatigably tried to demystify the conceptual, theoreti-cal, and methodological implications of such knowledgeclaims by critiquing and offering empowering reconstructions(see Gergen 1982, 1985, 1994, 2001, 2009). In so doing, hehas demonstrated an unparalleled intellectual courage and pa-tient striving. Ken’s early work has been dominated by a criticalstance but in later works he has moved toward developing analternative vision for social life characterized by joint action,performance, relational nature of constructed realities, andcultural inclusiveness.

A moment’s reflection on the contemporary social realitywould bring home the point that the perspective of construction-ism has become more pertinent today than ever before, espe-cially on the following two counts. First, it respects the pluralityand diversity in our social world. Instead of a singular orhegemonic view of reality, constructionism entertains multiplerealities which emerge and therefore offers innovative ways ofappreciating and shaping reality (Gergen et al. 1996). Recog-nizing ‘others’ on their terms builds trust and encourages dia-logue. Themove from the notion of objective reality to reality asconstruction opens the scope of interchange, collaboration, andsharing. Explicating and elaborating the significance and impli-cations of these ideas for a better world has been a major themein Ken’s work. Using this as a building block, Ken has venturedto envision collaborative practices in the domains such ashealth, organization, human development, and education.

Second, social constructionism reconfigures human dis-courses in a non-foundationist and non reductionist ways. Inhis groundbreaking paper titled Social Psychology as His-tory published in 1973, Ken drew attention to the histori-cally situated nature of social psychological inquiry and theresulting theory and knowledge. He observed:

‘Perhaps the primary guarantee that social psychologywill never disappear via reduction to physiology is that

physiology cannot account for the variations in thehuman behavior over time… To be sure, varyingresponses to the environment rely on variations inphysiological function. However, physiology can neverspecify the nature of the stimulus inputs or the responsecontext to which the individual is exposed. It can neveraccount for the continuously shifting patterns of what isconsidered the good or desirable in society, and thus arange of primarymotivational sources for the individual.However, while social psychology is thus insulatedfrom physiological reductionism, its theories are notinsulated from historical change’. (1973, Pp. 315–316).

It may be noted that in recent years there is revival ofinterest among psychologists in accounting everything interms of neuro-physiological processes and mechanisms.Proposals of brain-based understanding have been on in-crease. There is strong assertion that almost all psycholog-ical processes can be ultimately traced to brain processes.This is in tune with the idea of psychology as naturalscience. As such it required grounding of mental processesin neuro-physiology. In 2010 Ken addressed the problemsinvolved in such reifications. In a paper titled The Accultur-ated Brain Ken has raised some important issues for thediscipline as well as society. Examining the socio-culturalimplications of brain based explanations he observed that braindeterminism implies a kind of neo-fatalism and makes impor-tant concepts empty of values. In contrast, Ken noted that thebrain may be thought

‘as an instrument for achieving culturally constructedends. All attempts to infer mental states from behavioralobservation are suspended, then, on a network of conjec-tural assumptions…Brain scan data do not solve theproblem of inference, but simply remove it from one siteof speculation to another. Brain scans do not speak forthemselves. To read them as evidence of depression,deceit, trust, empathy, political preferences, and so on,is essentially to participate in a tradition of cultural inter-pretation. In this sense, making connections betweenmind and brain is a form of cultural projection. That is,one must participate in a cultural tradition in which theexistence of mental states is presumed in order to readbrain scans in their terms’ (Gergen, 2010, p. 7).

To Ken ‘brain may be a major facilitator of our actions, itis not their progenitor’ (Gergen, 2010, p.16). This viewacknowledges the value of indigenous psychologies rootedin diverse cultures. The Western psychology’s cultural im-perialism keeps other constructions on the margin. He asks:‘Why there has not been a lively interest in exploring the neuralbasis of karma, swabhava, swadharma, and sthita pragya, allsignificant to human functioning in Hindu psychology’?

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(Gergen 2010, P. 8). In seeing human activities as culturallybound, we can envision alternative futures, especially with theunderstanding of phenomenon like neural plasticity.

A concerted investment in relational processes has becomea key concern of Ken’s work. He notes that in today’s era ofrapidly changing ‘glocal’ boundaries, the idea of an individ-ual appears dislocated and inept. He also observes that thecelebration of the individual mind as a locus of capacity forautonomous thought and judgment is a legacy of WesternEnlightenment. Treating the individual mind as the primaryreality creates a gulf between the self and other. In thisscheme we don’t know the other mind so one need not trustthe other. As a consequence, relationships are becomingartificial and of secondary importance and we are movingtoward a culture of loneliness, self-centeredness, and antago-nism, with reduced degree of community participation.

The process of knowledge generation is primarily relation-al in nature. As Ken has nicely put, “reasoning well” is not tostep outside of relationships for a “private moment”, but toparticipate fully within them. He firmly believes that com-munally shared understanding and values are constitutive ofscience. Also, knowledge deeply involves the work of inter-pretation. Thus knowledge may not be more or less true butits functionality in terms of culturally accepted beliefsand values may be low or high. Thus knowledge originatesfrom communities and not from the individual minds. In thisway social construction becomes a framework within whichthe production and use of knowledge is embedded.

Contributions to The Present Issue of PS

This special issue of Psychological Studies begins with arecent interview of Ken by Liping Yang, a scholar fromNanjing Normal University, China. Ken has provided acandid account of his current engagements and respondedto a range of questions related to theory and application ofconstructionism. He declares that it is the dialogue which isthe ultimate aim of his endeavours. To him, social construc-tionism works as a meta-theory of knowledge and alsofurnishes a theory that accounts for the happenings in life.To him knowledge is a communal construction. He says:

When we talk about the world, it is not a mirror of theworld. It is a way of using words for some purpose,one interpretation among a possible infinity. So thereis no truly true account, no truth with the capital “T”,no objectivity that is opposed to a subjective account.

Ken’s interview is followed by a thought provokingcontribution by Shotter. Reflecting on Relational Being(Gergen 2009), he notes that the basic way of being in theworld is to be constantly in motion. We live continuously inthe midst of change. However the linguistic habit leads us

into thinking that what is new for us must, simply, be madefrom what is already in existence. Shotter notes that thenotion of relational embedding in our surroundings is en-tirely new in Ken’s recent work. The capacities for collab-orative inquiry help to better the conditions of our own livesand our living of them together. Our ontology lies ‘within aprocess of relational flow, in which there is both, continuousmovement toward constraint, and an openness to the evolu-tion of meaning’ (Gergen, 2009, p.46). Human actions haveno meaning in and of themselves; only within an ongoingconfluence of joint- or co-action can they begin to have apractical meaning. Shotter posits that ‘if our living activity istruly determined by that which has not yet been achieved,but which is in fact anticipated (as at least possible) in theflow of already occurring events, then we must contemplatethe possibility of a world that is still coming into being—aworld within which the many different flowing strands ofdifferent activity intertwine, become entangled with eachother, and then sometimes separate; a turbulent, not-yet-settled, dialogically-structured world—a world that is stillin the making. As a result, the whole field of psychologicalinquiry must take on a new cast—especially if it is to take onthe relational responsibility for the practical creation of worldswhich sustain, rather than merely exploit, the relational flowwithin which the confluences responsible for their emergenceoccur. We must conduct our inquiries from within the midst ofturbulent, flowing processes.’

In the next contribution Anderson shares her reflections onhow Gergen has offered and substantiated a shift from theindividual to the social, including the shift of the focus onknowledge from an individual cognitive construction to acommunal one, from language as representational to languageas a dynamic social process, and from the notion of a person asa bounded self to the notion of a person as a ‘multi-being’.Against this backdrop she discusses therapy as relationalrecovery. She argues that the constructionist view challengesthe hierarchy and dualism in therapeutic systems. The empha-sis is on using the dynamic process of dialogue with eachother, others and one’s self. Thus the relational and dialogicconversational endeavour becomes central. Dialogue invitesand requires of its participants a sense of mutuality. Thesecharacteristics distinguish dialogue as a collaborative andgenerative joint activity.

Situating constructionism in the context of communica-tion discipline, McNamee observes that Ken’s work inspiresand influences practitioners working in many areas. It offersresources such as centering relational processes which, inturn, generate the expansion of collaborative, participatorypractices that embrace alternative worldviews through areflexive stance. Ken has challenged himself and others tostay on the edge because it is on the edge that new relationalpossibilities can be created. Ken’s position is that “the limitsof my relations are the limits of my resources”. This implies

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the salience of situated joint action. It is argued that meaningis constructed with others and realized in the collaborativeperformances of people in relation.

In the next paper Yu and Sun have focused on organizationalprocesses. They note the limitations of reductionist approachwhich essentializes the ‘social’ through the usage of language,which itself is a product of culture. The social constructionistwork has brought into focus the fact that social psychologicaltheories tend to reflect historical and cultural circumstances,rather than capturing laws of nature. The implications of thisview for understanding organizational processes are elaborated.

In the next contribution Wortham and Jackson examinethe significance of relational approach for educational re-search and practice. They argue that education should in-volve a set of processes to enhance relationships rather thanenhancing the individual’s mind and offer critique of theprevailing assumptions. They elaborate the emerging em-phasis on individuals as woven into contexts and knowledgeas produced in relationships and bring out the implicationsof knowledge as ‘contextualized’.

Population dynamics are changing and the challenge ofgraceful aging is widely recognized as one of the key societalissues across the globe. In this context Randall has addressedthe problem of aging which simultaneously occurs in physicalas well as psychological domains. More specifically the ideaof biographical aging is distinguished from biological aging.Randall argues that an “inside” perspective views aging inmore positive terms, and aging people can be conceptualizedas persons with (and within) complex webs of stories. Agingmay be configured as a (potentially) creative process, a pro-cess of not merely getting old, but consciously growing old.The conceptual analysis presented by Randall brings a neworientation to aging.

In the next contribution, Panda has examined the multilin-gual education (MLE) discourse and practices in the Indiancontext. The choice of MLE model is influenced by thedominant construction of the problem of tribal children’slearning in regular government schools as one of ‘poor’ or‘inadequate’ bridging between their everyday language andconcepts and the school language and the academic concepts.‘Bridging’ and ‘exit’, therefore, became two foundationalmetaphors of the Indian MLE programmes. The paper decon-structs these metaphors and argues for a critique in pedagogy.

Using an autoethnographic lens, Sharma notes that thecommunal construction of mental illness makes recovery adaunting challenge since society largely perceives the psy-chiatrically ill as ‘deficient’. Not only does one have to dealwith the illness itself, but has to address the perpetual stigmaassociated with the labelling. Using a personal narrative, it isshown how one constructs structures which help to makeoneself stable and empowered from within.

The domain of helping professions is the theme of thenext contribution in which Romaioli explores the potential

contribution of the social constructionist paradigm to har-monize different perspectives on therapy. In particular, at-tention is drawn to three premises: (1) the individual psychicworld is constructed within relational processes, mainlythrough dialogue (2) in general, discourses can be classifiedas either generative or degenerative, and (3) individualsconstruct their life narrative according to a common-sensethat—more or less openly—draws its concepts from “offi-cial” psychology theories. This relational perspective allowsone to appreciate the implications for clinical practice,where therapist and client are seen as “multi-beings” andtherefore endowed with multiple views.

Using a dialogical style Paré and Sutherland haveaddressed the challenges in practice and examine concernsin counselling education following a social constructionistperspective. Building on the centrality of relationship as thekey theme they have written the article in two voices. Paré’sreflections occupy the major portion of the contribution;however, his account often takes turns by the reflectiveinterventions by a second counsellor educator, Sutherland.They draw attention to the relational aspect of knowledgeand meaning and reflexive cooperation. They argue thatdescriptions and explanations are accomplishments of coor-dinated human action, and relationships provide variousforms of choices for going forward, and are also impactedsignificantly by the choices made.

Taking to a different plane of deliberation Kwee, a Bud-dhist scholar and practitioner, argues that the psychology ofrelational Buddhism is a cutting-edge practical understandingof life. He notes that while living in an ocean of relationshipsfrom the cradle to the grave, it is significant to recognize theinterpersonal significance of the binding “we”. In the contextof the theory of dependent origination, to act is to inter-act andto be is to inter-be. This deep insight goes well with theassumptions of social constructionism. Relational Buddhisminvites the co-creation of inter-being-in-between-selves and ofa “non-foundational morality of coordinated action” to render“team spirit for humanity” with congenial bonds as a lifeline.

Priya has addressed the problem of suffering and healingand offers a critique of the Western biomedicine that focuseson diagnosis and treatment of the symptoms of a disease.Using a social constructionist paradigm as a meta theory, thehuman experiences of suffering and healing are explicatedand connected with the works of Eric J. Cassell and ArthurKleinman. It is argued that suffering and healing experien-ces are socio-historically contextualized. In this frameworkthe dialogic partnership between the researcher and theparticipant becomes a meaningful medium to understandsuch experiences.

In the next paper entitled “On a Train from Morgantown”Jones has shared a film script. It is built around the fictivehistorical dialogue between a German developmental psy-chologist, Klaus Riegel and Kenneth Gergen, an American

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social psychologist. Both have just presented papers at aconference and are boarding a train to return to their respectiveplaces. The author meets them as they are travelling fromMorgantown. Their conversation ignites ideas that wouldpropel Gergen into abandoning metatheories and lighting thespark that began the concept of social constructionism. Theconversation represents the interface between old ideas ofgrand theories and the birth of new ideas inspired by thepossibilities of a smaller, more intimate world view. Jonesuses retrospective imagining supported by narrative biograph-ical theory. He extends these to the illusory biographies ofothers constructed within a sense of other as created by animaginative projection of self onto their worlds.

In the final contribution, Mary Gergen, a feminist scholarand life partner of Ken, reconstructs Ken’s journey over theyears by relating to places and people in a historical context.Her narrative offers a deeply reflective account of the personthat Ken is, his zeal for writing, sharing and relating throughdialogue. Amidst diverse moves, turns, challenges, and col-laborations Ken has been continuously engaged in appreci-ating the complexities of human life as it unfolds. Maryoffers insights into the evolution of Ken’s passions, habitsand motivation for his wide-ranging concerns for humanity—his being and his ways of becoming—through engage-ments in dialogical reflection and action.

Ken’s creativity, imagination and engagement continue andhis ideas have made their presence felt around the world. Theconstructionist view is increasingly being used by a range ofresearchers and practitioners. It is assuming the form of aparadigm. However, it makes no claims for one truth. It opensthe door to multiple ways of engaging in knowledge. Theconsciousness of multiplicity is indeed an emerging globalsensitivity. In this context various relational processes likedialogues, collaborations, networks and negotiations are crit-ical. The social constructionist move from monologue todialogue, from isolated to relational rationality, is the future.

Together these contributions map out a clear and com-pelling vision of a constructionist perspective from aninsider’s perspective. They seek to explain the dialogicalnature of the social world. This issue PS is our attemptto contribute to the efforts in this direction and torecognize the accomplishments of a brilliant academicleader. We present this issue with the hope that it willignite a spirit of productive and useful deliberation formaking human lives more fulfilling through an openminded dialogue and reflexivity.

Acknowledgments We thank Ken, Mary and the authors who con-tributed papers to this issue. We also thank Nivida Chandra, PurnimaSingh, Rekha Singhal, Preeti Kapur and the Indian Council of SocialScience Research who helped in organizing the visit of Ken to DelhiUniversity. The preparation of this special issue was facilitated by theUSEFI’s Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Fellowship to one of the editors(GM) and support available at Department of Psychology, New Schoolof Social Research, New York.

References

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Gergen, K. J. (1982). Toward transformation in social knowledge. NewYork: Springer-Verlag, (2nd Edition, London: Sage, 1994)

Gergen, K. J. (1985). The social constructionist movement in modernpsychology. American Psychologist, 40, 266–275.

Gergen, K. J. (1994). Realities and relationships. Cambridge Mass:Harvard University Press.

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