the limit of the discursive. a critique of the radical constructionist approach to family...

THE LIMIT OF THE DISCURSIVE: A Critique ofthe Radical Constructionist Approach toFamily Experiencetsq_1237 321..340

Wing-Chung Ho*City University of Hong Kong

To date, the postmodernist approach to family experience which considers the actor’s use of

discourse rather than external sociocultural forces as primordial in constituting domestic reality

has become an intellectual stream which sociologists can hardly ignore. Using the Gubrium–

Holstein model as an exemplar for a “more sophisticated” postmodernist approach to construct-

ing family experience, this article attempts to outline a critique of radical constructionism which

overemphasizes the discourse of actors as artfully producing reality as featured in the notions of

“doing things with words” and “talking reality into being.” The critique is mainly based on the

works of Schutz and Garfinkel, of which Gubrium and Holstein claim their own model share

“abiding concern,” and is further supplemented by the work of Bourdieu. This article carries

a commitment to rebuking the postmodernist emphasis on the discursive by highlighting that

the prepredicative structure of the lifeworld—which is nondiscursive in nature—constitutes the

primordial, albeit insufficient, basis of the nomos pertaining to experience as constituted.

Bluntly put, this article represents another attempt at rebuking postmodernist claims onunderstanding social realities as constructed and reproduced through situated, articu-latory practices rather than objective structures (e.g., Mouzelis 1995; Stones 1996).However, rather than engaging the discussion only in the theoretical realm with severalquintessential postmodernist approaches in question, this article points to a singletheoretical model with a clear empirical focus—that family experience is constituted.This approach, to my knowledge, is rarely found among the critiques of postmoderntheories (similar endeavors may include Crotty 1996; Kvigne, Gjengedal, and Kirkevold2002). Before commencing with my main argument, I must define clearly the target ofcritique in order to avoid the problem of insufficient anchorage to the literature. Thisproblem has been pointed out by Day (2007) who rightly observes that many critiquesof postmodernism only refer to the subject matter as

a vague, ethereal practice of some people called postmodernists, who are themselvesequally wispy—they are rarely named, and their texts are apparently not only verydifficult to read but in some cases impossible even to find. (P. 119, original emphasis)

Quoting Monk (2004:34–35), Day further remarks that postmodernist “doctrines”are rarely stated in print, but just “assumed in the things they do write,” and espoused in“seminars, conferences, and pubs” (Day 2007:119) While Day’s observations are largelyvalid, I deem that the postmodernist tendency in social sciences, especially in sociology

*Direct all correspondence to Wing-Chung Ho, Department of Applied Social Studies, 83 Tat Chee Avenue,

City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China; e-mail: [email protected]

The Sociological Quarterly ISSN 0038-0253

The Sociological Quarterly 53 (2012) 321–340 © 2012 Midwest Sociological Society 321

and anthropology, have been real (not “straw figures”), and their tenets can be capturedtextually with a high level of concreteness. In question in the present article is one featurewhich is generally shared among those deemed “postmodernists,”“poststructuralists,” ormore subtly,“non-realists”—that social reality is constituted more by the actor’s usage ofdiscourse than shaped by the social structure, which is said to be fixed and static. Put inmore tangible terms, the essence of postmodernism refers to what I call radical construc-tionism whose formation can be identified in a number of academic texts. The termradical here is taken from the concept of “radical constructivism” put forwarded by vonGlasersfeld (1984; also Fisher 1991). It is a theoretical approach which means to breakfrom convention such that “knowledge does not reflect an ‘objective’ ontological reality,but is exclusively an ordering and organization of a world constituted by our experience”(von Glasersfeld 1984:24). This stream of thought suggests that our knowledge ofexperience is based on the fluid meanings of actors derived from interactions withina specific context. In juxtaposition with this development, a critical mass of socialscientists who are commonly labeled “constructionists”—not “constructivists”—positthat knowledge (and meaning) is more of social and exogenic in character rather thanindividualized and endogenic.1 With this turn, discursive practice becomes an essentialconcept inherent in the creation of knowledge. Along this line, for example, Laclau andMouffe (1985:96) argue that articulatory practice “constitutes and organizes social rela-tions,” and that “all ‘experience’ depend[s] on precise discursive conditions of possibil-ity” (p. 115). One interpretation of the theoretical consequence of this approach is that“the only reality is in discursive practices” (Mouzelis 1995:59). Some scholars furtherexpound that language and conversation are not merely words spoken to describereality; they constitute reality (Stetsenko and Arievitch 1997:163–64) Potter (1996), forexample, claims that “whenever words are uttered construction gets done” (p. 102).Thus, radical constructionism carries itself an epistemology that knowledge is a “prac-tical, situated activity” and that knowing “requires evaluation by some measures likeappropriateness to particular circumstances, rather than by its being true as such”(Hobart 1993:17). As a result, “all knowledge is created from the [discursive] actiontaken to obtain it” (Holstein and Gubrium 1995:3).

The scholars I just quoted—: Laclau, Mouffe, Potter, Hobart, Holstein, andGubrium—would by no means admit directly that their theories fit exactly the radicalconstructionist thesis I laid down at the beginning of the article. Rather, they would arguethat their theories are more sophisticated than what the oversimplified notions of “any-thing goes,” or “talking reality into being” would confer. For example, although Laclausuggests that the “nature of all objectivity” is “ultimately contingent” (1990:18) and thatthe structure itself is so unstable that “accidents” constantly “transform and subvert” thestructure (1990:30), his claim concerning“contingency”is not without limits. He remarksthat to simply assert that “necessity is replaced by complete contingency” is impossible.The case of “complete indeterminacy” of the structure, writes Laclau, only “make[s] anycoherent discourse impossible” (1990:26). Another example is based on the work ofGubrium and Holstein which the rest of this article will focus on. While on manyoccasions the authors seem to hold a pure radical constructionist view such that objective

The Limit of the Discursive Wing-Chung Ho

322 The Sociological Quarterly 53 (2012) 321–340 © 2012 Midwest Sociological Society

realities are utterly “discursive accomplishments” and that “the talk is considered asthe very action through which local realities are accomplished” (Holstein and Gubrium1994a:265), on one occasion, they suggest in a highly schematic manner that theirapproach does consist of something beyond the concrete, interactional realm of “discur-sive practice” (Holstein and Gubrium 2008). They argue that their model also workson two more analytical levels apart from the in vivo “discursive practice.” One is the moreexperientially distant level of “discourse-in-practice” attends to the communicationresources pertinent to talk and interaction, the other concerns the conditions of inter-pretation that shape and are shaped by “discursive practice” and “discourse-in-practice”(p. 376).

Despite the ostensibly more sophisticated nature of models featuring radical con-structionism, in this article, I argue that they are theoretically problematic, and only oflimited empirical utility in understanding family experience. My arguments will unfoldin several steps. First, the background pertaining to the evolution of radical construc-tionism in family studies is outlined. Second, the Gubrium–Holstein model is examined,and the reasons for using it as an exemplar of radical constructionism, hence, thepostmodernist approach, to family are discerned. Third, a critique of the Gubrium–Holstein model is presented. My argument is mainly based on the works of Schutz andGarfinkel, of which Gubrium and Holstein claim their model shares Schutz’s andGarfinkel’s “abiding concern,” and is further supplemented by the work of Bourdieu. Indiscussion, the limit of the discursive is highlighted by arguing that the prepredicativestructure of the lifeworld—which is nondiscursive in nature—constitutes the primor-dial, albeit not sufficient, basis of the nomos pertaining to experience as constituted.

FAMILY AS A TOPIC OF RADICAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

Following the Parsonsian perspective, family is conventionally considered a social systemwith family members occupying certain positions and roles (father, mother, husband,daughter, etc.). It is assumed that these positions and roles are “in a state of interdepen-dence, [and] a change in the behavior of one member leaders to a change in the behaviorof other members” (Hill 1971:12). In this vein, each family possesses a “boundary,” andis maintained by “normative behaviors,” and it becomes a functional unit which gener-ates “successful solutions to problems” (Cheal 1991:65). However, entering the 1970s,the notion of family boundary stabilized by normative behaviors has been increasinglychallenged. For example, by the early 1970s, Jallinoja (1994) observed that family soci-ology had covered an impressive range of themes such as premarital sex, cohabitation,divorce, extramarital sex, gay/lesbian relations, voluntary childlessness, and singlemothers, etc. Such studies point to a diffused spectrum of communal life, resulting from“incessant changes in the boundary and in the composition of the family unit, whichescapes any categorization.” Jallinoja (1994:20) and Taggart (1985:120) also argue thatthe family boundary had been relegated to “the mere container of the system’s substancedesigned, as it were, to keep the context at bay.” This proposal echoes an earlier call to thecomplete destruction of the family as a repressive and futile institution (Cooper 1971).

Wing-Chung Ho The Limit of the Discursive


In proclaiming a “postmodern” turn in understanding family, Stacey (1992)pinpointed in the late 1980s that “the massive reordering of work, class, and genderrelationships during the past several decades is what has turned family life into acontested terrain” (p. 107). She went on to argue that what “the postmodern success ofthe voluntary principle of the modern family system” had assured was “a fluid, recom-binant familial culture” (p. 109). In her book Brave New Families, Stacey (1990) writes:

The postmodern family is not a new model of family life, not the next stage inan orderly progression of family history, but the stage when the belief in a logicalprogression of stages breaks down. [The postmodern family thus ruptures] evolu-tionary models of family history and incorporating both experimental and nostalgicelements [and] lurches forward and backward into an uncertain future. (p. 18,original emphasis)

That being said, the postmodern era witnesses the family experience as some-thing which “bits of the old” always embraces “bits of the new” (Hertz and Ferguson1997:200), and people tend to defy the closure of meaning that overlooks diverse waysthey organize and give meaning to their intimate relationships.

In juxtaposition with this late 1980s’ postmodern turn in understanding familywas the more general postmodern movement in the intelligentsia. For example, inthe early 1990s, Bauman declared that postmodernity was already then “a full-fledged,viable system” with logic of its own (Bauman 1992:52). To him, the postmodern world ischaracterized by heterogeneity and fragmented-ness; and evolving into an undetermineddirection with ever-increasing differentiation and mobility (Bauman 1992). In the realmof family studies, scholars identified myriad new family configurations with declining ofintergenerational care because of the augmenting employment demands and geographicdistance, and increasing number of those being raised in divorced or blended families(Keith 1995; Webster and Herzog 1995; Karner 1998:71). Against this backdrop, a con-structionist approach to family experience began to emerge. It is argued that the meaningof “family” becomes so fluid that there are no standardized, objective criteria by which“family-ness” can be referred to (Gilding 1991). Rather than the normative familystructure and composition, for instance, Struening (2002:88) proposes that “it is thecommitment to care . . . that should be the basis for how we decide what counts as family.”

One key empirical focus of the constructionists is the formation and social functionof “fictive kinship.” Fictive kin refers to members who are emotionally or instrumentallyinvolved in a set of patterned relationships they consider as their family, but the membersthemselves are not related by blood. One should note that the topic itself is not postmod-ern. Rather, it had been a focus of a critical mass of anthropologists in the ’60s through the’70s, who set out to examine the everyday life and social exchanges in black communitiesor prisons with the concepts of “pseudo-kinship”“quasi-familial arrangements,”“inmatefamilies,” “prison families,” and “play families” (Ward and Kassebaum 1965; Giallom-bardo 1966; Liebow 1967; Lowenthal and Havens 1968; Heffernan 1972; Hochschild 1973;Stack 1974; Siegal 1978). The more recent constructionist attempts, however, make a



marked turn as to underscore the mundane usage of family discourse and the practicalimplications this usage possesses in promoting the well-being of actors in differentcommunity and human service settings (Gubrium and Buckholdt 1982). For example, instudying the support networks of black elders in low-income communities, Johnson andBarer (1990) discovered that the informants usually converted friendships into fictive kinrelationships which could become replacements of absent or unsatisfying genuine familyrelationships. In another study of low-income black communities, Collins (1991) foundthat the formation of women-centered support networks for child care often extendedbeyond the boundaries of biologically related individuals and included “fictive kin”(p. 120). This idea of “play” relatives was apparently useful in promoting the welfare ofindividuals living in deprived communities (Milewski-Hertlein 2001).

The social constructionists repeatedly report the positive role of fictive kin relation-ships between paid caregivers and their elderly clients (Gubrium and Buckholdt 1982;Aronson and Neysmith 1996; Karner 1998; Piercy 2000). These studies point to theformation of family-like small groups which take on filial labels and roles in formalinstitutionalized settings. For example, in arguing homecare workers as fictive kin to theelderly, Karner (1998) observes the negotiation of a fictive kin relationship with itsattendant rights, obligations, and sentiments when the paid caregivers provide care tothe recipients like family and do what families do. In her sample of elderly clients in thehomecare setting, Piercy (2000) found that some aides were granted the status of fictivekin not only by their elderly clients, but also sometimes by the clients’ primary familycaregivers. The beneficial and indispensable roles of these aides have been documented.

Over the course the postmodern turn and constructionist movement in familystudies emerges a radical strain of constructionism which emphasizes the individualisticview on family experience, and considers the discourse on family as relative and fluidrather than normative and durable. Gergen (1985) and Gelles (1995:14) goes on to arguethat family be defined as kinship which is a matter of “social definition,” rather thanbiology and genetics. This view places emphasis on the role of the discourse of the “thefamily” in constructing domestic realities. According to Holstein and Gubrium(1999:12), this “family discourse” informs “our politics, our senses of domesticity, theways we experience relationships, our orientations to interpersonal responsibility,[and] even the rhetoric and accounts we use to make claims about ourselves” (see alsoGubrium and Holstein 1990; Settles et al. 1999). Tilbury (2007:627) also remarks thatfamily discourse “simultaneously constructs and reproduces ideas about what ‘family’should be,” and “inform[s] the interactions of people.” Therefore, from the viewpointof radical constructionism, the familial is a discursive construction, and “family” is asubject of an ongoing negotiation process with its meaning constantly being challenged,reconstructed, and changed for different purposes in different contexts (Gergen andGergen 1992; Tilbury 2007; Allen, Blieszner, and Roberto 2011).

One should be aware that various studies which consider family as a topic (or aprocess) of construction through everyday talk in particular contexts usually draw theirintellectual resources from the work of Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein. Treatingobjective realities as “discursive accomplishments,” Holstein and Gubrium (1994a:265)



set out to strip the traces of modernist sociology which sustains “the” family asan abstract, idealized social form. To them, “facts” and “happenings” are considereda process of discourse. Hence, the meaning of family is not something fixed once andfor all; and the family experience is derived from discourse and its in relation to theconditions of everyday life (Gubrium and Holstein 1990). Focusing on the extensivepublications by Gubrium and Holstein, I shall argue that the model they put forward isan exemplar of radical constructionism, and apposite for formulating a hopefully, moresophisticated critique.

THE GUBRIUM–HOLSTEIN MODEL

Various works by Gubrium and Holstein place paramount importance on the role offamily discourse in the reality-construction; they claim,

[W]e’ve come to view family discourse as a social process by which ‘family,’ as a socialform, is brought into being as a matter of practice, so to speak. . . . [W]e’ve devel-oped an analytic perspective that looks at ‘family’ in terms of its social construction.Our aim is to empirically document the myriad social processes through whichpersons in the course of everyday life produce and organize ‘family’ as a meaningfuldesignation for social relations. (Holstein and Gubrium 1999:4)

In this light, the essence of family is found in the way family is used, not in conven-tional or idealized social forms. Moreover, discursive practice becomes the vehicle whichmediates the construction of family meaning and domestic reality (Holstein andGubrium 1999:7). Empirically, their empirical analyses adhere to a position that thesocial world is made concrete and meaningful through our everyday talk. For example,when the elderly who are not connected by blood in a nursing home speak of being likea family, such as, “He’s like a brother of me,” or “We are just like a family,” the reality ofa family gains its concrete and meaningful existence (Gubrium and Holstein 1993:663).Thus, family discourse is considered more as the constitutive of a social relationshiprather than merely spoken or transcribed description. Clearly demonstrated in theirwork is the consistent radical constructionist stance; for example, they write:

[F]amily is a “project” . . . [which] is realized through discourse. (Gubrium andHolstein 1993:655; see also Gubrium 1988)

Family is constructed by practitioners of domestic order, “doing things with words”to assemble domestic reality. (Holstein and Gubrium 1994b:246)

[We study how] interacting persons artfully produce reality by “doing things withwords,”“talking reality into being,” in a manner of speaking. (Holstein and Gubrium1999:6)

We’ve become a self-articulating society . . . collectively author(is)ing particularselves. (Gubrium and Holstein 2000:220)



At one point, one might think that the model articulated by Gubrium and Holsteinis simply a manifestation of “anything goes.” However, this is not the case. They clearlysuggest that family discourse is “delimited by circumstance and sociohistorical context”(Gubrium and Holstein 1993:662; see also Holstein and Gubrium 1999:7). Rather thansimply following the postmodernist position on knowledge’s relativity because of indi-vidualistic differences, they argue that family discourse “conveys apparently sharedideas—collective representations [in the sense of Emile Durkheim]—about domesticlife” (Gubrium and Holstein 1993:662). On one occasion, they discern explicitly thattheir “constructionist analytics” incorporate three enduring sociological preoccupa-tions, and only one refers to the everyday discursive practice in situ (Holstein andGubrium 2008). The second concern (or level), they suggest, is a more experientiallydistant or transcendent one called “discourse-in-practice,” and the third is the condi-tions and circumstances of interpretation that both reflexively shape and are shapedby the previous two levels, namely, “discursive practice” and “discourse-in-practice.” Putsuccinctly, Gubrium and Holstein have put forward sophisticated arguments for theexistence of supra-discursive influences, or what they call the “resources and parameters,local culture” which “are attached” and “articulated with,” but not determinative of,experience (Holstein and Gubrium 1999:7–8).

In suggesting that we gaze beyond immediate discursive activity, Gubrium andHolstein are calling us to examine the “analytics of discourse-in-practice” which refer tothe discursive environments and communicative resources (e.g., discourses, languagegames) in relation to specific talks and interactions; and how these broader circum-stances, conditions, and interpretive resources mediate the reality-construction process(Holstein and Gubrium 2008:376). Rather than focusing on the present-time face-to-face interaction, this concern attends to historical, institutional, or cultural resourcesthat complement the study of discursive practice. However, Holstein and Gubrium(2008:379) emphasize that their goal here “does not—indeed, should not—seek toformulate causal or determinate relations between discourses and/or language gamesand local processes of reality construction.” Rather, their aim is to “describe how systemsof discourse mediate the social construction process, providing the practical, substantivegrounds of everyday life” (p. 379).

Gubrium and Holstein then further point to the “conditions of construction” whichrefer to “varied working ‘contexts’ that shape reality construction.” What they emphasizehere is their concern over the influences of “[l]ocal culture, organizational settings, andinstitutional structures [that] mediate talk and interaction [and] shape the ways indi-viduals understand and represent local realities” (Holstein and Gubrium 2008:379).Issuing a reminder to readers, Gubrium and Holstein claim that these conditions ofconstruction “should not be viewed as prescriptions, rules, or norms for the socialconstruction processes.” Instead, they mainly “provide discernible frames of interpreta-tion and standards of accountability to which members orient as they engage in con-structive activities” (Holstein and Gubrium 2008:380).

The above illustrations should suffice for one to see the theoretical blueprint of theconstructionist analytics put forward by Gubrium and Holstein. On the one hand, they



repeatedly claim that the ongoing, artful, and agentic discursive practice is key toreality-construction; on the other hand, they stress that discursive practice is subject toboth local and more distal contextual influences. And, in order to avoid the modernistcritiques on understanding experience, they also make clear caveats in their model. Forexample, they state that their study of communicative resources does not strive for apriori definitions of what is called “social structure,” not to mention, theorize its causalor determinate effects on individuals (Holstein and Gubrium 2008:379). Rather, they setthemselves another goal to describe how external resources penetrate into the myriadsocial construction processes. Furthermore, in discerning the conditions of construc-tion, Gubrium and Holstein emphasize that the discursive environments in question donot refer to any “prescriptions, rules, or norms.” Instead, they point to certain “locallyaccomplished” frames of interpretation through which members use to construct mean-ingful experience (Holstein and Gubrium 2008:380).

Having illustrated the key features of the Gubrium-Holstein model, my discussioncan now move on to its critique.

A CRITIQUE FROM WITHIN

It should be noted that Gubrium and Holstein declare their work to share the “abidingconcern” of Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology “for theinteractional bases of reality construction” (Holstein and Gubrium 1999:7). Theadoptions of phenomenological terms, such as “description” and “bracketing” (e.g.,Gubrium and Holstein 1997:45; Holstein and Gubrium 2008:390), and ethnomethod-ological logic such that practice is “artful” and realities are “local” and “accomplished”confirm this intellectual heritage. This theoretical undertaking, however, is juxtaposedwith a discursive turn in the sense that objective realities are conceived as “discursiveaccomplishments” (Holstein and Gubrium 1994a:265). On many occasions, Gubriumand Holstein simply consider developments from the phenomenological and eth-nomethodological traditions to their own model; underscoring discursive practice andtalk are so smooth that further explanation seems unnecessary. For example, they putit fluently that

[t]he ethnomethodological project moves . . . [as to document] how discursive prac-tice constitutes social structures. (Gubrium and Holstein 2000:499)

And that

the talk is considered as the very action through which local realities are accom-plished. (Holstein and Gubrium 1994a:265)

Such a discursive turn has indeed ignored the key Schutzian phenomenologicalthesis of the lifeworld. To Schutz, the lifeworld experience is fundamentally nondiscur-sive in the sense that it is the prepredicative domain of the lifeworld that constitutes the



condition for the possibility of the discursive (Ho 2008a). To speak of the nondiscur-sivity of the lifeworld experience no means implies that people are dumb to each other.Rather contrarily, Schutz (1964) claims that when interacting with others, actors alwaysalready bring to bear a stock of preconstituted knowledge which includes “knowledge ofexpressive and interpretive schemes of objective sign systems, in particular, of thevernacular language” (pp. 29–30). What is rendered nondiscursive to actors is the signsystem of language which constitutes a “meaning-context” of experience and is essen-tially a configuration formed by interpretive schemes. In Schutzian phenomenology, it isthe stock of knowledge at hand that gives the lifeworld its typicality. Once established,this network of typificatory schemes for me and my fellowmen means that our experi-ence remains taken for granted or unquestioned until further notice. On this point,Berger and Luckmann (1991)—the disciples of Schutz—have astutely suggested that itis the background of a world which has been silently taken for granted that makes realitymaintenance in conversation possible; they stress that

the greater part of reality-maintenance in conversation is implicit, not explicit. Mostconversation does not in so many words define the nature of the world. Rather,it takes place against the background of a world that is silently taken for granted.(Berger and Luckmann 1991:172; my emphasis)

Garfinkel, despite his abstruse style of writing, sharply delineates his own approachfrom the radical constructionist perspective. He emphasizes repeatedly that everydaypractices are not “texts” or “signed enterprises” (Garfinkel 1996:8, 2002:97). In fact, heconsiders that 90 percent of our everyday life “lies below [an iceberg] as an unques-tioned . . . [and even] unquestionable background” (Garfinkel 1967:173). Hence, whatinterests Garfinkel are the “background expectancies” of everyday life, or certain “sanc-tioned properties” which constitute the conditions under which discourse becomesunderstandable to actors (Garfinkel 1967:41–42; see also Button and Sharrock 1993:16–17). Thus, ethnomethodologists are mainly concerned with the procedures involved inproducing the social order, and whether these procedures involve semantic expressions(like greeting someone in the hallway) or nondiscursive behaviors (like queuing for aservice) are of secondary concern. These procedures refer to the “background expect-ancies” which are by nature unquestioned, shared among members, and founded on thenondiscursivity of the everyday world.2 That being said, when Gubrium and Holsteinspeak of objective realities as “discursive accomplishments,” or make explicit claims “towork backward” from the taken-for-granted realities to the discursive practice thatconstructs social realities (e.g., Gubrium and Holstein 1993:663), they come close tomissing the canons of Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology.3

Based on my observation, Gubrium and Holstein never take the discursive turnexplicitly as a theoretical drift from their intellectual heritage; rather, they simply take it,and merge it quietly with the phenomenological and ethnomethodological clichés. Forexample, rather unintentionally, they write that “family is as much a way of thinking andtalking about relationships as it is a concrete set of social ties and sentiments” (Gubrium



and Holstein 1990:x). While both phenomenology and ethnomethodology place muchmore attention to “thinking” than “talking,” the way Gubrium and Holstein seems toendow the two ideas with similar, if not equal, theoretical foundation. In another text,when speaking of how the constructionist analytic mediates in the epistemology ofethnography, they make the following claim:

A constructionist agenda spurs ethnographers to look at and listen to the activitiesthrough which everyday actors produce the orderly, recognizable, meaningful fea-tures of their social worlds. This is an explicitly action orientation, focusing intentlyon interaction and discourse as productive of social reality. (Holstein and Gubrium2008:375)

Evidently, the first sentence of the quote closely aligns with Garfinkel’s perspective,since it adopts the pertinent ethnomethodological terminology. However, upon aclose reading of the second sentence, the ethnomethodologist would ascertain theunexpected sneaking-in of the idea of “discourse” following immediately the idea of“interaction” as if—once again—the two ideas are on a similar, if not equal, theoreticalfooting. In the same text, they also state: “If the social construction process is artful,as Harold Garfinkel (1967) put it . . . ” (Holstein and Gubrium 2008:376). While“artful” is obviously a term Garfinkel would use, the term “social construction” isnot. Anne Rawls, the editor of Garfinkel’s more recent book, Ethnomethodology’sProgram, has sharply observed that Garfinkel would never use the word “construction”to describe his own work (Rawls 2002:5fn9). In fact, more examples of this type canbe quoted in the extensive publications by Gubrium and Holstein. It must be empha-sized that to transplant their radical constructivist viewpoint to Schutizian phenom-enology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology may be justifiable only if a rigoroustheoretical explanation is offered. Unfortunately, Gubrium and Holstein has yet tooffer any.

Another theoretical turn which scholars true to Schutzian phenomenology andGarfinkel’s ethnomethodology would disagree with is the epistemological continuumbetween common sense and scientific knowledge proposed by Gubrium and Holstein.In writing about their constructionist project of family, they suggest that

the[ir] constructionist project is precisely to document ordinary knowledge andexplanation in order to gain a sense for, among other things, how the familial isunderstood by those concerned, how it is seen as entering their lives, and how it isconstructed by way of commonsense notions of the domestic. (Holstein andGubrium 1999:15)

In so doing, they claim that their project can bypass the “invidious comparisonsbetween what people know, think, or believe, [and] what is scientifically known” (Hol-stein and Gubrium 1999:15). Scathingly criticizing the social scientist’s tendency to “takedelight in debunking ‘what everybody knows’” and “dismiss the mundane as so much



uniform or illogical ‘claptrap,’ ” Gubrium and Holstein imply that their model canrescue “common sense” from the objective view of the social scientist. Here, Gubriumand Holstein seem not to realize that both Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’sethnomethodology insist on the existence of “ontological distancing” between the worldof common sense and that of scientific interpretation (Ho 2008b). In theoretical terms,Schutz asserts a break that disconnects the “world of consociates” where social reality isdirectly experienced in face-to-face contacts, and the “world of contemporaries” wherethe “Other” is experienced in terms of “types.” (Schutz 1980:140–41) Such an assertionis crucial to social scientists as it implies that that all intellectual attempts to understandthe experiences of “others” must be based on the “models” constructed in the “world ofcontemporaries”; hence, epistemologically, to grasp the subjective point of view face-to-face, with a here-and-now understanding of the ongoing discursive process is anoutright impossibility (Ho 2008b). Gubrium and Holstein may also overlook thatSchutz’s acknowledgment of the ontological break between the common sense and thescientific world was essentially the focus of contention in the time-honored Schutz–Parsons debate back to 1940 to 1941 (Grathoff 1978).4

Evidently, Garfinkel was a keen supporter of Schutz’s sharp categorical distinctionbetween natural and scientific attitudes (Psathas 2004:17). To Garfinkel, the backgroundexpectancies of experience can be “made visible, recorded . . . , and identified” not in theeveryday life, but “in tour” (Garfinkel and Livingston 2003:27). By watching “in tours,”Garfinkel points to Schutz’s “world of contemporaries,” within which social scientists areakin to “birdwatchers” (Garfinkel and Livingston 2003:26–27). And, only “in tours” isthe orderliness of social order “picked out in its properties and watched; it is inspectedin its features; it is noticed in its exhibited details, examined, identified and recorded inits witnessed particulars” (Garfinkel and Livingston 2003).

One would defend the Gubrium-Holstein model by saying that it also attends to thelevels of “discourse-in-practice” and “discursive condition” which are epistemologicallynondiscursive. Put eloquently, Gubrium and Holstein remark that their constructionanalytic is located “at the crossroads of social interaction, discursive environments, localculture, and material circumstance” (Holstein and Gubrium 2008:380). It is these localaspects of discursive environments, such as the local culture, organizational settings, andinstitutional structures “all mediate talk and interaction . . . [and] shape the ways indi-viduals understand and represent local realities” (Holstein and Gubrium 2008:380). Inorder to avoid the criticism of attempting to eat one’s cake and have it too, Gubrium andHolstein need to make explicit their theoretical position on whether they considerdiscursive practice or the local aspects of discursive environments as more primordial inconstituting reality. Gubrium and Holstein would definitely opt for discursive practice.Choosing otherwise, they would have found themselves difficult either in defending theirradical constructionist stance highlighted throughout their research, or in offering any-thing new—at least, not anything more than what Schutz and Garfinkel have laid down.

On this issue, it is suggestive to look into the response of Gubrium and Holstein tothe critique of the radical constructionism inherent in their work. First, they querythemselves:



Does it suggest that the study of family construction is the documentation ofwhatever serves to define or undefined relationships as familial, whenever or wher-ever they occur, in or out of households, regardless of whether they are applied toconventional familial bonds? (Holstein and Gubrium 1999:11)

Then, they answer:

The answer is yes, in a sense, it does. But not just anything goes! . . . Accordingly,family members who have cohabited for decades, for example, may learn for the firsttime what they mean and, in practice, what they have been, to each other during ameeting of a multi-family support group for the parents of substance abusingadolescents. . . . Interpretively, the familial is realized—both understood andassigned its reality—on any occasions that is made a topic of discussion. It is only inthis sense that “anything goes.” (Holstein and Gubrium 1999:11; original emphasis)

Taking a closer look at this answer, Gubrium and Holstein’s view that discursivepractice is primordial in reality construction becomes obvious. One should note thattheir answer to “anything goes” is “yes, in a sense.” However, logically speaking, if thisanswer is replaced by a “no,” the whole argument remains intact. I deem that the artfuluse of “yes, in a sense” here mainly serves to underscore the agentic side rather thanthe limiting side of discursive practice. Along this line, when they say, “the familial isrealized . . . on any occasions that is made a topic of discussion,” they must imply thatthe local aspects of discursive environments also play a role. However, these nondiscur-sive entities play a relatively less fundamental role than the discursive as they onlyconstitute the “interpretive resources and [contextual] parameters” that “are attached”and “articulated with” experience (Holstein and Gubrium 1999:7–8).

Having elucidated this key theoretical position of the Gubrium-Holstein model, ournext question is: Does this position stand, at least, in the domain of understanding familyexperience? Undeniably, to consider “facts” and “happenings” as a process of discourse(Gubrium and Holstein 1993:78) and to treat objective realities as “discursive accom-plishments” (Holstein and Gubrium 1994a:265) have been quite successful in strippingthe essentialist traces that sustain “the” family as an abstract, idealized social form.However, what has not been thoroughly pursued is the prepredicative meaning thatmakes possible a particular phenomenon meaningful to the actor that antedates explicitdiscursive constructions. In fact, in their empirical investigations into how fictive kinassignments were being made to nonfamily in various settings, like nursing homes andrehabilitation centers, one may question: “Why family?” To sociologists, this is a legiti-mate inquiry for it is also possible that a caring and noncalculating human relationshipis derived from, for example, the supernaturally oriented sect, or the intimate relationbetween the people and the monarch.

In other words, while logically, there exists other discursive constructs in societywhich confer the sentiments of mutual care and unconditional regards amongnonblood-tied individuals, why the practitioners and inmates of institutionalized



service settings seem always to find the discursive construct of the familial so easy toaccept and effective in soliciting mutual “genuine concerns” among individuals? Even ifit is “anything goes” only “in a sense,” Gubrium, Holstein, and their supporters shouldhave been able to identify other discursive constructs, or, at least, a couple more discur-sive constructs other than the familial in their empirical investigations. But, why thenumber of empirically realized discursive constructs has been so limited? Why can’tartful and agentic discursive practice be more flexible and express more contingencythan just simply employing the familial construct? All these questions represent a rebut-tal of the theoretical position that discursive practice is more primordial than the localaspects of discursive environments in constructing reality. These questions point to themore fundamental aspects of social construction. Rather than discursive practice, inquestion is what constitutes the “meaning-context,” the “background expectancies” thatmake possible the empirical discursive construction of family experience. Interestingly,the theoretical inference along this line harkens back exactly to the genuine “abidingconcern” of Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel ethnomethodology. It is exactlythis “abiding concern” that Gubrium and Holstein consider relatively less importantthan the discursive in the construction of domestic reality.

Seeing that the radical constructionist claim would relegate family experience “to thenon-existence of pure figments of thought,” Bourdieu (1996:21) once issued an unyield-ing critique of the model put forward by Gubrium and Holstein. Bourdieu insists thatthere exists a prepredicative element, a tacit law, a nomos, which constitutes somecommon organizing principles pertinent to the construction of family. While concur-ring that the family is a principle in the construction of social reality, Bourdieu suggeststhat this principle refers to a nomos, which “is both immanent in individuals (as aninternalized collective [i.e., in all habitus]) and transcendent to them, since they encoun-ter it in the form of objectivity in all other individuals” (p. 21). On the nature of nomosand its relation to the commonsensical understanding of “family,” Bourdieu’s illustra-tion is particularly lucid; he writes:

[I]t is a common principle of vision and division, a nomos, that we all have in ourheads because it has been inculcated in us through a process of socialization per-formed in a world that was itself organized according to the division into families.This principle of construction is one of the constituent elements of our habitus,5 amental structure which, having been inculcated into all brains socialized in a par-ticular way, is both individual and collective. It is a tacit law (nomos) of perceptionand practice that is at the basis of the consensus on the sense of the social world (andof the word “family” in particular), the basis of common sense. (Bourdieu 1996:21;original emphases and bracket)

In this light, Bourdieu suggests that the category of “family” possesses a “specificontology,” and is “being rooted both in the objectivity of social structures and in thesubjectivity of objectively orchestrated mental structures” (p. 21). Therefore, althoughthe family is subject to acts of construction, the “products” of these constructions always



“present themselves to experience with the opacity of and resistance of things” (p. 21).This argument echoes my early queries against the Gubrium–Holstein model, concern-ing the highly limited number of discursive constructs being realized by actors acrossdifferent settings.

THE LIMIT OF THE DISCURSIVE

The critique developed insofar is based on the radical constructionist’s relatively lackof concern of the prepredicative, nondiscursive structure of the lifeworld which exertsimportant patterning effects on the actor’s experience, in our case, of the domesticreality. Stemming from a similar line of query, several scholars have criticized the radicalconstructionists for ignoring the mechanism through which the broader social norms(or dominant discourses) come to shape the interpretive schema of actors. For example,Parker (1989:63) argues that “the knowledge that circulates in discourse is employed ineveryday interaction in relations of submission and domination.” This suggests thatthose who construct reality and convey it through the “dominant discourse” are oftenthe ones in power. Thus, discursive constructions of the individual are often reflectionsof the dominant ideology which possesses a privileged and determinative influenceon people’s language, thought and action (Hare-Mustin 1994). In short, individuals’discursive constructions of reality are directly influenced by the dominant discourse ofsociety (Stetsenko and Arievitch 1997).

My argument here, however, takes a different tack. Focusing on the Gubrium–Holstein model of radical constructionism, my discussion pinpoints that the discursiveturn Gubrium and Holstein made to Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s eth-nomethodology means almost a theoretical subversion of the traditions. Furthermore, itshows that the epistemological continuum between commonsense and scientific inter-pretation supposed in Gubrium and Holstein’s analytic of constructionism is preciselywhat Schutz and Garfinkel oppose outright. Despite their effort to portray their modelas consisting of three levels of which two belong to local aspects of discursive environ-ments, and that the three levels seemingly possess similar theoretical thrusts, it can beargued that Gubrium and Holstein would view discursive practice as more primordialthan the other two levels in constructing reality. To adopt this line of inquiry implies thelimit of the discursive. One is immediately faced with the question: “Why family?” whenit is ubiquitous to see across different settings that the discursive construct of the familial(e.g., fictive kin)—but not other constructs—evolve so naturally among nonfamilyindividuals. Implicated in the highly limited number of realized discursive constructs isthe existence of the prepredicative element, the tacit law that operates like what Bour-dieu coins, a nomos pertaining to experience as constituted. In Schutzian phenomenol-ogy, the small number of empirically identified habitual discursive pattern refers to thenatural attitude which consists in the taken-for-granted nature of the prepredicativestratum of experience. This prepredicative structure of the lifeworld is itself durable, andby nature nondiscursive and transcendental to the experience of everyday life (Ho2008a). In directing Schutzian phenomenology to the empirical realm, Garfinkel’s



ethnomethodology also aims to make describable the background expectancies ofeveryday life which are contextually intelligible and coherent to the actors, or refer towhat Garfinkel calls more recently, the “local coherent phenomenal field” (Garfinkel andLivingston 2003:26; original emphases). In short, the radical constructionism putforward by Gubrium and Holstein has failed to offer a model with high theoreticalvalidity and empirical utility in understanding family experience.

To take discourses as key structuring principles of social reality, Gubrium andHolstein tend to deny that people’s everyday life understandings of the external world arevery often reflections of durable, transcendental, and a priori structures. One should notethat this position is not without supporters beyond family studies. A critical mass ofscholars have argued that actors’ discursive accounts of their motives and intentionsshould be considered as the prime data for making sense of the situation (Bruce andWallis 1983; Schwandt 2000), or what Orbuch (1997) remarks,“people’s account count.”However, akin to how Gubrium and Holstein face the critique of Bourdieu, the artfulnessand agency of the discursive put forward by these scholars also needs to face the criticismswhich point to its limit. For example, Hastrup (1990) has underscored “silence” as a vitalpart of a culture-specific experience; he remarks sharply that “[a] too narrow focus onverbal statements distorts the experiential reality of people where silences and othernegativities also define the world” (p. 53). Being a well-known expert in qualitativeresearch, David Silverman shows a mistrust of the discursive as he explicitly warns ones to“avoid treating the actors’ point of view as an explanation” (1989:18). Based on hisethnographic experience, Maurice Bloch is skeptical of what informants have put explic-itly and discursively in the field, and argues that “ethnography backed up by our infor-mants’ ‘actual words’ may often be quite misleading” (Bloch 1998:16). Rather, he suggeststhat the researcher gaze at the actor’s implicit, “chunked knowledge” which is not only“non-linguistic but also must be non-linguistic if [it is] to be efficient” (p. 11; originalemphasis). This “non-linguistic”“chunked knowledge” can be compared to John Searle’sconcept of “background” which refers to the set of nonintentional or preintentionalcapacities that make possible people’s understanding of utterances (Searle 1995:141).Searle explicitly admits that his concept of “background” refers to “the same sort ofphenomena” that Bourdieu calls habitus (p. 132). And, Bourdieu’s concept of habitustogether with Searle’s concept of “background,” Bloch’s “chunked knowledge,” Hastrup’s“silence,” can all roll back to Garfinkel’s “background expectancies” and Schutz’s“meaning-context”of experience which have constituted my critique of radical construc-tionism in this article.

On scanning my arguments, I realize that my central objection to radical construc-tionism is not that discourse is totally useless or futile in constructing domestic realities,nor that the radical constructionists have failed to provide useful insight for scholarsof family studies. The objection centers on the forms of constructions which overvaluethe linguistic power, which are not only theoretically problematic but also limited in itsempirical utility. It is to pinpoint that Gubrium and Holstein have not thoroughlypursued the prepredicative meaning that makes possible the familial reality meaningfulto the actor, and that antedates explicit the discursive constructions of families. What I



suggest as the object of inquiry proper to the field of family experience is the prepred-icative structure of the lifeworld, the preconstituted stock of knowledge, which makes upthe nondiscursivity of the lifeworld experience. That being said, however, is not to denythat the constitution of the lifeworld has an element of discursiveness. Rather, one mustbe aware of the problem of radical constructionism which has overemphasized theconstitutive power of discourse as the determinant in the formation and maintenance ofsocial order. And, this perspective tends to forget what Berger and Luckmann rightlyclaim that the discursive does “take place against the background of a world which issilently taken for granted” (Berger and Luckmann 1991:172).

NOTES

1Although Richard (1995) argues that there is much in common between (social) constructionism

and (radical) constructivism, I prefer maintaining the distinction. The distinction highlights the

difference between the two approaches in terms of the differential character of knowledge. While

the former considers knowledge as socially based and exogenic, the latter views knowledge by

nature as being individually based and endogenic. In the family studies literature, scholars tend to

conflate the two terms (e.g., see Pilgrim 2000:9).2Apart from the classic “breaching experiments” and jury panels, the subject matter under the

empirical gaze of ethnomethodology have been indeed more nondiscursive than discursive.

For example, one may refer to Garfinkel (2002) for studies on inverting lenses, Helen’s kitchen,

orienting with occasional maps, and freeway traffic flow.3In fact, this problematic understanding of ethnomethodology is not uncommon in the

literature. For example, I found it misleading when I saw Rogers (1984:169) wrote: “From the

start, ethnomethodologists emphasized linguistic activities as the key to understanding the com-

monsense world.”4Gubrium and Holstein will be probably surprised to know that their tendency to eliminate the

difference between common sense and scientific knowledge through a constructionist analytic

has positioned themselves in the side of Parsons rather than Schutz in this debate. To Parsons, the

distinction between the objective and subjective points of view does not cut deep. In the debate,

Parsons even ridiculed Schutz’s insistence on the break as being “apt to be unrealistic” because

what is between the common sense and the scientific worlds is only “a matter of refinement rather

than of basic methodological principle” (Grathoff 1978:69).5Habitus refers to “a complex of durable dispositions, propensities, and schemes of perception and

appreciation that then guide practice” (Atkinson 2010:3–4).

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