constructivism (social sciences)

Constructivism is a major interdisciplinary paradigm in the social sciences that forms part of the broader field of the sociology of knowledge. It is alternatively referred to as social constructivism or social constructionism. Constructivism has been described as having a significant potential to become an integrative framework, since it has significant representation in sociology, psychology, learning and education, philosophy, and linguistics, and, more recently, in communication, media studies, political science, and international relations. Nevertheless, there is no generally accepted definition for this term, the different approaches informing the constructivist perspective having in common a sort of family resemblance, as noted by Vivien Burr, and a theoretical framework still under construction. The scholarly literature points out, however, that the constructivist approach is typical of qualitative research, where researchers focus on interpreting the complex ways people make sense of their lives and experiences, given both their personal and collective interactions and the social context in which they live (including the social, cultural, and historical norms that constrain their actions).

A Terminological Dilemma

In his book The Foundations of Social Research, Michael J. Crotty interrogates the process of the construction of meaning that is triggered by human interaction with the outside world. During this interaction, individuals make sense of the world in accordance with their historical, cultural, and social contexts of existence. These general premises permit Crotty to state that the process of meaning creation is always social, irrespective of the nature of the interaction (human or not). Starting from these assumptions, the author elaborates on the perspective break that separates social constructivism—rather adapted for epistemological considerations on the meaning-making activity of the human mind—and social constructionism—focusing on the collective emergence, transmission, and retransmission of meaning. He argues that constructivism is rather axiomatic because it underlines the individual life experience as a unique and valid one, while social constructionism is permanently open to critical thinking and new developments because of the central role of culture shaping both our minds and the way we see and even feel the world. In his essay An Invitation to Social Construction, Kenneth J. Gergen prefers to use the term social constructionism in order not to create confusion with the constructivist theory of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and points out the main difference between the two orientations: while, for constructivists, the psychological process of world construction takes place in our heads, according to social constructionists what we consider to be real is the result of our social relationships.

The Constructivist Paradigm

Piaget began developing the ideas that would later become known as constructivist theory in the 1920s. He proposed that people produce knowledge and meaning based upon their life experiences, through the mechanisms of accommodation and assimilation. Constructivism gained prominence after World War II as it was presented as an alternative approach to empiricism, realism, and naturalism; as such, it was discussed throughout the domain of the social sciences and became an influential theoretical paradigm of social sciences research all over the globe. Later on, the main premise of the constructivist scientific movement became the idea of cognition that allows us to constantly reconstruct the social reality surrounding us, producing representations of social reality adapted to our social and cultural views and subjective practices. From a methodological point of view, these latter are considered multiple and varied subjective meanings of our life experiences that individuals mentally create in order to understand the world, while the involved process is called the construction of meaningful reality. As such, knowledge, above all, is socially constructed—through language as a primary medium of socialization, while conversation contributes via interaction to the permanent social construction of reality as a secondary medium of socialization, according to Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s theory of the social construction of reality.

Discover how ordinary objects work, and expand your understanding of the familiar.

SIGN UP

" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">

Thank you for signing up!"

Back to homepage

By clicking "Sign Up", you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

In general, the dialectical view is specific to all the emergent constructivist approaches. This was also the case of Pierre Bourdieu’s constructivist structuralism (or structuralist constructivism) dealing with the ambivalent relationship between objective structures and subjective phenomena, where the notions of praxis, or practices (the results of this relationship), and habitus (the result of the structure’s internalization), defined as a structuring structure, are central. On the macro level, the same social and cultural context (called field) produces collective habitus.

Scholarly literature identified two main orientations of constructivism: (1) a system-oriented approach based on the symbolic construction of reality, which assumes the existence of multiple valid realities within the system, and (2) an action-oriented and interpretive social constructivism, which assumes the existence of collective meanings corresponding to social action schemes.

Core Concepts of Constructivism

The central themes of constructivism capture most of the core concepts of the approach: (active) agency, order, self, relatedness, life span, along with (social) reality and (social) structure, where individuals as active participants in their lives are called agents. The conventional vocabulary of constructivism was also enriched with the well-known concepts of norms and institutions as stable and normative structures organizing the world. Some authors argue that the constructivist theory should reconsider the term structure because it does not include the dynamics of constructivism; for example, in his book Making Sense, Making Worlds: Constructivism in Social Theory and International Relations, Nicholas G. Onuf states that institutions should better be called social arrangements because they reflect agents’ goals and interests. Starting from the core concepts of the constructivist movement, another formula was developed, Berger and Luckmann’s social construction of reality, later developed into a theory, with its alternative name—the construction of social reality, as elaborated by John R. Searle.

Constructivist Contributions to Communication Theory and Media Studies

Constructivism has contributed to the development of valuable approaches in communication and media studies with added value to significant methodologies and theories in this field, such as discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, critical media studies, and poststructuralism, and it continues to register significant advancements in this field. Starting from the general assumption that media represent an active actor within the process of the social construction of reality, the most eminent authors who have integrated the study of communication and mass media within the constructivist approach are Peter Berger, Niklas Luhmann, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. Furthermore, two specific notions have been elaborated within the constructivist approach in media studies, namely media construct and simulacrum, theorized, respectively, by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard. Simulacrum was defined as the representation of representation, reconstruction of a construction, or the copy of a somehow lost original; it became the core concept of hyperreality approaches. Their representatives argue that a perpetually simulated reality is produced and reproduced via the mass media where the referent has come to be absent.

Explore Britannica Premium!

The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.

SUBSCRIBE

In his book Mass Communication Theory, Denis McQuail considers social constructionism as one of the fundamental theories of media and society, focusing on the processes of media influence, whereby society is a construct, and the media provide the mechanisms for reality construction and formulate meanings or interpretations for social facts and events, which can be totally accepted, negotiated, or rejected. McQuail relates social constructionism’s influences on media studies first to the theories of propaganda and ideology and second to critical theory. According to McQuail, two other terms are essential in order to understand the constructivist approach in media studies: (1) framing and (2) schemata, allowing generalization. Media discourses are considered processes for the collective social construction of reality in terms of frames and schemata. The two concepts represent social cognitive frameworks of meaning as used in media content research. For example, Teun A. van Dijk developed the term news schemata, analyzing news syntax and focusing on news structure and the process of construction. In this perspective, the social construction of reality via the contents of mass media refers to mass media’s role of providing interpretations of social facts, events, values, trends, and so on, helping people to create personal and more elaborate interpretations—corresponding to the social construction of larger views on reality.

The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society.