Paradigm: Social constructionism

This study is informed primarily by the social constructionist tradition. As Gergen & Gergen (2008, p. 461) argue, social construction ‘refers to a tradition of scholarship that traces the origin of knowledge, meaning or understanding to human relationships’. Social

constructionism is a highly diverse and contested field of knowledge (Burr 2015; Gergen 2003; Holstein & Gubrium 2008; Witkin 2011). Despite the great deal of diversity, there are shared features regarding understandings of the social world that all approaches within this broad umbrella term share. In attempting to provide a definition, Elder-Vass (2012, p. 4) argues that:

If there is one claim that is definitive of social constructionism, it is the argument that the ways in which we collectively think and communicate about the world affect the way the world is. But social constructionism is not a single synthesis; rather, there are a range of social constructionisms, each striking a different balance between traditional sociological arguments and postmodernist innovations.

Holstein & Gubrium (2008, p. 3) argue that social constructionist theory challenges the idea

‘that the world we live in and our place in it are not simply evidently “there” for participants. Rather participants actively construct the world of everyday life and its constituent elements’. In order to understand how individuals and groups construct meaningful social realities, social constructionism focuses on language, communication, context, meaning making, identity and social interaction (Burr 2015; Gergen 2003).

Furthermore, in understanding how we experience reality as a social construct, it also

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encourages the development of a critical position towards taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world by ‘problematising the obvious’ (Holstein & Gubrium 2008; Parton

& O’Byrne 2000, pp. 14–15; Zufferey 2008).

In order to understand how individuals and groups make sense of their reality, social constructionist theory epistemologically prioritises the centrality of discourse. Language is understood to be a dominant macro structure and viewed as a constitutive force as ‘objects of the world are discursively produced’ (Witkin 2013, p. 27). Language and communication are the primary medium of reality construction and seen to create phenomenon, instead of simply being a transparent vehicle that reflects it. A core tenet is that as opposed to

empiricism, human beings are unable to develop understandings of the social world

unaffected by concepts, theories and personal experience (Burr 2003; Gergen 2003; Witkin 2013). In relation to the research process, from a constructionist viewpoint all social inquiry reflects the assumptions of the researcher, as all observation is theory-laden and therefore it is impossible to produce theory-free knowledge (Denzin & Lincoln 2005).

In order to research how news media constructions of the profession affect social workers, this study draws upon recent advances in social constructionist theory to provide an epistemological basis for the methodology and methods. As a key tradition within

constructionist theory, Bergerian sociology’s (Berger et al. 1963–2011) understanding of the social world was influential in the development of this research. According to Bergerian sociology, human subjectivity is, during the course of social interaction, externalised and objectivated, and in turn objectivated knowledge becomes structuralised and acts upon and shapes subjectivity (Berger et al. 1963–2011; Lewis 2010; Sibeon 2004). ‘Actors’ meanings in micro settings, when repeated and objectivated across time and space in effect become the macro-social world via a process that Berger & Luckmann (1966) describe as the social construction of reality’ (Sibeon 2004, p. 61); however, once it has been constructed the macrostructure enters back into the micro-sphere and shapes the consciousness, identity and the actions of individuals and groups.

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As Berger & Luckmann (1966, p. 4) state:

It is through externalisation that society is a human product. It is through objectivation that society becomes a reality sui generis. It is through internalisation that man (sic) is a product of society.

This process has been occurring for as long as humans have been social and therefore we are born into objectivated discursive structures with limited subject positions that form the basis of socialisation. Berger & Luckmann (1966, p. 149) argue that in researching the social construction process, ‘society and each part of it are simultaneously characterized by three moments (externalization, objectivation and internalization), so an analysis in terms of only one or two of them falls short’. Furthermore, in arguing for the duality of agency and structure, Berger & Berger (1976, p. 18 in Sibeon 2004) propose that ‘the micro-world and what goes on within it only makes full sense if it is understood against the background of the macro-world that envelopes it, conversely the macro-world has little reality … unless it is repeatedly represented in the face to face encounters of the micro world’. The authors claim that the social construction process largely consists of objectivated macro discourses and internalised/externalised micro subjectivities and inter-subjectivities (Sibeon 2004;

Lewis 2010).

Critics have argued that in his attempt to provide an account of both the subjective and objective structural dimensions of society, Berger overemphasised the subjective at the expense of the objective. In doing so, Berger follows mutually exclusive theoretical

strategies that collapse the difference between subjectivity and structure while arguing for the autonomy of structures from subjectivity (Sibeon 2004, p. 63). Lewis (2010) writes that critics (including Sibeon 2004) have focused on Berger’s explicit, meta-theoretical

ontological pronouncements about the nature of the social world as written in his and Luckmann’s seminal text The Social Construction of Reality (1966), whilst ignoring the more elaborate epistemological account of the agency-structure relationship that is presupposed by his extensive research. Based on Berger’s body of work, Lewis (2010) understands the micro and macro realm as emergent properties with causal powers, and that these powers interact to produce meaning that guides human activity, which he describes as emergent entities.

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As opposed to Berger & Luckmann (1966), Lewis (2010) proposes that macro discursive structures are ontologically irreducible to human agency, mainly because the structures are the bearers of emergent causal powers (Elder-Vass 2010; Lewis 2010; Wahlberg 2013). Also, macro structures are always constituted at least partly by individuals, but such structures may have causal powers that are different from those of their individual human

components (Lewis 2010). In line with ‘emergentist social constructionist theory’ (Lewis 2010) and Bergerian sociology (Berger et al. 1963–2011), human knowledge and action is comprised centrally, but not exclusively, of a duality of macro-discursive and micro-subjective elements with varying degrees of influence and determination in the social construction process. Lewis’ (2010) contribution to the development of constructionist theory has already been recognised by several authors (Elder-Vass 2010; Nizigama 2011;

Pratten 2013).

The aim of this research was to explore the role of news media portrayals of the profession in the social construction of social work. In accord with the theory, this needed to be understood at both a macro and micro level because it is the interplay between the two that in part constructs social work. Burr (2003) writes that macro and micro versions of social construction should not be seen as mutually exclusive, as there is no reason why they should not be brought together in a synthesis of micro and macro approaches. Danziger (1997) and Wetherell (1998) also call for a combined approach arguing that we need to understand the situated nature of accounts as well as the social structures within which they are constructed.

This study makes a significant contribution to this field by proposing a research design that can explore both domains in the social construction process.