Research Paradigm: Constructionism

Secondly, this research project does examine cultural representations and their

“relation to power.” Today’s power struggles between Indigenous and dominant, ‘white’

Australia over the definition of identity are the background to this study. Consequently, this is a study which is indeed only relevant in a specific “social and political” context. Finally, I also believe that this study is, to a certain extent, a pragmatic enterprise. I wish to examine how the relationship of power I described has a real impact on the participants’

understanding of Indigeneity and of their identity in their everyday lives. Explaining how discourses about Indigeneity are constructed and reproduced within this relationship of power, and pointing out the issues it creates for the participants make problematic dynamics visible and may help shift perceptions.

1.2.2 Research Paradigm: Constructionism

In this project, I adopted a constructionist point of view which allowed me to consider the participants’ experiences as influenced by discourses about Indigeneity, whiteness or Australian-ness which are constructed over time.

The constructionist point of view is particularly significant when studying definitions of Indigeneity which are often presented as essential. An example is the common discourse about Indigenous people and their relationship to the Australian land presented as

“incommensurably”²⁷ different from that of non-Indigenous Australians, regardless of how far back the families of the latter have been living in the country. Several participants also mentioned an attachment to the land that they associate with their Indigenous heritage.

Adopting a constructionist point of view means questioning such an essentialist statement, not so much to confirm or infirm its reality as to understand how the participants – with a

‘white’ upbringing and Indigenous heritage – relate to it, and how this discourse is used as an inclusive or exclusive device – hence the importance of the notion of power.

27MORETON-ROBINSON, Aileen, “I Still Call Australia Home: Indigenous Belonging and Place in a White Postcolonizing Society”, in AHMED, S., CASTANEDA, C., FORTIER, A. andSHELLER, M. (eds.), Uprootings/Regroupings: Questions of Home and Migration, New York: Berg, 2003, p. 31.

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This outlook on the issues at stake is derived from a social constructionist paradigm first theorised by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in 1966.

1.2.2.1 Social Constructionism

It is our contention (…) that the sociology of knowledge must concern itself with whatever passes for ‘knowledge’ in a society, regardless of the ultimate validity or invalidity (by whatever criteria) of such ‘knowledge’. And in so far as all human ‘knowledge’ is developed, transmitted and maintained in social situations, the sociology of knowledge must seek to understand the processes by which this is done in such a way that a taken-for-granted ‘reality’ congeals for the man in the street. In other words, we contend that the sociology of knowledge is concerned with the analysis of the social construction of reality.²⁸

This statement from Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality informs the approach adopted in this thesis.There are two significant elements in this statement.

First of all, knowledge is constructed. This research project aims at explaining how the representations of Indigenous identity constructed over the years have in turn constructed the participants’ visions of Indigeneity. The main question for the participants is to know whether or not they fit within the definition of an Indigenous person they have built, and why. This obviously depends on the knowledge about Indigeneity they have acquired through what Berger and Luckmann call “social situations” – which in this case may be as different as having an Indigenous friend at school, watching Cathy Freeman on TV or reading a history textbook about the ‘first Australians’.

Most of the knowledge constituting the participants’ representations of Indigeneity was constructed by non-Indigenous people. However, it is interesting to see that in this research, Indigenous and non-Indigenous discourses often overlap. Indeed, several representations emanating from the Indigenous community, and which constitute obstacles to identification for the participants, mirror the ‘white’ representations of Indigenous people and culture. For example, parts of both communities can regard a lack of

28 BERGER, Peter L. and LUCKMANN, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality, London, England, New York, USA, Ringwood, Australia, Toronto, Canada, Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin, 1991 [1966], p. 15.

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colour, of culture, or of a ‘lived experience’ of disadvantage and/or racism as evidence of inauthenticity.

I would like to link Berger and Luckmann’s statement on the social construction of reality to another which is more specific to the ‘white’/Indigenous relationship, and which is at the foundation of this research project. Marcia Langton adopts a constructionist view of Indigeneity when she states that “the most dense relationship is not between actual people but between white Australians and the symbols created by their predecessors.

Australians do not know and relate to Aboriginal people. They relate to stories told by former colonists.” While Berger and Luckmann emphasised the fact that “face-to-face situation” is the best way for us to apprehend others because “in the face-to-face situation the other is fully real”,²⁹ they also explained that we interact with contemporaries whom we “apprehend only by means of more or less anonymous intersecting typifications”^{30 31} but also with successors and predecessors. In the Australian context, the stories about Indigeneity which circulate in non-Indigenous Australian society have notably been constructed over the years by predecessors, as Marcia Langton writes, and, according to her, their accounts have more influence on the way non-Indigenous Australians understand Indigenous people than “actual” social relationships – something which, as we will see, can be problematic.

However, the potential lack of ‘truth’ of such stories does not erase their impact on the participants. The second important element in Berger and Luckmann’s statement is the idea that the validity or invalidity of knowledge is inconsequential, which is an important tenet of this project. Coming back to the example of Indigenous people’s relationship to the land, as I stated, whether or not the feeling of being close to the land only results from the influence of the essentialist discourse I described matters less than the influence of this feeling on the way the participants relate to their Indigenous identity. I considered that whatever representations the participants had gathered to form their understanding of Indigeneity were ‘truths’ of their own, since this knowledge informed their realities. As

29BERGER, Peter L. and LUCKMANN, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality, op. cit., p. 43.

30 For example, an Indigenous Australian can be typified as black and traditional.

31Ibid., p. 47.

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William I. Thomas’ theorem states: “If people define things as real, they are real in their consequences.”³² Thus the aim of this research project is not to uphold or reject any specific definition of Indigeneity, but to reveal how discourses about this concept are constructs in evolution. To use Sardar’s expression, the “pragmatic enterprise” behind this is to broaden the definition of Indigeneity to include experiences like that of the participants, and to move beyond strict oppositions between ‘white’ and Indigenous identities.

1.2.2.2 Interpretive Social Constructionism

Understanding someone’s reality – and more particularly in this case, identity – as socially constructed is adhering to the social constructionist paradigm. Scott Harris goes further to introduce a distinction between what he calls Objective Social Constructionism and Interpretive Social Constructionism.

Interpretive constructionists believe that researchers ought to study the meanings people live by and how those meanings are created. (…) They are not principally concerned with discovering what things “really” mean in order to dispel myths or correct misunderstandings. They try to suspend belief and disbelief in reality in order to examine how meanings and reality are produced by and for members of various social settings. (…) For Objective Social Constructionist analyses, what are made, built or assembled are not interpretations but (…) real state of affairs. As a result, OSC arguments can be made without necessarily attending so much to what things mean to actors and the intricate processes through which those diverse meanings are created.³³ This is an interesting distinction as far as this study is concerned since, as I wrote, I often questioned myself on the importance of reality in the issues the participants mentioned and most particularly so when studying the notion of essentialism which is an important aspect of this study. Harris explains that interpretive social constructionists

“sidestep [the “nature vs nurture” debate] in order to study more carefully what people claim to be the reasons for behaviour, as well as how those claims are advanced, confirmed,

32 THOMAS, William I. quoted in HARRIS, Scott R., What is Constructionism? Navigating its Use in Sociology, Boulder, Colorado and London, UK: Lynne Rienners Publishers, 2010, p. 7.

33 HARRIS, Scott, R., What is Constructionism? Navigating its Use in Sociology, op. cit., p. 5.

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and contested. In contrast, more objective constructionists try to separate myth from reality regarding human behaviour.”³⁴ I have at some stages in this research considered that some phenomena were real – for example ‘white’ or Indigenous educations. Some sections of this thesis may also adopt a more objective approach (Harris pointed to the fact that it is often the case that both approaches are used by the same scholar, depending on the issue he/she deals with). Nevertheless, my interest lies less in finding out the real reasons for the phenomena I study than in understanding why they are important in the participants’ definitions of who they are, and how they make sense of them. This approach also makes sense considering the limited scope of this project.

1.2.2.3 Discourse, Knowledge and Power

The word ‘discourse’ which I use extensively across this thesis is thus defined by Ziauddin Sardar: “A discourse consists of culturally or socially produced groups of ideas containing texts (which contain signs and codes) and representations (which describe power in relation to Others). As a way of thinking, a discourse often represents a structure of knowledge and power.”³⁵ The links between discourse, power and knowledge were studied by Michel Foucault whose work has become influential in social constructionist analyses.

The links between these three concepts have informed the general way I approached this research project. According to Foucault,

It is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together. And for this very reason, we must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable. To be more precise, we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one;

but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies. (…) Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it, any more than silences are. We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it,

34Ibid., pp. 10-11.

35 SARDAR, Ziauddin, VAN LOON, Borin, Introducing Cultural Studies, New York: Totem Books, 1998, p. 14.

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renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. (…) There can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy.³⁶

Foucault’s attempt at defining the complexity and variability of the links between discourse, power and knowledge strongly resonates with the intricate way in which discourses analysed in this thesis work. I can think of several examples illustrating Foucault’s definition in this project. The use I mentioned earlier of colonial representations of Indigeneity by Indigenous people today, such as the blood discourse, is one illustration of the “complex and unstable” relationship between discourse and power, where a dominant ‘white’ discourse is now used by the dominated minority as a tool of re-empowerment.³⁷ The degree of control – or power – that the participants have over their identity when exposed to the different discourses about Indigeneity, whiteness or Australian-ness can be analysed by keeping in mind, as an overarching concept, Foucault’s links between discourse knowledge and power.

Another important point in Foucault’s theory is stressed by Stuart Hall: “Foucault does not deny that things can have a real, material existence in the world. What he does argue is that ‘nothing has any meaning outside of discourse.’”³⁸ This can be linked to my previous remarks on the concepts of truth, or of reality. The point of this thesis is to show that the realities the participants experience – for example, being called inauthentic because of a fair skin – are the products of discourses – “An Indigenous person is black”, in this case – which need to be understood as empowering or disempowering tools.

36 FOUCAULT, Michel, “Method”, in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction (translated from the French by Robert Hurley), New York: Vintage Books-Random House, Inc., p100, 1990

37 See 9.1.2.1.1.

38 FOUCAULT, Michel quoted by HALL, Stuart, “Foucault: Power, Knowledge and Discourse” in WETHERELL, Margaret, TAYLOR, Stephanie, YATES, Simeon J. (eds), Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005 [2001], p. 73.

Part I