Social constructionism

Social constructionism is a relativist epistemological position based on the notion of the social world being constructed by individuals themselves through their social practices (Cassell and Symon, 2004), rather than being a fixed entity which is external to individuals and impacts on them in deterministic ways (Cohen et al., 2004). As Weick has argued, people are part of their environments and through their actions they contribute to the creation of „the materials that become the constraints and opportunities they face‟ (1995:31). Socially constructed reality is therefore seen as a continuous and dynamic process where reality is constantly reproduced by people acting upon their representations of it. In this section I will explain the social constructionist paradigm in relation to six distinguishing features. Here I will be drawing on the work of particularly Vivian Burr (1995; 2003) who in my opinion has explained social constructionism without bias towards sociological or psychological traditions.

The primacy of social processes

According to social constructionism, the people we are and the world around us are the product of social processes (Cromby and Nightingale, 1999). In other words the values, practices and structures of meaning that constitute us are deemed to be socially produced. For example, gender from a social constructionist point of view would be seen as socially constructed rather than biologically determined. Gender construction starts with individuals being assigned to a socially agreed gender category on the basis of what their genitalia looks

like at birth (Lorber, 1994). Following this assignment, people treat those in one gender category differently from those in the other, and children behave different in response to this differential treatment (Lorber, 1994). Language plays a central role in social construction (Cromby and Nightingale, 1999). For example, in an English speaking country, traits such as honest, proud, humble and angry becomes available to us because of language. We learned these concepts upon our entry to this world and we were compelled to understand ourselves and our relationships in terms of these concepts.

Scholars disagree over the extent to which the social realm can be privileged over other determinants of human life. For instance some scholars (e.g. Edwards and Potter 1992, Edwards, Ashmore and Potter, 1995) seem to believe that reality refers to a world which is solely discursively constructed. Others however (e.g. Harre, 1990; Burr, 2003) do not deny the existence of a reality beyond text but argue that the only way we can understand reality is by discovering people‟s perceptions of it. I am partial towards this view.

Historical and cultural specificity of knowledge

Social constructionism implies that individuals‟ understandings of the world must be seen as historically and culturally situated and changing across time and space (Young and Collin, 2004; Burr, 1995). The idea of people‟s meaning making being culturally situated portrays them as relational beings (see Gergen, 1999; 2001). As Crotty (1998) argues individuals‟

group affiliations influence the way they perceive themselves, their relationships and others.

Studies have drawn attention to cross cultural variations in individuals‟ meaning making. For example Adya‟s (2008) findings highlight how western and South Asian women differ to each other in their interpretations of gender discrimination within the IT workplace in the US.

Most South Asian women in Adya‟s (2008) sample had not identified „genderization‟ in their

US workplace while most American women had perceived gender stereotyping and discrimination. Adya (2008) argues that a national culture of high power distance may partially explain lower perceptions of unfavourable workplace attitudes among South Asian women. She also suggests that many years of societal inequality faced by women in India may explain their relatively favourable perceptions of the American workplace. Adya‟s (2008) findings illustrate that individuals‟ meaning making is historically and culturally situated as stated by the social constructionist paradigm (see Burr, 1995).

Construction of knowledge is a negotiated process

In social constructionism the construction of knowledge is seen as a negotiated process where certain interpretations are privileged over others. While all constructions claim to be factual some constructions are likely to be seen as more truthful than others. However this can vary in relation to specific cultures (Burr, 2003). For example natural events such as tsunamis are likely to be interpreted in terms of science rather than in terms of religion in most societies in this world, although there may be a few societies who may interpret a tsunami in terms of gods‟ doings.

Practical conditions of life are seen to provide a suitable climate for particular common sense views prevailing at any one time (Burr, 2003). Once these views become available culturally, they may be used by powerful groups to advance their interests (Burr, 2003). For example, women are represented as relational beings and the main nurturers in their households, due to them bearing children (Gilligan, 1982), and this has successfully been used by men to maintain their privileged positions in organisations (see Gatrell, 2010; Lyng, 2010).

Knowledge and social action goes together

Social constructionism states that knowledge and social action go together where prevailing versions of events give rise to certain actions and marginalises alternative ones (Burr, 2003).

For instance leadership being defined in terms of traits such as aggressiveness and risk taking implies potential leaders to perform masculinity and marginalises non-masculine leadership styles commonly associated with women. Similarly women being constructed as feminine require women rather than men to perform femininity at the workplace often entertaining corporate clients and smoothing corporate deals (see Bolton and Muzio, 2007), which at times leaves them out of core work processes in the organisation. Thus dominant knowledge clearly has implications for what we can do and what we should do, although there may be variations between different cultures and historical time periods. However we often do not see that our actions are influenced by dominant meanings or acknowledge the existence of alternative meanings. According to Burr (2003) dominant meanings are firmly entangled to social practices that over time they become objective realities to individuals who experience them as such in the course of their socialisation (see Berger and Luckmann, 1966).

Nevertheless the dominant position of a particular perspective cannot be ensured for eternity.

According to Burr (2003) marginalised voices will eventually emerge and contest dominant views. The rise of feminism which led to alternative discourses of femininity and masculinity emerging during the 20th century can be taken as an example to illustrate this point.

Moreover men‟s invisible power in organisations is brought to attention in academic literature (see Lewis and Simpson, 2010) and stories about women who have fought their way to the top of organisations by demonstrating their superior technical knowledge (see Alvesson and Billing, 2009) are becoming increasingly common in current society, although there may be some variation between different nations.

Iterative relationship between individuals and society

The essence of social constructionism is in highlighting the iterative relationship between individuals and society. As Berger and Luckmann (1966) argue individuals continuously construct the social world through their actions, which then becomes the reality to which they must react to. In other words individuals and society are in a continuous dialectical process of influencing each another, where social action impacts on society and thereby maintains or transforms existing social arrangements that people confront.

However it is important to note that human beings may not be able to transform the social world overnight in any way they choose since the world has already been constructed by those who preceded them and therefore may assume a status of objective reality for others (see Berger and Luckmann, 1966). As noted before, dominant understandings are often deeply entwined to social arrangements that challenging these understandings would involve resisting their associated social practices as well. People can therefore expect to find some degree of resistance to their attempts to change society since groups in society whose privileged positions are threatened by transformation may fight back (Burr, 2003). For example, Lewis and Simpson (2010) talk about how men in organisations would be likely to react to women who display technical know-how, good leadership skills and demonstrate that work and family could be achieved together, since their privileged positions in organisations would be threatened by these new entrants who bring with them alternative ways of doing things.

I am not stating that social change is altogether impossible but rather that it is likely to be time consuming and incredibly challenging. Although individuals continuously construct the world they live in, they must also to some extent live their lives within the frameworks of

meaning which precedes them (Burr, 2003). Berger and Luckmaan‟s (1966) early work captures the dialectic relationship between individuals and society extremely well in highlighting how individuals simultaneously construct society and how society continuously shape individuals.

Self and agency as dynamic and dialectic entities

Social constructionists talk about individual „self‟ in terms of identity, which according to Burr (2003) is a social concept. In other words elements which make up human identities such as sane/insane can be seen as socially produced concepts rather than essences of a person. Burr (2003) argues that a person‟s identity is constructed by interweaving of many different threads such as age, class, gender etc. These components are deemed to be constructed through the discourses that are present in society which people draw upon in their communication to others. Here „discourses refer to a set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so on that in some way together produce a particular version of events‟ (Burr, 2003: 64).

However it is important to note that a social constructionist view doesn‟t imply that identities are simply imposed on people; rather people have an element of choice in constructing their identities. In other words, for each thread of our identity there is deemed to be a limited number of discourses on offer out of which we might construct ourselves, since our class, gender, ethnic origin and so on may impose limitations upon the kind of person we can claim to be (Burr, 2003). However within these limited discourses, we have a certain element of choice regarding the ones which we draw on to construct our self in interaction with others.

According to Burr (2003) people can resist identities unacceptable to them and claim positions in alternative ones. To illustrate this point through an example, if a woman becomes

aware that her identity as a full-time worker represents her as a less dedicated mother to society, she could frame her paid work in terms of providing for children with the financial imperatives of work. This is likely to represent her as a „good mother‟ in society.

Having described the social constructionist paradigm in relation to six key features, I will explain how career would look from a social constructionist point of view and justify my choice of a social constructionist approach for careers research.

Career from a social constructionist view

From a social constructionist point of view „career‟ has been defined as constituted by an actor in interaction with others as she moves through time and space (Cohen et al., 2004). I see two key implications of taking a social constructionist view to career research. First, social constructionism contextualises career (Young and Collin, 2004) by highlighting how individuals and their societies are deeply implicated with each another and continuously and iteratively impact on each other. This perspective would therefore look at career in relation to the various social contexts within which it is embedded such as organisational, familial and wider socio cultural contexts. Thus it would highlight how individuals‟ careers are both enabled and constrained by the contexts they are situated within and enable scholars understand people‟s career meaning making in relation to their social contexts. Second social constructionism which highlights the iterative relationship between individuals and society has the potential to illuminate how individuals contribute towards maintaining and/or redefining the contexts within which they operate through their career enactment.

Third, by taking a critical stance towards taken for granted understandings and attempting to understand how certain understandings come to be seen as natural, this perspective would

encourage researchers to question overarching notions of acceptable career behaviour (Cohen et al., 2004). In other words social constructionism would entail understanding of career at a deeper level rather than a surface level (Lewis and Simpson, 2010) and help scholars move away from reductionist understandings.

Chapter 8: Methodology

In this chapter I address the methodology adopted in this study.

The objective of this study is to examine how professional women in Sri Lanka make sense of and enact their careers. Implicit here is the assumption that individuals are inseparable from their social contexts (see Burr, 2003) and the social worlds individuals are situated within are therefore central to understanding their lives (Giorgi, 1970). I am interested in how women perceive the social contexts that impact on their career development, and explain how they engage with these social contexts in the course of pursuing their careers. Therefore I intend to collect rich and detailed data from a selected number of Sri Lankan women to construct theoretical frameworks for understanding women‟s careers in a deep and meaningful manner. In this sense, theory development will be grounded in the data collected.

The methodological approach I adopt in this study can be broadly described as qualitative.

Here I use semi structured interviews as the main research tool. In the paragraphs that follow I will first introduce the qualitative approach to research and then explain the use of semi structured interviews in my study. Finally I will talk about the research process of this study focusing on the specific processes of sampling, data collection and data analysis.