Beyond Social Constructionism: Critical Realism and Social Work

What is Social Constructionism?

Social Constructionism has been instrumental in remodeling grounded theory. In attempting to make sense of the social world, social constructionists view knowledge as constructed as opposed to created. This paper discusses how social constructionists construct knowledge and argues that social constructionism is concerned with the nature of knowledge and how it is created and as such, it is unco...

Critical Realism and the Limits to Critical Social Science

Critical social scientists argue that explanations of social practices must be critical precisely in order to be explanatory, and that the necessity of critique gives social science a potentially emancipatory character. In practice, critiques of social phenomena are enormously contentious because it is difficult to establish agreement about what constitute problems, solutions or improvements, a...

Why Critical Realism Fails to Justify Critical Social Research 1

Many social scientists have argued that research should be designed to perform a ‘critical’ function, in the sense of challenging the socio-political status quo. However, very often, the relationship between the political value judgements underpinning this commitment and the values intrinsic to inquiry, as a distinct form of activity has been left obscure. Furthermore, the validity of those jud...

Introduction: Social Constructionism and Its Critics

The articles in this issue signify the maturation of social constructionism. After introducing the articles, I raise two questions that have remained under-represented on these pages. First, the historicization of constructionism has been avoided by constructionists and critics alike; and, second, the epistemological concerns have been dominated by realist– anti-realist debates. I conclude by i...

Realism and Social Science