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Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2001

Review Essay

The Social Construction of Social Construction

John P. Hewitt

The Social Construction of What?. By Hacking, Ian. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1999. 261 pages, paperback, ISBN: 0-6748-1200X.

The liberating phrase “social construction” was planted more than thirty years
ago in the title of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of
Reality. It has since, kudzu-like, overgrown the social sciences and humanities and
withered into yet another dead metaphor. Then, the image of “social construction”
helped to counter a frequently essentialist “mainstream” sociology as well as to
educate students about the human origins of things they thought inevitable and
eternal. Now, few understand where the phrase originated or what it might mean.
The truth was made plain to me a few years ago when a graduate student asked
me if the symbolic interactionism I espouse was an offshoot of “constructionism.”
No, I sighed, let me explain these things to you.
Ian Hacking, who teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto, unfortu-
nately does not trace the intellectual genealogy of “constructionism” in The Social
Construction of What? He provides no systematic overview of “constructionist”
theory or research, nor of debates within sociology about “social construction-
ism.” His goal—and, within limits imposed by his philosopher’s orientation to
such things, he achieves it—is to cast light on the various ways in which “social
construction” is deployed, understood, and debated. He does this by examining
words and their uses, teasing out varying meanings and differing questions that
lead to contrasting answers. One can be a “constructionist” in some ways but not
others, he avers, and more with respect to some issues than others. He frequently
departs from philosophy and its multitude of distinctions (and occasional differ-
ences) and writes ethnographically, describing the customs and world view of
various intellectual tribes. These are the best parts of his book, because they sit-
uate “social constructionism” within ongoing research programs and intellectual
debates rather than philosophical abstraction or clever distinctions.
Correspondence should be directed to John P. Hewitt, Department of Sociology, Thompson Hall,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003; e-mail: [email protected].

417
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C 2001 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
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418 Hewitt

I first became aware of this book in the bathroom of my daughter’s house

when I read an essay drawn from it published in Lingua Franca. The article was
disappointing, but the book is better. In one respect, however, my judgment after
reading the book resembles the one I reached on the toilet: Hacking’s analysis—not
to mention “constructionism” itself—would be improved by a solid understanding
of pragmatist ontology and epistemology. Hacking refers to Charles Saunders
Peirce only twice, and then briefly, and to William James, John Dewey, and George
Herbert Mead not at all. And it shows. Still, the book contributes to the informed
general reader’s understanding. Uninformed social scientists who utter the phrase
“social construction” in response to almost every question may benefit especially.
Hacking emphasizes two key ideas. First, social constructionism rests upon
a characteristic attitude toward the world. Social constructionists typically take a
critical stance toward the status quo, an attitude spelled out by Hacking in greater
philosophical precision. Writing about some phenomenon, “X,” that is alleged to
be socially constructed, constructionists are apt to make certain assumptions about
“X ” (whether “X” is delinquency, depression, child abuse, or quarks).
(1) X need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is. X, or X as it is at present, is not
determined by the nature of things; it is not inevitable.

“Very often,” he continues, “they go further, and urge that

(2) X is quite bad as it is.
(3) We would be much better off if X were done away with, or at least radically transformed”
(p. 6).

There is another condition—a precondition—for social construction talk.

Scholars begin to speak of gender or childhood or quarks as “socially constructed”
when they believe that these things are widely and naively thought to be inevitable.
Or, as Hacking puts it,
(0) In the present state of affairs, X is taken for granted; X appears to be inevitable (p. 12).

The precondition speaks to motive: social scientists do social constructionist anal-

yses because they want to reveal the social origins of what is commonly seen
as “natural” rather than “social,” a part of a given “reality” rather than a human
creation.
So, for example, a constructionist analysis of “depression” will be grounded
in the concern that people commonly and without reflection assume this “mental
illness” to be a “problem” of (what we have begun to call) “behavioral health” to
be remedied by “behavioral medicine” (i.e., psychology, psychiatry, or pharmacol-
ogy). The contemporary conception of depression is widely assumed to be “true”
because it has captured “reality,” the constructionist argues. Therefore, its social
origins must be revealed because they are not obvious to most people, including
the diagnosed, their healers, and various relevant social circles and communities.
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The Social Construction of Social Construction 419

Depression is not an inevitable fact of biology or neurotransmission, they argue,

and need not exist in the way it has been constructed. Moreover, the multitude of
folk beliefs, medical practices, scientific findings, diagnostic categories, and the
like that comprise “depression” have bad consequences. They expose people to
psychoactive drugs like Prozac whose long-term effects are unknown. Drugs make
it easy for the “managed care” system to prescribe pills rather than explore the psy-
chological and especially the social origins of human problems. Psychotherapists
treat patients at arm’s length and pharmaceutical companies are enriched. Some-
thing ought to be done, therefore, whether by unmasking and therefore possibly
destroying the utility of this socially constructed illness, or taking more radical
steps to abolish or change it.
Hacking’s second key point is that constructionism exists in a variety of forms
and that constructionists exhibit varying grades of commitment. Historical con-
structionism (known in some circles as “history”) shows how a particular “X”
has been created over time. Ironic constructionism shows the constructed nature
of “X” and recognizes that in spite of its socially contingent nature, it is there
and we can’t avoid dealing with it as a reality. Reformist constructionism says
well, maybe we can improve some aspects of “X” even if we can’t fully undo its
social construction. Unmasking constructionism, following Mannheim, exposes
the functions “X” serves and thereby undermines its authority. Rebellious con-
structionists actively argue that “X” is bad and that it should be changed. And
revolutionary constructionists go beyond ideas and try to change the world with
respect to “X.”
The foregoing may not be news to most social scientists, although it will be to
some. Social construction talk emerges from a desire to address an audience that
includes both social scientists who are not yet cognizant that everything is socially
constructed and the great unwashed outside the fold who think nothing is: Look!
Do we have news for you! But talk of “social construction” is sometimes downright
silly, as Hacking realizes, for in many instances it is so obvious within the fold
that something is socially constructed that saying so seems superfluous. You call
this news? I have known since I took Professor Llewellyn Gross’s honors class in
introductory sociology at the University of Buffalo in 1959 that everything is in
some sense socially constructed. And I thought revealing the “social construction of
reality” (though I did not have the phrase) was what sociologists were supposed to
do. Does the phrase add to our understanding within the fold? Does it communicate
clearly to others? Or is it just another instance of sociologists’ penchant for picking
up stray metaphors and keeping them as house pets even when they pee on the rug
and scratch the upholstery?
Perhaps the book would have been more informative for social scientists
had the author undertaken a social constructionist analysis of constructionism:
Social constructionism is now taken for granted by many social scientists and its
seeming inevitability should be revealed. This approach to knowledge need not
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have developed as it did, but how it came about and whose interests it serves and
how its ideology and practices make it seem so inevitable to a certain group of social
scientists can be made plain. Those in general sympathy with constructionism
might then attempt to show that things could have gone differently—that there is
a better version of social constructionism that could have been and still could be
created. Those in opposition would, of course, proceed to show how thoroughly
bad social constructionism—either the object itself or the name we give it—is and
propose its abolition.
The bulk, and the better part, of Hacking’s book consists of six chapters
that explore the uses of social constructionism across a variety of fields and top-
ics: quarks, madness, child abuse, weapons research, geology, and anthropology.
Hacking explores Andrew Pickering’s Constructing Quarks and the outraged re-
action of physicists to the idea that their theories and research could have led them
to any other conclusions than the ones they reached. He examines how geologists
fought over the nature of dolomite, a rock that resembles limestone but is actually
composed of magnesium carbonate that over time replaced calcium carbonate, a
process whose nature and timing presented a perplexing challenge for geology.
He explores the construction of child abuse, the idea and name of which did not
exist prior to 1961. And he explains the controversy over Marshall Sahlins’s How
“Natives” Think. About Captain Cook, for Example, which argued that, yes, the
Hawaiians did regard Captain Cook as one of their gods, and no, the idea that
they did is not merely the result of European myth-making. And along the way he
develops insightful analyses of how controversies over social constructionism are
linked to contemporary debates—the “science wars,” for example, or arguments
over “multiculturalism.”
Throughout these chapters, Hacking tells an interesting historical story, clari-
fies terms, and adds some distinctions of his own. There are “interactive kinds” and
“indifferent kinds,” for example, and “objects” and “ideas.” Quarks are indifferent
kinds: they do not care about or react to what people think about them. “Abused
children” are “interactive kinds.” To produce the idea of “child abuse” and to create
the category of “abused child” is to change people’s conduct, for both the child
and his or her others care about and react to placement into a category of “risk.”
He attempts to get his reader—who is educated and knowledgeable, but not deeply
involved in the controversies—to consider what is constructed and what is not.
And sometimes the question becomes, what is “real” and what is not.
The “reality” question frequently takes center stage in debates about social
constructionism. Natural scientists and a great many ordinary people tend to take
the view that there is a world out there whose reality is ready to be examined.
Quarks exist, and with the right ideas and techniques they can be discovered.
Constructionists say no, “quarks” come into being as answers to the questions we
raise about the physical world. As questions change or as the means of answering
them become exhausted or new ones are invented, reality changes. This is not
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exactly news either, at least not if you were reading Thomas S. Kuhn in, say, 1962.
What we ask, and how, and what we take as answers are by no means inevitable,
nor merely dictated by an external world. Physics (and everything else) could have
come out otherwise, had it asked different questions, developed other techniques,
or been influenced by other historical circumstances. Indeed, periodically it does
come out otherwise. To the social constructionist, it seems obvious that the world
is not a fixed place in which facts reside, but rather a place where facts are created
in response to our efforts to discover them and put them to use. To the physicist
already reeling from criticism of science as lacking the objectivity it claims, as
well as from a perceived serious decline of scientific authority, facts are facts, and
propositions to the contrary a form of anti-science madness.
Hacking clarifies matters, but not with full success. The problem lies partly
in the lack of a suitable language, but perhaps more in the lack of a convincing
image of what the world is like and how we know it. He makes strenuous ef-
forts to clarify the meaning of terms, put social constructionism into its social
and historical setting, and invent useful distinctions. But in the last analysis, the
language and imagery of pragmatism, particularly that of Mead and James, would
have accomplished more precisely and convincingly what his own words do only
approximately.
Human acts, always social, sculpt reality from materials encountered en route
to their completion. Some of these materials we have already created, though we
may not see our authorship when we encounter them. Other materials are not
humanly created and lie beyond our control—or at least are out of our control at
certain times. We respond to them on the basis of our ideas about them, but they
do not respond to us on the basis of our ideas about them. What we sculpt this
“reality” to be is probing and tentative, partial and incomplete, useful for some
purposes but not others. Human beings doggedly pursue “reality,” which refuses
to sit or stay on command.
Or, to put this in more concrete terms, a large and still-evolving body of ideas
and practices has created something we now call “depression.” The materials out
of which we sculpt the reality of “depression” come to us from unrecognized
religious legacies, from the historic theories and practices of psychiatry and the
emerging ones of psychopharmacology, and from popular ideas about sadness,
the human capacity for psychic bootstrapping, the greater authenticity of pain
over that of pleasure, and the right to happiness. There are diverse players in
the sculpting—sufferers, healers, panderers, pill pushers, insurance companies,
do-gooders, conceptual entrepreneurs, and government regulators, to name a few.
And the sculpting and the sculptors encounter not just materials other humans have
earlier created and foisted on the present, for now and then they strike a hard place
that does not so readily yield to ideas about it. Psychological bootstrapping is urged,
but frequently does not work. Therapists and their patients talk and talk and talk to
no avail, but a few weeks of Prozac alters the serotonin reuptake process in ways
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422 Hewitt

not well understood but that make earlier therapy suddenly effective. Individuals
know how happy they ought to be and know they are not and discover they never
can be no matter what therapy they are given.
It thus makes no sense to say that “depression” is “real” or “not real.” It does
makes sense to say that we have carved out “depression” in the course of our
human efforts to cope with what appears to be a widespread human affliction. It
makes sense to say that human actions have created a set of ideas and practices,
and that some of these practices work some of the time, some work at other times,
and some never do, but persist nonetheless. It makes sense to say that the “reality”
that psychopharmacology is beginning to carve out has been gaining favor over
that inherited from religion or psychiatry, and that this has happened for a host of
reasons: Because sometimes pills work as well as or better than talk, because they
are cheaper, and because taking pills and getting well is a major cultural script for
illness and recovery. And it makes sense to say that the “reality” carved out by those
who study the transmission of impulses from neuron to neuron is itself incomplete
and will remain so, however much they take umbrage at the idea. Theories of how
serotonin and other neurotransmitters affect what we call “depression” encounter
their own hard places, and as often as not those obstacles are erected by received
ideas about “depression” rather than by the elusive electricity and chemistry of the
brain. This is why, in fact, many students of “depression” have concluded that it
is not one “disease” but several, and that treating “depression” is the wrong way
to conceive of and treat the affliction. Perhaps the most useful illness categories
might be derived from various drugs and their effects. By this light, one would not
be “depressed,” but rather one would have the disease that Prozac treats—or one
of the diseases it treats.
The phrase “social construction” adds little to our grasp of the human problem
that we currently call “depression,” nor do debates about whether depression is
“real” or “socially constructed,” a product of chemicals or social experiences. Of
course, if someone defines something as real it has real consequences. And, equally,
if someone defines something as not real it still may have real consequences. Just
ask anyone who is “depressed” if they found it possible to think themselves out
of “depression” by calling it unreal. The “reality” of “depression” is multiple,
shifting, uncertain, debated, subject to interests, shaped by bad (or good) theories
and good (or bad) science, and always a product of the ways various parties act,
of the problems they are trying to solve, of the opportunities they find and the
obstacles they encounter, and of things that yield readily to conceptual touch and
things that do not.
Under these circumstances—and one could say as much of anything that soci-
ologists and other social scientists study—phrases such as “the social construction
of” and “a constructionist analysis of” add little to our understanding. They persist
not because they illuminate, or even help social scientists to market their lighting
equipment, but rather because so many sociologists are deficient in the capacity
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The Social Construction of Social Construction 423

even to recognize a metaphor when they see one, much less to imagine new ones.
They are content to take up whatever freeze-dried metaphors they find and brew
the intellectual equivalent of Taster’s ChoiceTM coffee. Not the real thing. Not
satisfying. Not worth drinking. Not even if occasionally we fool the restaurant
patrons (and ourselves) into thinking it is freshly brewed.