Social constructivism is a theory of cognition and learning that argues that the categories of knowledge and reality are actively created by social relationships and interactions. Based on the work of theorists such as L. S. Vygotsky, it focuses on the personal construction of knowledge through social interaction.

Constructivism and social constructivism

Constructivism is a learning or meaning theory that explains the nature of knowledge and the learning process of people. He argues that people create their own new knowledge in the process of interaction, on the one hand, between what they already know and believe, and the ideas, events and actions with which they are in contact, on the other. According to the theory of social constructivism, knowledge is acquired through direct participation in the learning process, and not through imitation or repetition. Learning activities in constructivist settings are characterized by active interaction, inquiry, problem solving, and interaction with others. The teacher is a guide, facilitator and challenger who encourages students to ask questions, challenge and formulate their own ideas, opinions and conclusions.

The pedagogical tasks of social constructivism are based on the social nature of cognition. Accordingly, approaches are proposed that:

• provide students with the opportunity to have specific, contextually relevant experiences through which they search for patterns, raise their own questions, and build their own models;
• create conditions for learning activities, analysis and reflection;
• encourage students to take greater responsibility for their ideas, to ensure autonomy, to develop social relationships and empowerment aimed at achieving goals.

Background of social constructivism

The educational theory under consideration emphasizes the importance of culture and context in the process of knowledge formation. According to the principles of social constructivism, there are several prerequisites that cause this phenomenon:

1. Reality: Social constructivists believe that reality is built through human activity. The members of society together invent the properties of the world. For a social constructivist, reality cannot be discovered: it does not exist prior to its social manifestation.
2. Knowledge: For social constructivists, knowledge is also a human product and is socially and culturally constructed. People create meaning through their interaction with each other and with environment in which they live.
3. Learning: Social constructivists view learning as a social process. Not only does it take place within a person, but it is not a passive development of behavior that is shaped by external forces. Meaningful learning occurs when people engage in social activities.

The social context of learning

It is represented by historical events inherited by students as members of a particular culture. Symbol systems such as language, logic, and mathematical systems are learned throughout a student's life. These symbol systems dictate how and what to learn. Of great importance is the nature of the student's social interaction with knowledgeable members of society. Without social interaction with more knowledgeable others, it is impossible to get the social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to use them. So, young children develop their thinking abilities by interacting with adults.

learning theory

According to L. S. Vygotsky, the founder of social constructivism, knowledge is formed through social interaction and is a common, not individual experience.

Learning theory suggests that people create "meaning" from educational experiences by learning with others. This theory states that the learning process works best when learners function as a social group that co-creates a shared culture of artifacts with shared meaning.

Within the framework of this theory, the leading role is assigned to the activity of people in the learning process, which distinguishes it from other educational theories, mainly based on the passive and receptive role of the student. It also acknowledges great importance symbol systems, such as language, logic, and mathematical systems, that are inherited by students as members of a particular culture.

Social constructivism suggests that learners learn concepts or create meaning from ideas through their interaction with other ideas, their world, and through interpretations of that world in a process of actively constructing meaning. Learners create knowledge or understanding through active learning, thinking and working in a social context.

According to this theory, the student's ability to learn depends to a large extent on what he already knows and understands, and the acquisition of knowledge should be an individually tailored building process. Transformational learning theory focuses on the often needed changes that are required in the learner's bias and worldview.

Constructivist philosophy emphasizes the importance of social interactions in the construction of knowledge.

According to constructivism, the formation of each of us occurs through our own experiences and interactions. Each new experience or interaction is fed into our schemas and shapes our perspectives and behaviors.

© Ishchenko N.S., 2010

UDC 1:316 BBK 60.001

THE PROBLEM OF THE FORMATION OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

N. S. Ishchenko

The problem of the formation of constructivism is essential in social philosophy. First of all, it should be noted that "constructivism" is a multi-valued concept, which causes a number of difficulties. We can talk about constructivism in art and architecture, in mathematics and logic, in sociology, in education. The problem of constructivism and its role in philosophy has long been discussed in Western philosophy. But the philosophy of constructivism takes its origin in the epistemological tradition Ancient Greece. A number of pre-Socratic statements testify to the emergence of doubts about the possibility of considering knowledge as a reflection of some reality even at the dawn of the emergence of philosophy as such. Xenophanes is the first of the ancient philosophers who doubted the possibility of reliable knowledge. In the history of philosophy, Xenophanes is given the place of one of the first forerunners of skepticism by most researchers. The epistemological statements of Xenophanes are the first in the history of Greek thought to raise the question of the possibility and limits of knowledge. It is characteristic that Xenophanes connects the illusory nature of knowledge with the anthropocentricity of human thinking, the inability to go beyond the limits of one's own consciousness. This is clearly evidenced by his reasoning about the relativity of divine images by those who worship them. The idea of ​​the inevitable anthropocentricity of any knowledge makes Xenophanes related to another ancient Greek mentioned by Glazersfeld, the sophist Protagoras. His idea that man is the measure of all things leaves no doubt about his epistemological position. How could we

to say today, the vision of the world by man inevitably remains human. Our ideas and concepts, our ideas about ourselves and the world will remain human due to the fact that the way we created all this is our way.

Numerous specific theses against the possibility of reliable knowledge (in particular, the paths of Aenesidemus and Agrippa) make it possible to include skeptics among the forerunners of radical constructivism. It should be noted that “the traditions of skepticism in philosophy are so deep and significant that it is rather not skeptics who are the forerunners of constructivism, but constructivism is a kind of modern skepticism. Skeptics, which means doubters, that is, those who consider true knowledge to be fundamentally impossible, have existed at all times - from the sophists, through Montaigne and David Hume, to Albert Camus and the constructivists of our century - and will always exist. For example, the teaching of Pyrrho, the founder of skepticism, concerns ethics and, secondarily, epistemology. He believed that we can know nothing about things, and therefore it is safer (happier) to refrain from judging them.

The key word in skepticism is doubt, understood, however, not in the sense of "I doubt in order to come to true knowledge", but in the sense of "I doubt, since true knowledge is impossible." You should never say: "I know", it is correct to say: "It seems to me." The justification for this position is most detailed by Sextus Empiricus in the form of tropes, the authors of which are recognized as Aeneside and Agrippa. It must be said that no

which of these tropes have not lost their philosophical relevance to the present. Sextus Empiricus defines skepticism (skepticism) as the art of opposing any conceivable (seeming) objects to each other, which, as a result, precisely due to the inconsistency of things and arguments, leads us first to restraint in judgments, and then to finding peace of mind.

It is important to note that already in the days of ancient skeptics, a question arose that has constantly accompanied any skeptical position in epistemology throughout the history of philosophy: is not the principled anti-dogmatic position of skepticism itself a dogma? According to Sextus Empiricus, the most important thing is that, by uttering these key words (“this is how it seems” and “I do not affirm anything”), one declares only what it seems to him, how it looks from the standpoint of only his own experience. , he does not assert anything reliable about the external state of things. In other words, skepticism cannot be a dogma, since it does not assert anything as an ideal of knowledge, it does not dogmatize. Constructivist writers constantly have to deal with the similar reproach that constructivism is an internally contradictory doctrine.

In addition to the above-mentioned thinkers of antiquity, it is necessary to mention Plato as a philosopher who was one of the first to systematically raise the question of the relationship between the object and its perception and tried to counter the skepticism of the Pyrrhonists with a justification for the possibility of true knowledge.

In the process of reviewing the traditions of skepticism in ancient philosophy, the main contradiction of epistemology is formulated, which, having passed through the centuries, has remained unresolved up to the present day, and which constructivism claims to resolve. The school of Pyrrho, described and characterized by Sextus Empiricus more than half a millennium after its existence, proclaimed that it was the presence of reason, and not its lack, that led to the conviction that living beings had no way of ascertaining to what extent

their experience is consistent with the independent world, if at all. In order to establish or prove any correspondence, lived experience must be compared with reality, and such a comparison would be possible only if it were possible to contrast what has been experienced with what has not yet been experienced. The only way to the not yet experienced passes through the experienced, thus leaving no chance to establish whether the experience we are experiencing somehow distorts what is given to us by reality. Before proclaiming true knowledge of the world, you should make sure that the picture that you build, based on your own feelings and ideas, is in every respect a true representation of the world as it really exists. However, in order to be sure that this similarity is valid, you need to be able to compare a given representation with what it is supposed to represent. But that is exactly what you cannot do, because you cannot go beyond your human way of perceiving and thinking. Traditional epistemology has presented itself with an insoluble dilemma. If knowledge and its result - knowledge are necessarily a description, an image of the world as it is, then we need a criterion by which we could judge the truth of our descriptions and images. The main contradiction lies in the fact that, while declaring knowledge to be a reflection of reality, we at the same time have no opportunity either to verify the correspondence of knowledge to its object, or, in fact, the existence of this prototype in general. It is in an attempt to find a solution to this problem that the philosophy of constructivism lies.

Initially, constructivism was presented not so much as a direction as a method, an approach used by philosophers - representatives of various schools, primarily in the field of epistemology. This approach is opposed in the theory of knowledge to realism. If realism treats the world around us as given to us and assumes that

that knowledge fundamentally cannot correspond to objective reality, reflect it, then in constructivism, the construction performed by the subject plays the leading role. In this regard, it is important to be clear about what exactly is meant when one speaks of constructivism in epistemology. It's about not simply that thinking is a kind of activity for the production of knowledge, or that concepts can be represented as logical constructions from sense data. The main idea of ​​the approach, which is called epistemological constructivism, is the thesis that the reality with which cognition (both scientific and everyday) deals and in which we live is nothing more than a construction of the subject himself, sometimes conscious, but more often unconscious. There is no other reality, reality, apart from that constructed by the subject, and cannot be. Thus, Kant showed that the reality that appears to the cognizing subject as given in his experience is in reality a construction. According to Kant, the world is the way we construct it through a priori forms of rational activity. With complete certainty, he argued that our knowledge of the world of things is the result of the constitutive function of our mind. “According to Kant, for example, the world we experience is constructed by our minds to obey certain fundamental laws, among them the laws of geometry and arithmetic, but Kant didn’t think we were free to do otherwise. On the contrary, he thought that any conscious mind was constrained to construct a world which obeys those laws”2. Thus, the subjective states of consciousness of an individual in their content depend on external experience and are determined by it. This understanding of experience as dealing with external reality, which is “embedded” in the very structure of individual consciousness, Kant calls “empirical realism”.

In order for the construction of a cognizable reality to be possible, there must be a material for construction and the one who carries out this process, that is, the subject of construction. The material cannot be given by the world of objects of experience, since, although they appear as real to the individual

consciousness, in fact, from the point of view of Kant, they are constructions. Therefore, the presence of such material presupposes the existence of a thing-in-itself independent of cognition and construction, which affects the sensibility of the individual subject. The subject of construction, according to Kant, cannot be an empirical individual, to whom the objects of experience are presented as real, independent of his consciousness. “Such a subject can only be a Transcendental Subject that goes beyond the empirical... The Transcendental Subject and the thing-in-itself, as it were, fall out of experience, lie on the other side of knowledge”3.

The material of sensations is what is introduced in the process of cognition by an empirical, that is, individual psychological, subject, without which the transcendental subject cannot carry out its synthesizing activity. Husserl reproaches Kant for psychologism. He takes an esoteric point of view, asserting the coincidence of his vision and reality, while he considers intentionality to be the true reality, that is, “the state when consciousness is established, set up in such a way that the object itself enters into it, shows itself”4.

Husserl considered evidence to be the criterion of certainty. Evidence, according to Husserl, is the direct experience of truth as agreement, the coincidence of the intentional content of an act of consciousness with the objective content, the objective given. Consciousness allows the object to reveal itself to us, to show itself, to reveal itself. Thus, Husserl's perception is the main mode of consciousness, “after all, the being of an object is directly revealed in perception; what we call perception from the side of the subject, from the side of the object corresponds being.

Kant proposed a constructivist solution to the problem: the object must correspond to knowledge, and not vice versa. Only in this way is the reliability of the repeated procedure established. “According to Kant, the Copernican discovery of the heliocentric system is only a hypothesis, later confirmed by Newton. This statement leads Kant to view science as a field

synthetic judgments a priori, incompatible with our modern view of science as a field of knowledge prone to error.

The post-non-classical stage of science is more and more distinguished by the definition of cognition through the factor of interaction between the system of scientific knowledge and the social and cultural practice that generates it. So, the essence of the requirements of social constructivism in the 70s. 20th century consisted in an externalist reading of scientific knowledge, which meant deriving the process and results of science not from laws immanent to it (the position of internalism), but from “external” (social) forces and data. One of the most famous examples on this topic is presented in the book by B. Latour and S. Woolgar “Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts”, “where the authors, using microsociological analysis, prove that a new scientific fact discovered by scientists, thyrotropin -releasing hormone is a social construct, that is, created by the practice and interaction of scientists and has no independent meaning outside of this activity”7. Another famous example is in E. Pickering's book Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics. Here the author defends a similar idea that the quark as a scientific fact is situational, that is, determined by the sociocultural context. If this context were different, we would get a different (but this does not mean incorrect) physics. Constructivist epistemology is characterized by a new interpretation of objectivity, as well as a clearly visible anti-reductionism. Even in social constructivism, forced to more actively overcome the temptation of anthropocentrism, in its latest versions a course has been developed for the consistent rejection of such constants as "society", "culture" and "history". The ideals of science have changed dramatically over the past two centuries. Today it is suggested that reason itself “does not represent some primordial factor called upon to play the role of an impartial and infallible judge”8. It develops historically. 60-70s were a turning point in the development of philosophical and methodological studies of science. It is in this

period, the final transition was made from the dominance of the positivist tradition, focused on the ideal of methodology, modeled after the exact natural science disciplines, to a new vision and understanding of science. Today, talking about science is impossible without taking into account its historical changes, as well as the impact of social and psychological factors on its development. The idea of ​​scientific knowledge as an integral organic system immersed in a historically changing socio-cultural environment can be considered the main programmatic requirement of science at the present stage. It has become impossible to accurately predict the future of science, as well as the future of the civilization that it defines.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. constructivism received a powerful development in connection with the problem of substantiating science, especially mathematics. “One way of solving the problem of justification was to refer to precise rules and procedures. Operationalism, instrumentalism and constructivism were the currents of this direction. As a special option, one can single out methodological constructivism, which was also associated with the problem of justification. It was developed by H. Dinger and his followers. He sought to apply the principle of constructivism to build phenomena in specialized empirical areas in such a way that each of them had confidence in the tools used. Science must be built methodically, layer by layer: the exact experience of creating tools, then the materials used, then the methodical construction of space and time. Thus, protophysics, protochemistry, protobiology, etc., must be created. In the "new" constructivism, a decisive shift in the problematics takes place. In the center is not the problem of justification, but the study of the process itself (biological, neurophysiological, psychological) of creating structures. Thus, the central question is

about how the observer's knowledge of the world arises, which he perceives as his own world.

Social constructivism was formed within the framework of the social sciences and the humanities.

Its initial premise is a kind of fundamentalism, largely discarded in the philosophy of natural science. Social scientists, having abandoned social atomism and individualism, today mainly proceed from the concept of society as a whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts. Such a concept of society can be used to explain private social phenomena (practical actions, acts of speech, economic structures, religious beliefs): each of them is constructed from the totality of the social functions or roles it performs.

Methodological fundamentalism and reductionism, transformed from a method of social criticism into a method of constructing systematic theoretical knowledge, turned against themselves. After all, the concepts of the social and human sciences must also allow social interpretation. The very concept of society is thus a social construct, the origin of which cannot be explained in any other way than from itself. This thought move was made by N. Luhmann, whose concept was a special type of social radical constructivism. He had to return to a kind of social atomism and admit that society itself is a construct, a product of individual communicative acts, while communication already presupposes social ties.

Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge developed by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman in their book The Social Construction of Reality (1966).

The theory of social construction by P. Berger and T. Lukman is traditionally attributed to the phenomenological direction of sociology. All theories developed within the framework of this approach are based on the implicit assumption that the world around us is a creation of our consciousness, therefore the main task of the theoretical study of phenomenologists was to identify ways of structuring the world in our consciousness. P. Berger and T. Lukman made an attempt to build a phenomenological theory of society, the basis of which is “self-evident meanings”.

According to the theory of social construction, “everyday life is a reality that is interpreted by individuals and has subjective significance for them as a whole world. Individuals in their subjectively meaningful behavior consider the world Everyday life"for granted" reality. The intersubjective everyday world is constructed in the process of objectification of subjective meanings”9. The construction of social reality is impossible without language - language is the most important sign system of society, in which all experience is ordered and classified in concepts. Institutions and roles as socially prescribed actions are classified according to the rules of the organization of meanings and become objectively and subjectively real.

The main problem in the theory of P. Berger and T. Luckmann is the existence of social reality as a typed activity, manifested in the functioning of institutions and roles. To describe the process of institutionalization and the formation of roles, the authors introduce such concepts as "habitulization" and "institutionalization". Habitulization means that a repetitive action becomes habitual and is done without thought. An important psychological result of habitualization is the reduction of various choices of action - a set options actions are reduced to several "types". “Institutionalization is defined as the typification of habituated actions by actors of various kinds”10. Analyzing these concepts, one can find that the content of both is indistinguishable. Consequently, the concepts of "habitulization" and "institutionalization" can be replaced by the more general category of "typification". It should be noted that the introduction of concepts that are indistinguishable in content into the theoretical system turns out to be a problem for the concept of P. Berger and T. Lukman (“objectification” - “reification”, “legitimation” - “double legitimation”).

An institution is a typification of habitual actions by various actors. A role is also a socially prescribed typing. Role is opportunity

implementation of institutionalization at the individual level. Linguistically objectified roles are an essential element of the objectively accessible world of any society. The world turns out to be subjectively real for the individual as a result of the internalization of roles. On the one hand, the institutional order is real only insofar as it is realized in the roles performed, and on the other hand, the roles represent the institutional order that determines their character and gives them an objective meaning. In the context of these reflections, it can be concluded that both the role and the institution are indistinguishable "empty" concepts. Similarly, with the introduction of the concept of "typization", here we can introduce the concept of "type", which is an invariant, to which the whole variety of social phenomena is reduced. "Type" as a pure form turns out to be a construction.

The main categories of the concept of P. Berger and T. Lukman - "society" and "individual" - are also indistinguishable. The reality of "society" is reduced to the existence of "institutions", while the "individual" completely coincides with its behavioral "role". In their opinion, society is constructed by individuals in the process of their interaction, and the individual becomes a social product as a result of socialization and assimilation of socially typified activities.

Society as an institutional order, in turn, is an objectified human activity, which is formed in the process of mutual typification of this activity. Thus, the concepts of "individual" and "society" can also be reduced to the concept of "social type", and reveal their sameness, indistinguishability and "emptiness".

The reduction of social reality to a set of patterns of activity involves the formulation of the problem of the typifying principle, the question arises “who typifies?”. The typifying "beginning", which can only be defined as the absolute foundation of society (absolute subject), is outside social reality, it must be considered as a transcendental principle of social organization.

noah reality. Thus, a contradiction is revealed: between everyday life constructed in everyday practice and the constructing principle of society, taken out of its limits, absent in everyday life. Thus, it is impossible to explain the emergence of social norms and standards of behavior. The explanation of social reality is possible only within the framework of mythological or ideological systems. Mythology implies the existence of a myth about the creation of the world. The myth assumes that the sacred, otherworldly beginning creates something that did not exist before. Norms, rules, patterns of behavior are presented to a person as an objective reality. Another way of explaining social reality is ideology. Ideology, designating new objects and renaming existing ones, claims to be a complete and total explanation of social reality. The subjective vision of reality and its explanation is projected onto the world and posited as absolute, objective, existing in reality.

In the theory of P. Berger and T. Lukman, this problem is solved by introducing the concept of “legitimation” into the theoretical system. By creating new meanings to explain the meanings of already existing typifications, it explains the institutional order by giving cognitive validity to objectified meanings, and justifies it by giving a normative character to its practical imperatives. Legitimation explains to the individual why he should do something and why things are the way they are. Analytically, legitimation can be divided into different levels, the highest of which is the level of the symbolic universe. The symbolic universe is a theoretical system, accumulating different areas of meaning, which explains the institutional order in its entirety. The symbolic universe is understood as the matrix of all socially objectified and subjectively real meanings. Society, its history and the life of individual individuals are considered as phenomena occurring within the framework of this universe. On this

level of legitimation, the mental integration of disparate institutional processes reaches its ultimate existence. The whole world is being created. Institutional roles become a way of participating in a universe that is organized as an institutional order.

Reality is socially determined, that is, specific individuals and groups of individuals determine reality; therefore, in order to understand the state of the socially constructed universe, it is necessary to know who constructed it, that is, to answer the question "who speaks?". P. Berger and T. Lukman postulate the thesis that reality is determined in theoretical constructions developed by experts. Experts, creating patterns of action, perform the function of changing, redefining reality, creating a new picture of the world. Denoting new objects and renaming existing ones, experts define social reality, and the definition of social reality is connected with power relations. Power in society includes the power to determine how the basic processes of socialization will be organized, and thus the power over the production of reality is established. The monopoly right to determine reality belongs to the state. However, bureaucratic power never manages to achieve complete dominance and the possibility of an absolute right to shape and impose a vision of social reality. In fact, in the social world there is a constant clash of many definitions of reality.

The goal of social constructivism is to identify the ways in which individuals and groups of people take part in the creation of their perceived reality. This theory looks at how people create social phenomena that are institutionalized and become traditions. Socially constructed reality is a constantly ongoing, dynamic process; reality is re-reproduced by people under the influence of its interpretation and knowledge about it. Berger and Luckman argue that any knowledge, including basic knowledge, as perception

reality, based on common sense, occurs and is maintained through social relationships. When people communicate with each other, they do so based on the belief that their perceptions of reality are similar; and by acting on this conviction, their perception of it as the truth of everyday life is only strengthened. Since everyday knowledge is a product of the agreement of people, as a result, any human typologies, value systems and social education presented to people as part of objective reality. Thus, we can say that reality is constructed by society itself.

Consequently, social reality, considered by P. Berger and T. Luckman as everyday life, becomes problematic, since it is based on an absolute typifying principle that has no place in social space. Objectified typifications, which are the foundation of society, reveal the lack of a real basis, uncertainty. In a situation of uncertainty of the foundation of social reality, there is a reference to the transcendental subject responsible for the construction of types. The elements of reality (“institution”, “role”, “socialization”, “legitimation”, etc.) reveal their indistinguishability, “emptiness”, which implies the problematization of social reality, the identification of the space for its actualization. This space is the reality structured by the subject in the process of interpretation, and this interpretation is a reflection of the subjectivity of the interpreter, and not of objective phenomena, reality.

The role of constructivism in science is very great. Schemes and constructs are used in building models and pictures of the world. Science uses idealized constructs to organize experience. Engineering and cognitive activities have much in common, scientific knowledge is largely the construction of certain objects that were originally given to us from the side of their functions or properties. Unlike an engineer, however, a scientist often creates designs that are far from

practical feasibility. Nevertheless, construction in scientific knowledge is used everywhere: it is the construction of theories, the design of an experiment, the construction of classifications and coordinate systems, etc. And any natural scientific theory is a certain constructor with a set of examples of its use to explain certain phenomena.

Social constructivism is a serious, strong and modern-sounding philosophical concept. Regardless of the assessment of the content of this concept, it should be noted that it drew attention to the philosophical problems that arise in the analysis of living systems, and made us once again seriously think about the fundamental philosophical question of the possibilities and limits of knowledge. And the problem of the formation of such a direction in social philosophy remains relevant to this day. Constructivist versions of cognition are extremely in demand in the modern philosophical and methodological reflection of science because they hide a powerful reserve of its future development.

NOTES

1 Tsokolov S. A. The philosophy of radical constructivism of Ernst von Glasersfeld // Vestn. Moscow university - Ser. 7, Philosophy. - 2001. -№4. - S. 38-59.

2 Boghossian P. A. Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism. - Oxford; N.Y.: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 2006.-VIII. - (In English). - 140 r. - Bibliogr.: R. 132.

3 Lektorsky V. A. Kant, Radical Constructivism and Constructive Realism in Epistemology // Vopr. philosophy. - 2005. - No. 8. - S. 11-21.

4 Rozin V. M. Phenomenology through the eyes of a methodologist // Vopr. philosophy. - 2008. - No. 5. - S. 116-126.

5 Ibid. - S. 119.

6 Rockmore T. Kant on representationalism and constructivism // Epistemology. Philosophy of Science. - 2005. - T. II. - No. 1. - S. 41.

7 Stolyarova O. E. Social constructivism: an ontological turn (Afterword to the article by B. Latour) // Vestn. Moscow university - Ser. 7, Philosophy. - 2003. - No. 3. - S. 39-51.

8 Bogatyreva E. D. “Overcoming” of rationality in radical constructivism // Vestn. Samar. humanitarian. academy. - Issue. "Philosophy. Philology". - 2006. - No. 1 (4). - S. 64-76.

9 See: Berger P., Lukman T. Social Construction of Reality. - M. : Medium, 1995. - 323 p.

CONSTRUCTIVISM VS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

ACT is the story of an experiment so casually begun that it took a quarter of a century to bring it to the necessary purity and understand what its true meaning was. It all started very badly - with an unfortunate use of the expression "social construction of scientific facts." Now it is clear to us why the use of the word "social" could lead to such a significant misunderstanding; two completely different meanings are intertwined in it: the type of material AND the movement of the assembly of non-social entities. But why did the introduction of the word “construction” cause even more confusion? In explaining this difficulty, I first hope to make clear why I attach such importance to this small section of the study of science. In it there was a renewal of the meaning of all the words that make up this short innocent expression: what is a fact, what is science, what is construction, and what is social. Not too bad for an experiment that was carried out so thoughtlessly!

When on idle English language something is said to be constructed, meaning that this “something” is not a mystery that appeared out of nowhere, but has a more modest, but more visible and interesting source. Usually a huge advantage of visiting construction sites is that it is an ideal vantage point to observe the connections between human and non-human actors. It is easy to amaze visitors with their feet in the mud with the sight of all the construction workers hard at work during their most radical metamorphosis. This is true not only of science, but of all other construction sites. This is most obvious to those who are at the origin of the metaphor itself, that is, the places of construction of houses and buildings created by architects, masons, urban planners, real estate agents and homeowners. The same is true for activities in the arts. "Creating" anything - movies, high-rise buildings, facts, political rallies, initiation rituals, haute couture, cooking recipes - represents a point of view that differs significantly from the official one. Thanks to her, you not only enter from the back door and get acquainted with the skills and abilities of people of practical action, but also get a rare chance to see what it is like to emerge from nothingness by supplementing any existing entity with its time dimension. And, even more importantly, when you are taken to any construction site, you experience an exciting and invigorating feeling that things could be different or might not work out- a feeling that is never so deep when meeting with the finished result, no matter how beautiful or impressive it may be.

So, the use of the word "construction" at first glance is ideally suited to describe a more realistic version of what it means for any thing. be sustainable. Indeed, in any field, the assertion that something is constructed has always been associated with an assessment of its strength, quality, style, durability, value, etc., so connected that no one would bother to report that a skyscraper, a nuclear reactor, the sculpture or car is "engineered". It's too obvious to specifically point out. The main questions are different: is the design successful? is the construction solid? how durable or reliable is it? is the material expensive? Everywhere - in technology, engineering, architecture, art, design to such an extent is synonymous real, that the question immediately turns into the following and really interesting one: Fine is it designed or bad?

At first, it seemed obvious to us - scientists in the past - that if there were such construction sites to which the usual understanding of constructivism could easily be applied, then these should be laboratories, research institutes with their huge arsenal of expensive scientific tools. Science, even more than art, architecture, and engineering, demonstrates the most extreme cases of the absolute artificiality and perfect objectivity. There is no question that laboratories, particle accelerators, telescopes, national statistics, masses of satellites, giant computers and collections of samples are all artificial places whose history could be documented in the same way as the history of buildings, computer chips, locomotives. Yet there was not the slightest doubt that the products of these artificial and costly places represented the most tested, objective, and certified results ever achieved by collective human ingenuity. That is why we have taken to using the term “fact engineering” with great enthusiasm to describe the amazing phenomenon of artificiality and reality going hand in hand. Moreover, the statement that science is also constructed is just as awe-inspiring as all other "made from": we went through the back door; we learned about the skills of people of practical action; we have seen how innovations are born; we felt how risky it was; and we have witnessed a mysterious fusion of human activity and non-human entities. While watching a fairy tale film made for us by our fellow historians of science, we can watch the most incredible spectacle frame by frame: the truth is gradually being reached in breathtaking episodes without any certainty of the result. In terms of suspense, the history of science surpassed any plot that Hollywood could concoct. Science for us has become even better than just objective, it has become interesting as interesting as it was for its actors involved in its risky production. Unfortunately, the excitement quickly subsided when we realized that for other colleagues in both the social and natural sciences, the word "construction" meant something quite different from what common sense had hitherto associated with it. The words "something constructed" in their understanding meant that this "something" was not true. They seemed to have the strange notion that they were presented with an unpleasant choice: or something is real and unconstructed, or it is constructed and then artificial, unnatural, invented, made and false. Not only was such a notion impossible to reconcile with the enduring meaning of a "well-designed house," a "well-designed" computer program, or a "well-sculpted" statue, it vanished at the sight of everything we had witnessed in laboratories: there "to be invented" and "to be objective" went hand in hand. If you were to break the seamless narratives of "making the facts" into two branches, it would make the emergence of any kind of science simply incomprehensible. Facts are facts, literally. because they are made, that is, they have arisen in artificial situations. Every scientist we studied was proud of this link between design quality and data quality. This strong connection was indeed the main confirmation of the reputation. And if epistemologists could forget it, there is an etymology to remind everyone of it. We were ready to answer a more interesting question: Fine or Badly constructed this scientific fact? And certainly not to be dominated by this most absurd alternative: “Choose! Either the fact is real or it is fabricated!”

Yet it has become painfully clear that if we want to continue using the word “construction,” we will have to fight on two fronts: with epistemologists who still claim that facts are “of course” not constructed, what is so much as much sense as the statement that children are not born from the womb of their mothers - and with our "dear colleagues" who apparently think that if the facts are constructed, then they are as weak as fetishes, or at least like what, how sure they are"believe" fetishists. Then it would be safer to completely abandon the word "construction" - especially since the word "social" has the same internal defect: it plunges readers into rage as steadily as the cape of a torero bull. On the other hand, for all the reasons just given, "construction" remains an excellent term. Especially useful in it is the clarity with which this concept focuses our attention on the scene of the junction of human and non-human actors. Since the whole idea of ​​the new social theory we are inventing was to renew the understanding of both - what is a social actor and what is a fact - the main thing is still not to lose sight of the most important construction sites where this double metamorphosis takes place. . That's why I chose to do with constructivism what we did with relativism: both terms, biting as insults, have too venerable a tradition not to be raised like a glorious banner. After all, those who criticize us for relativism never noticed that its opposite would be absolutism. And those who criticize us for constructivism probably did not want to see that the opposite position, if the words make sense at all, is fundamentalism.

On the one hand, it seems easy enough to restore a clear meaning to the much-maligned term "construction": we just have to use the new understanding of the social set out in the previous chapters of this book. Just as a "socialist" or "Islamic" republic becomes the opposite of a republic as such, adding the adjective "social" to the word "constructivism" completely reverses its meaning. In other words, "constructivism" should not be confused with "social constructivism". When we say that a fact is constructed, we simply mean that we are explaining a solid objective reality by involving various entities whose assembly may not succeed; on the other hand, the expression "social constructivism" means that we substitute what this reality is made of, some another substance the "social" out of which it is "really" built. The explanation of the heterogeneous origin of buildings is replaced by another one in which everything is built from homogeneous social matter. To put constructivism back on its feet, it suffices to note that as soon as "social" again denotes association, the very idea of ​​a building built of social substance disappears. For any construction to take place at all, non-human entities must play a major role, which is what we wanted to say from the very beginning, using this rather harmless word.

But apparently this rescue operation was not enough, since the rest of the social sciences seem to share a completely different understanding of this term. How could this happen? Our mistake was this: because we never shared the idea that the word "construction" could mean reduction to only one type of material, we were too slow to develop antibodies against the accusation that we reduce facts to "mere construction." Since it was obvious to us that social "construction" meant a renewed attention to the many heterogeneous realities involved in the construction of this or that state of affairs, it took us years to adequately respond to the absurd theories with which we were superficially associated. Despite the fact that constructivism was for us a synonym growth realism, our colleagues in social criticism hailed us as having finally shown that "even science is gone! It took me a long time to understand the danger of the term, which in the hands of our "best friends" clearly meant a kind of revenge on scientific facts for their strength and reflected their claims to truth. They seem to mean that we are doing to science the same thing that they - to their great pride - did to religion, art, law, culture and everything that everyone else believes in, that is, they turned it all into dust, showing his "done". For someone who has never been trained in critical sociology, it is hard to imagine that people can use causal explanation in their own discipline as evidence that the phenomenon they are explaining does not really exist, let alone associate the artificiality of the construction with deficit. reality. Constructivism involuntarily turned into a synonym for its opposite - deconstructivism.

No wonder that our enthusiasm when we showed the "social construction of a scientific fact" was met with such fury by the actors themselves! For physicists, it is far from the same thing whether to have complex discussions about "black holes" - or, as it is portrayed, "struggle for influence among physicists." It is far from all the same to the religious soul whether to turn to God in prayer or to pray, as they say, simply "personalizations of the Society." For a lawyer, it is not the same thing to follow the Constitution and succumb to the pressure of powerful lobbies lurking in the shadow of the law. The couturier is not all the same whether to cut tight and shiny corduroy or - as they say - to make "social differences" visible. It's not the same thing for a cultist to be associated with the existence of a deity and hear about yourself worshiping a wood fetish. The substitution of the social for another substance is perceived by each actor as a catastrophic loss that must be resolutely resisted - and rightly so! However, if the word "social" is used not to replace one type of substance with another, but, on the contrary, to develop connections that make the state of affairs strong and lasting, then in the end one can listen to such a different social theory.

How is it possible, we wondered, such a discrepancy in the interpretation of the main tasks of social science? That is why it gradually became clear to us that there is something deeply flawed, not only in the standard philosophy of science, but also in the standard social theories used to explain what is happening in areas other than science. This is what made the ACT researchers appear at first glance either too critical—they are accused of attacking "even" the facts and not "believing" in "Nature" or "external reality"—or too naive: they believe in the activity of "real things" "outside of us". In reality, ACT only tried to make changes in the use of the critical repertoire in general, simultaneously abandoning both the word "nature" and the word "society", invented to reveal "behind" the social phenomenon what "really happens". However, this meant a complete reinterpretation of the experiment that we initially carried out unintentionally when we tried to explain scientific production sociologically. After all, a lot can be said in defense of red rags in the hands of nimble bullfighters, if in the end, thanks to them, they managed to tame a wild beast.

From the book In the Shadow of the Silent Majority [The End of the Social] author Baudrillard Jean

…or the end of the social The dynamics of the social are not clear and definite. What characterizes modern societies - its growth or decay? In other words, are they characterized by socialization or consistent desocialization? The answer depends on how

From the book Introduction to Social Philosophy: A Textbook for Universities author Kemerov Vyacheslav Evgenievich

§ 1. Stages of the social process Of course, the selection of such large forms was made by historians and philosophers based on some objective grounds, so the “large-format” image of the history of society contained fairly accurate characteristics

From Weber's book in 90 minutes (just about the complex) the author Mityurin D

§ 1. Facets of the social process The usual way to represent, describe, think and explain being - human or natural - can be something like this. There are people or things (people and things). Between them arise, exist, some connections change. Between them

From the book Philosophy: A Textbook for Universities author Mironov Vladimir Vasilievich

The theory of social action However, the behavior of the individual is also studied by psychology, and in this connection the question arises: what is the difference between the psychological and sociological approaches to the study of individual behavior? Weber answered this question at the very beginning of his

From the book Morning of the Magicians author Bergier Jacques

2. Correlation between the biological and the social Already Aristotle called man a "political animal", thus noting his inclusion both in the sphere of the biological and in the sphere of the social. Later, questions arose before scientists: what is the relationship between these

From the book Philosophy of History author Panarin Alexander Sergeevich

From the book Sociology [Short Course] author Isaev Boris Akimovich

2.2. Historiosophical constructivism of R. Descartes Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, not only proclaimed the thesis "Cogito ergo sum" - "I think, therefore I exist", but also absolutized it. A man remains a man as long as he thinks, otherwise

From the book Introduction to Philosophy the author Frolov Ivan

5.1. The essence of social deviation

From the book Selected Works author Weber Max

2. The unity of biological and social Natural and social in man Representing a social being, man is at the same time a part of nature. From this point of view, people belong to the higher mammals, forming special kind Homo sapiens, and therefore

From the book Theory of Justice by John Rolls

2. The concept of social action 1. Social action (including non-intervention or patient acceptance) can be oriented towards the past, present, or expected future behavior of others. It can be revenge for past grievances, protection from danger in the present.

From the book Adept Bourdieu in the Caucasus: Sketches for a biography in a world-system perspective author Derlugyan Georgy

II. Motives of social action Social action, like any other behavior, can be: 1) goal-oriented if it is based on the expectation of a certain behavior of objects in the external world and other people and the use of this expectation as "conditions" or

From the book ENLIGHTENING EXISTENCE author Jaspers Karl Theodor

79. THE IDEA OF SOCIAL UNITY We have already seen that, despite the individualistic features of justice as fairness, the two principles of justice provide an Archimedean point of view for assessing existing institutions and the desires and hopes they give rise to. These

From the book Matrix of the Apocalypse. Europe's last sunset author Baudrillard Jean

Transformations of social capital According to sound reasoning, there was nothing surprising in this accidental discovery of the scientific and intellectual incarnations of the perestroika politician and well-known nationalist Yuri (aka Musa) Mukhamedovich Shannbov. As elsewhere in the period

From the author's book

3. Existence in the struggle against the integrity of history and against the will to non-historicity. - Thinking of history as a whole, whether as a cipher, or in immanent pictures of its unity, brings it in the form of some closed objectivity: a single huge

From the author's book

The End of the Social The dynamics of the social are not clear and definite. What characterizes modern societies - its growth or decay? In other words, are they characterized by socialization or consistent desocialization? The answer depends on how you understand

From the author's book

The end of the social (continued) 3. The social certainly existed, but now it is no more. It existed as a coherent space, as the foundation of reality. Social relation, production of social relations, social as a dynamic abstraction,

Smagina M.V. 2007

M. V. Smagina

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: FEATURES AND PROSPECTS

The work is presented by the Department of Social Philosophy of the Ural State University.

Scientific adviser - Doctor of Philosophy, Professor E. G. Trubina

The "objectivity" of the modernist worldview, with its emphasis on facts, reproducible procedures, and rules of general application, ignores the specific, localized meanings of individuals. Social constructivism (SC) is one of the areas of postmodern philosophy. The adoption of a narrative, social constructivist worldview entails useful insights into how concepts of power, knowledge, truth are discussed and accepted in modern society how people accept and define themselves. SCs are more interested in exceptions than in rules, specific contextual details more than in generalizations.

This gives additional opportunities for understanding and accepting the world around us.

Social constructivism is a view on the nature of subjectivity held by many contemporary social theorists and those who work in the humanities. In the debates between social constructivists and essentialists the following issues are under discussion: how do we represent social differences in our theories without returning to dual hierarchized oppositions? who determines or validates the production of new research narratives? why should we insist on the rights of individuals to construct their own stories? do new subject position impact on form - are we dealing with metaphor, representation, or some kind of "real"? These are complex and charged questions.

The study of socio-cultural para-components such as the impact on meters of scientific knowledge includes scientific research on interhuman and

social relations, the influence of social relations and values ​​dominant in society on the search for knowledge and the social dimensions of the research process itself. This process is carried out mainly within the framework of social constructivism - a theory and paradigm focused on the processes of social influence on people's ideas and ways of their activity (including within the framework of science). Thus, the philosophers and methodologists of science T. Kuhn and P. Feyerabend analyzed the socio-cultural factors of the emergence and development of science and proved the social conditionality of the ideal of scientific objectivity. The social theorists N. Berger and T. Luckman, having comprehended the features of the cognition of sociopsychological reality as constructed by society and at the same time independent of the will of people, showed that “the connection of individual perspectives with social processes and their materialization through language continue to play a major role in social constructionist dialogues" 1. The social philosopher J. Habermas rethought the traditional understanding of the rational foundations of knowledge by analyzing the diverse links between knowledge and human interests.

In this article, we will be interested in such a specific manifestation of the growing influence of social constructivism as its comprehension and use within the framework of domestic social psychology.

Social constructivism in psychological knowledge is a problem that has been actively developed over the past few decades. One of the active participants and initiators of this process is the well-known American psychologist, the leader of American social psychology, Kennent Gergen, some of whose works have been translated into Russian2. In a certain sense, it is precisely his ideas that many associate with social constructivism in general. Jer-

Jen considers social reality as a reality of generally valid meanings and meanings created by discourse. In his research project, he encourages colleagues to shift their focus from how people create the reality of their own lives based on their own experience, to “how people interact with each other to construct, modify and maintain what is considered true in their society. real and meaningful"3.

K. Gergen's approach is interesting for several reasons. American social constructivism is trying to position itself as a new theoretical basis for social psychology, while recognizing its deep kinship and textual connection "with a variety of intellectual traditions"4. Comparing two competing conceptual psychological approaches - behaviorism and cognitivism, he claims that both of them are wrong both in theoretical constructions and in methodology based on experiment and observation. Gergen contrasts his own concept of social constructivism with the experimentalist direction that occupies a leading place today.

K. Gerdzhen’s “attacks” on socio-psychological experiments are explained, firstly, by the fact that the social constructivist paradigm always positions itself in opposition to traditional social science and traditional psychology (especially to those ideas about social and psychological reality that take place there). Secondly, social constructivism emphasizes that the psyche, behavior, ideas of people depend on specific cultural contexts. And since the psyche is conceived as created from the symbolic resources of a particular culture, then the place of understanding it as a certain substance is occupied by the understanding of the psyche as a discursive process or as different

discursive practices of human interaction with each other, during which people tend to appear as socially responsible beings. Thirdly, discourse and language are understood by Gergen's version of social constructivism as the central organizing principle of construction.

Since the social-constructivist paradigm emphasizes the dynamic relationship between the "psychological" and the "constructive", the strategy that is usually used in socio-psychological experiments does not satisfy it: the instrumental attitude to discourse is only a means of accessing the "true" psychological reality seems insufficient and fundamentally wrong. There is nothing but a discursively given and interactively created psychological reality - this is how the key thesis of social constructivism can be formulated.

Critics of the overly rigid position that K. Gerdzhen took in relation to experiments, reasonably draw attention to the following circumstance. The social constructivist paradigm (unlike the experimental one) cannot claim to be a concrete method (at least not in the sense that psychologists traditionally use the term for). It is no coincidence that some researchers prefer to speak of social constructivism not as a method, but as a school of thought5. In their opinion, the lack of clarity of the method (in the sense that the social constructivist method cannot be described as a strictly specified set of procedures and calculations) does not mean that social constructivism lacks a developed system of argument or rigor, or that social constructivism does not have well-developed theoretical foundations. .

On the other hand, one gets the impression that, defending one's own pre-

property, social constructivist authors tend to underestimate the methods and paradigms with which they compete. Indeed, does not experimenting with human prejudices or memories (which social psychologists so often do) correspond to some kind of social constructivism in the sense that situations that are missing in reality are artificially constructed in the experiment? Russian social psychologists talk in a similar, balanced way about the possibilities offered by social constructivism.

Assessing the prospects for the development of Russian socio-psychological knowledge, the founder and leader of the Russian socio-psychological school G. M. Andreeva in a recent article at the same time gives an analysis of the development of social psychology as a whole. In her opinion, “throughout the entire period, science carried out a painful search for its status, mainly determining its attitude towards two “parental” disciplines - psychology and sociology”6.

With regard to Russian social psychology, Andreeva adheres to the position that it has already developed as a “sociological” discipline7, however, “the internal logic of the development of social psychology and the nature of social changes in its “object” at the end of the 20th century require a revision of many positions taking into account the real social context”8.

The revision by social psychology of its own positions contributed to the introduction of various paradigms into the methodological basis of Russian psychological science. Along with others, the paradigm of social constructivism falls into the field of view of Russian researchers. And it is precisely about the use of social constructivism that we find many responses in publications devoted to the prospects for the development of modern Russian social psychology.

(see articles by T. D. Martsinkovskaya, Onuchin, G. M. Andreeva).

Comparing American social constructivism with European socio-psychological concepts, G. M. Andreeva notes that, although some of the provisions of the concept of social constructivism can to a certain extent be qualified as “a special claim to create a new paradigm”, many of the ideas he formulated “in European developments have already been largely implemented”9, in particular, in such areas as the theory of social identity by A. Taschfel, the theory of social representations by S. Moscovici10, and the theory of discourse by R. Hare11.

Despite a number of criticisms of social constructivism, G. M. Andreeva pays tribute to its positive aspects, since its main advantage, in her opinion, is that in its origins one can find a wide variety of elements for creating a new socio-psychological theoretical bases. She believes that due to the fact that social constructivism synthesizes a number of influential intellectual traditions, it manages to avoid excessive radicalism in favor of “a sound search (emphasis mine. - M.S.) for a more productive paradigm in the system of socio-psychological knowledge”12.

K. Gerdzhen created social constructionism (his version of social constructivism) simultaneously as a philosophical and socio-psychological paradigm. G. M. Andreeva also believes that “... science, in search of answers to cardinal questions, must go beyond the conventional boundaries between disciplines, using those “languages” that turn out to be suitable for describing various aspects of a multi-level interconnected reality”13, thereby considering the social constructionist paradigm as an intermediary capable of deriving a philosophical

philosophy and social psychology into the space of dialogue.

The interdisciplinary orientation of social constructivism provides additional resources for a complete understanding of the place of man in the world by including the resources of philosophical knowledge, in particular phenomenology. For example, T. D. Martsinkowska emphasizes that in the light of social constructivism, “phenomenological reduction. is important not only for structuring information received from the outside world. but also for structuring meanings, including understanding and meaning of one’s existence in the world”14.

Among the interesting works carried out by Russian psychologists, those whose authors refrain from fixing their attitude to social constructivism, but work in a very close vein to it, stand out. Thus, the child psychologist M. V. Osorina considers how social representations give the child “a holistic worldview and a sense of being included in the general order of the universe, that is, to set a certain system of basic coordinates that help the child determine himself in vital relations with the world”15. The theory of M. V. Osorina is brought closer to social constructivism, firstly, by the fact that it shows the conditionality of the process of growing up and socialization of the child by a specific cultural context. Secondly, it is demonstrated how the child builds his interactions in the social space, relying on the symbolic resources of culture (folklore and elements of children's subculture: horror stories, counting rhymes). Thirdly, the discourse here is conceived as the central organizing principle of the social construction of the child's personality.

I would like to draw attention to the following point. Showing socio-constructivist ideas by a psychologist

about how the language works and how

meaning (namely, the reasoning that words in the children's world never have meaning in themselves, but get their meaning from the contexts in which they are created or constructed) is based on a huge number of subtle observations. M. V. Osorina believes that, based on observations of children, it is possible to identify ways in which a child independently enriches his environment in order to satisfy his own gaming and personal needs. She emphasizes that this is not given importance. After all, it is precisely the harmonious combination of observation and analysis that can significantly enrich the knowledge of specialists about the many necessary steps of a socializing personality. For example, she says: “Usually adults do not understand the psychological meaning of the huge intellectual and spiritual work that a drawing child does between the ages of three and four. Although it is precisely on the example of early childhood drawings that an adult can clearly see the sequence of construction phases (italics mine. - M.S.) of a child's speculative picture of the world. Speculative - that is, generalizing the understanding reached by one's own mind of how the world works. The child embodies this understanding in his drawings and thus makes it possible to at least partially see the results of the grandiose work that is invisibly taking place in his soul.

This position can be interpreted in such a way that the “proportion” of social constructivist attitudes and specific options for obtaining empirical data (experiment, observation) in various psychological concepts may differ. In particular, in the approach of M. V. Osorina, the experiment leaves the leading positions characteristic of traditional psychological research. At the same time, great importance is attached to analysis, which indicates the closeness of her methods to modern sociological socio-constructivist methodologies.

The use of the social constructivist paradigm is relevant in the context of mastering strategies for working with the social stock of knowledge. In addition to certain theoretical reconstructions taking place directly in the space of scientific and cognitive activity, we observe the use of social constructivism in psychological practices.

Thus, relying on the opinions and studies of the leading social psychologists of our country, we have shown that social constructivism can act as an integrating strategy that allows, on the one hand, to preserve the specifics and results of Russian science, and on the other hand, to fully include Western models in the context methods used by Russian psychologists.

NOTES

1 Gergen K. J. Realities and relationships. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1994. P. 67.

2 Jurgen K. The movement of social constructionism in modern psychology. Social psychology: marginal self-reflection™: Reader. M., 1995; Jurgen K. Social constructionism: knowledge and practice. Minsk, 2003; Gergen K. Social Psychology as History // Gergen K. J. Social Psychology as History. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 26, no. 2. 1973. (Translated from English by A. Deryabin.)

3 Friedman D., Combs D. Construction of other realities. Stories and stories as therapy. M., 2001. S. 50.

4 Gergen K. Realities and relationships. P. 67.

5 Cited. Quoted from: Billig M. Methodology and scholarship in understanding ideological explanation. In Antaki, C. (Ed.). Analyzing Lay Explanation: A case book. London: Sage.

6 Andreeva G. Social psychology. M., 2002.

7 Andreeva G. On the “sociologization” of social psychology in the 20th century. S. 6.

8 Ibid. S. 7.

10 According to the theory of social representations by S. Moscovici, cognitive acts are doubly dependent on social representations that are generated by the group, and at the same time are in the process of change, as they are included in the communication system.

11 R. Hare's discourse theory considers human behavior as a specific text. Therefore, according to this approach, a prerequisite for any socio-psychological research is linguistic analysis. In order for different groups and individuals to interact, they must adhere to uniform systems of meanings. In the process of discussion, there is a constant refinement of the meanings by all participants in the interaction. Conversation and discussion should ensure that the categories are interpreted in such a way that their meaning is shared by all participants in the discourse.

12 Andreeva G. On the “sociologization” of social psychology in the 20th century. S. 7.

13 Martsinkowska T. Philosophy and social psychology - an attempt at dialogue // Questions of Philosophy. 2005. No. 12. P. 120.

14 Ibid. S. 124.

15 Osorina M. The secret world of children in the space of the world of adults. SPb., 2004. S. 11.

Constructionists recognize each other by calling each other constructionists after all.

Most fully - Peter Berger and Thomas Lukman Social Construction of Reality. Treatise on the sociology of knowledge. Knowledge - the fundamental phenomenon of our life - has a social nature. This does not mean that social being determines social consciousness, but also that knowledge is a component of social interaction, and the analysis of this interaction implies an analysis of knowledge.

Knowledge as a common cultural environment. What is the importance? Sociology changed a lot after the Second World War. Classical sociology is oriented towards the analysis of institutions, and where the sociologist does not see an institution, there is no sociology.

After the Second World War, new religious movements flourished, to which sociologists were the first to pay attention. Religious scholars espoused respectability, Italian texts in Aramaic and Greek, and temporality and modernity testified to the transitory nature of New Age phenomena.

It is important for sociologists - the new age is characterized by the blurring of social institutions, they should not be leveled. A strange situation: an individual can have his own religion. This is the same absurdity as for a linguist - an individual language. Some kind of glossolalia is not a linguistic factor.

And there is no institution in the NRO. Is Scientology a Religion or Not a Religion? Organization or not organization? Hence the formulation of the concept of invisible religion for the sociologist - for him religion is social by default. Here religion is seen only by a psychologist, and a sociologist sees a semantic gap. Such a religion is not registered by classical sociological means, identification criteria do not work, a Scientologist can suddenly be an atheist, there are no ways of legitimation. How to socially relate to phenomena and whether it is possible.

We turned to the worn-out philosophical phenomenology. A unique situation: sociologists are rehabilitating rather than trying to black out a philosophical doctrine. Usually they stay in their own world, and leave the philosophies to philosophers, that is, useless people, with the so-called. accumulation of knowledge.

The philosophy of Alfred Schutz turned out to be in demand - an example of the fact that philosophy can be done this way too. This is also philosophy. "A world luminous with meaning." The name speaks for itself: a person always stays and acts in some way in the reality of the meanings with which he associates himself. The concept of the life world is a system of meanings with which the subject relates himself and which determine his self-identification. This is a system. If we exclude any of these meanings, the subject becomes another subject. Meanings are intentional objects that determine interaction. Sociologists still study the individual in the system of his social connections, and these connections may not be institutional.

Schutz was not too focused on empirical research. Like Max Scheler, early Marxism was also in demand in this teaching. Marx 70 years earlier opsal what sociologists will then do (German ideology)

For a traditionalist sociologist, the criterion of religiosity is more or less regular attendance by the subject of church. Go to work or not go. But if a person does not go to the service, but reads the works of the church fathers every day, this is not measured by numerical parameters.

The subject must obviously recognize himself in the description given by the sociologist. Here the individual Rakhmanin relates himself to early American poetry. His interaction with another subject...

A moment missing in classical sociology is trust in a person. Early: a person is only a person to the extent that he turns out to be a fragment of the social system. At the level of the norm, he participates in interactions unconsciously. The more unconsciously he does this, the more social he is.

And in the sociology of knowledge (understanding sociology), a person is considered to explain his interactions to himself. And you need to find out those worlds and environments in which a person lives. The restructuring of the life world is another subject.

The elements of the life world have a social nature. The person himself is socialized from an early age. It will take us far, but L and B distinguish two types of socialization:

Primary (upbringing, inclusion of a person in the community, language acquisition - we native language we don’t teach it, we master it, and then we study it retrospectively at school, and in our school it’s absolutely terrible and disgusting, it can only cause disgust for the language. There is no alternative in learning, we do not learn Russian because we wanted to - we have no choice. We objectify reality, reproduce cultural meanings, learn that Pushkin is our everything, about Mamai and other delights. Our awareness of Pushkin is a phenomenon of language acquisition, not the result of learning. Pushkin as an intentional object shines in our world due to the fact that we are built into the same element of language. Also, we do not interpret anything, we get ready-made knowledge)

Secondary (acquisition of specific skills, specialization. A person justifies their own stay in the community with them. The acquisition of a specialty is also socialization, and it is not homogeneous, you can choose).

Both socializations presuppose the acquisition by the subject of social meanings, because there are no other meanings. Thanks to these meanings, mutual understanding is possible, as well as the building of power relations and the distribution of status.

The question is, where is the man himself? It's clever here. Understanding sociologists say this - the set of elements of the life world for all people is more or less the same, but the ratio between these elements is unique. And most importantly, they interact with each other.

One of the consequences is that a certain element of the life world can acquire an individual meaning that does not coincide with the social one. Pushkin can be read as a great poet, or you can read him in a religious way. The gospel - as a religious text, but it can be as a poetic one. Knowledge is a fixed, conceptualized, recognizable fragment. Social activity strives for balance = simplification, for all meanings to have a common meaning for people.

All these elements occur in the process of socialization. A person is a person to the extent that he is included in communicative interaction, and therefore socialization is constant. An interesting squiggle is auto-communication, this is also communication.

The life-world element basically allows us to interact.

America is a sociology of madness. How subjects with mental pathology are included or excluded from society. The institution of madness is quite extensive, ancient and venerable. Since I am not a psychotherapist, I cannot speak clearly, but it has been said: the failure of modern psychiatry is due to the fact that old methods of treatment are applied to new forms of insanity, and this is because insanity is an institution. In Russia, everything is limited to medical examinations, in other traditions, they seem to be treated, and socialization after treatment is possible.

Why did RV seize on this concept? Promising prospects for the study of regularities, the hope to still study religion as religion, religious phenomena as phenomena of consciousness (although the Vedas have long said that sociologists are losing it). Religion is not an institution, but a system of meanings; it can be implemented and institutionalized in different ways. The intention is not to reduce religion to just social institutions.

If there is no interaction, it is not clear whether there is a human one. What a person relates to is not Peirce's, not the French concept of meaning. In general, this is a sociology of common sense, it rarely refers to the unconscious, without refined constructions. Weber is close to them, so NF is a kind of rehabilitation of Weber. Before the war, he was not very popular: people think and think, it is important how they act. And that they act out of the way they think was missed.

The criterion of self-understanding. The life world of the subject is the meanings in which he is immersed, and we should not construct them for the subject. This is the rehabilitation of a person: a person understands what he is doing. Situations are rare when a person does not analyze his activity. sociological fantasy. Durkheim: there is a social function, and a person is forced to implement it simply because it is a function.

Modern phenomenology: the bearer of tradition is always right (the criterion of self-understanding).

We have no other evidence regarding the subject, except for his self-presentation. As he says, so it is. A statement is a special case of behavior, it is both good and bad, but let's not.

There is no need to mystify, as the respected classics did - the coherent, the numinous, the universal, in itself, and so on. Religion is a system of elements of the life world, which determines a person's attitude to ultimate issues.

Poorly written plot. Ultimate interest is a concept coined by theologians. Because if you do not attach to them, it will not be called a religion. This concept was introduced by Paul Tillich as an ontological category, and sociologists use it as a psychological one. Religion determines how a person sees the criterion of the identity of his personality. That by which a person defines himself is the limit of human existence.

This is far from an ideal definition, but the formulation is schematic. Berger - Sacred Refuge or Sacred Veil (Sacred Canapy). What a person hides behind. Phenomenological sociology (the sociology of knowledge) has not only rehabilitated religion, but made it neutral. In the sociology of the 1920s, religion is only an illusory consciousness, irrational, and a person strives for irrationality, someday this will all disappear, well, that is, soon. Durkheim - explain away - to debunk with an explanation.

At the level of methodology, everything turns out to be quite capacious. In research of an anthropological nature, we have the opportunity to identify elements of the life world in the process of interviews and observation. We see how a person behaves. Which meanings are fundamentally important for him, and which are not. The key practice is the interview.

It reveals two levels of self-understanding. In the interview, we can reveal the spontaneous realization of the objects of the life world. Missed something? I will repeat. I'll try.

It is difficult to communicate with Scientologists without learning, it is better to learn this in traditional culture, whose carriers are not accustomed to apologia. Scientologists have to justify themselves every time. You can sympathize with them, but communicate monstrously. And with the bearers of the tradition, circumstances are clarified in the context of their violation. This is how the space of meanings is marked, in which the subject is located and without which his personality loses its integrity.

Secondly, the level of reflection. We don't know how to do it all. I'll tell you now. What the informant says in response to your question and what he says under your influence are two different things. You arrive at the village. To the question, is it necessary to believe in God - yes, but is religion good or bad? Religion is bad. And how do you explain it to yourself? And under the influence of the researcher, the informant turns on reflection. HE heard that in the party activists on the collective farm they said that religion is bad, which means it is bad. In the subject's life world, religion and belief in God may not coincide. If you force him to come to terms with the contradiction, he will begin to construct a reflexive definition.

We define ourselves by templates, they are not invented by us, but are used in situations. If nothing fits, use the one that is closest.

Having identified the elements of the life world in anthropological research (no way in history, and this is fundamentally important), we can correlate the elements of religiosity with other elements of the life world. NOT only how a person is religious, but also how it relates to aesthetics, politics, etc. We can't get it any other way.

Understanding another person is always an honorable task.

In historical research, we are connected by reading texts. You have to be able to read them. In this section, there is such a thing: any text contains instructions on how to read it. You will be told that any message has a metalinguistic function, i.e. contains an indication of the code.

If I tell you: man is not a transcendental unity of apperception, but the result of God's providence. Different elements of the code refer us to different philosophical/religious systems. Each message is a set of interpretations, and we cut off superfluous, irrelevant ones.

The message in itself carries a train of possible interpretations. The meaning of socialization is to choose the right ways to interpret messages.

Each text contains those elements in the system of which it must be read. M. Pay introduced the concept of "hermeneutic dominant", that which predetermines our interpretation. Somewhere they are obvious, somewhere you have to look for them, but their discovery is the only condition for understanding.

Every text of the religions of tradition refers to the religions of tradition. Hypertextuality. The Gospel of Mark suggests the Gospel of Matthew. And tantra presupposes sutras. The reproduction of tradition is the cutting off of inadequate elements of tradition, this is how the canon and apocrypha appear. A religious text, as a rule, asserts and substantiates itself. There are also such apocrypha, which were created even before the formation of the canon.

Every text calls for comments. Differences between Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc. created not by the Bible, but by commentaries on it, and this difference is marked by socialization.

The difference between Catholics and Orthodox is in a different way of making sense in the same situations, given by socialization.

The usefulness is that the rules for reading the text, which we extract either from the text itself or from the tradition around it, we need to compare with the interpretation of the bearer of the tradition.

This is a technique, there is no meaningful basis for life.