The Deconstructive and Reconstructive Faces of Social Construction: An Interview with Ken Gergen

Abstract

This conversation is an effort to include new elements in the FQS debate on constructionism. In his eloquent and unambiguous style GERGEN speaks out about critical realism, rationality, truth claims, grounding and other scientific and human beliefs. Firmly based in the constructionist perspective of ethics, GERGEN leads us to examine relevant epistemological questions such as solipsism and the value of prediction, the searching for foundations, and the radical and retro pendulum in the sociology of knowledge. The "conversational reality" performed in this piece is just a small part of our cultural complexity. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0801204

Keywords

• social constructionism
• research methods
• social science
• positivism
• epistemology
• ethics
• deconstruction