Sociology - General & Miscellaneous, Social Psychology, Pragmatics & Discourse Analysis

Realities and Relationships

Name: Realities and Relationships
Author: Kenneth Gergen
ISBN: 9780674749313

by Kenneth Gergen

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Overview

Recent attempts to challenge the primacy of reason - and its realization in foundationalist accounts of knowledge and cognitive formulations of human action - have focused on processes of discourse. Drawing from social and literary accounts of discourse Gergen considers these challenges to empiricism under the banner of "social construction." His aim is to outline the major elements of a social constructionist perspective, to illustrate its potential, and to initiate debate on the future of constructionist pursuits in the human sciences generally and psychology in particular. Realities and Relationships not only integrates the many voices of anti-empiricist criticism, it positions us to consider alternative conceptions of knowledge, new vistas for human science, and transformations in cultural practice.

About the Author, Kenneth Gergen

Kenneth J. Gergen is Gil and Frank Mustin Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College. He is the author of The Saturated Self and Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge.

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Editorials

Contemporary Psychology

Critics and supporters alike of social constructionism will find Gergen's volume an important contribution. It provides a cogent and powerfully rendered statement of the assumptions and claimed potentials of social constructionism...Realities and Relationships will likely emerge as a classic that will be cited widely for some time to come.
— Leslie A. Baxter

Booknews

Western culture has traditionally celebrated the individual mind as the locus of reason and, thus, of knowledge. According to Gergen (psychology, Swarthmore College), meaning derives less from the single mind than from interdependent relationships. Revisiting standard areas of inquiry in psychology, he examines what forms of theory, research, and practice result when the human sciences are guided by a constructionist perspective. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)