Contextual Understanding in Constructionism: A Holistic, Dialogical Model

Lawrence T. Nichols

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.11.2.06

Authors

Lawrence T. Nichols West Virginia University, U.S.A.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.11.2.06

Keywords:

Context as Construction, Embeddedness of Contexts, Context Work, Context Gaming, Contextual Understanding Lawrence

Abstract

This paper seeks to develop contextual constructionism through elaboration of the concept of context and the articulation of an accompanying methodology for empirical research. I approach context as a construct involving awareness when: (1) claims-makers define contexts in social problem debates, and (2) academic analysts do likewise in studying those debates and their outcomes. Such constructions can either converge or diverge, both within and across groups of claims-makers and analysts, with significant consequences for understanding and interaction. Importantly, context is never singular, for it always presupposes at least two related settings, namely, an immediate situation involving claims that is embedded in a more distant or general one which has at least a short-term historical dimension. Both social problems claims-makers and constructionist analysts, moreover, engage in “context work,” that is, efforts to sustain an overarching sense of setting between periods of social problems claims-making and research on them. I suggest that analysts examine claims-makers’ discourse in order to identify their view of context, and then apply the same scrutiny to their own presuppositions. Analysts should also be alert to strategic uses of context as a resource (“context gaming”), they should map significant shifts in constructions of context and pay attention to unobtrusive factors that might not yet have entered awareness. Finally, analysts should avoid overly deterministic accounts. For although contexts, as constructed, do indeed impose constraints, they ought not to be seen as eliminating agency, but only as locating it in ways that facilitate sociological insight.

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Author Biography

Lawrence T. Nichols, West Virginia University, U.S.A.

Lawrence T. Nichols is a Professor of Sociology and former Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, where he teaches courses on constructing social problems, mass media and crime, white collar crime, terrorism, and business. He has published research in criminology, social problems theory, and the history of sociology with a particular emphasis on the thought and career of Pitirim A. Sorokin and events at Harvard University. Since 1998 he has edited The American Sociologist, and in 2011-2012 he served as a President of the North Central Sociological Association.

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