Contextual Understanding in Constructionism: A Holistic, Dialogical Model

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.