The Point of Social Construction and the Purpose of Social Critique
The Point of Social Construction and the Purpose of Social Critique
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社会建构的着眼点与社会批判的目的
DOI：
10.1080/02691720500224657
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发表时间：
2005
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
J. Leach
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Sterne;J. Leach
接下来几期的论文是在匹兹堡一个凉爽的夜晚构思出来的，当时两位编辑坐在门廊上讨论技术研究的现状和他们对技术研究的不满，我们觉得一个关于社会建设的故事被一遍又一遍地讲述着，而不管问题中的人工制品是什么。近年来，这个故事变得更加复杂，但它仍然是相当可预测的：对象“X”原来是构造的，而不是自然的。通过叙述建构过程（或用图表表示），作者揭示了一系列感兴趣的社会行为者，在某些情况下，还揭示了物质因素本身在相互关联的因果网络中的作用。社会建设的理想工作恢复了事物的多面性存在：技术不再被其工具性所压倒，而是被证明是世界的人工制品和世界事务中的人工制品。在恢复了人工制品的完整性后，故事圆满结束。这种束缚在伊恩·哈金的《什么的社会建构》中得到了很好的解释？伊恩·哈金（Ian Hacking）对不同形式的社会建构主义正在“建构”什么的探索，揭示了建构主义理论的力量以及它的传播是多么稀薄。黑客发现，从现代国家到瑞士奶酪，一切都是在某种意义上“构造”出来的。当人们从社会科学漫游到人文科学，再到教育时，这些对象被构建的意义确实是非常不同的。对这种差异的一种回应是尝试一个统一的项目，以某种方式使这些不同的建构主义相互连贯或简化。Hacking指出这项任务是徒劳的，其他人也指出这项任务是不可取的（Fuller 2002）。但哈金的结局最终并不令人满意：他只是要求更好地说明利害关系。最能说明问题的是，当问题转向科学战争中的真理政治主张时，像艾伦索卡尔这样的老左派声称自己是真理的衣钵
The papers in the following issues were conceived on a cool Pittsburgh evening, while the two editors sat out on a porch and discussed the state of technology studies and their dissatisfaction with it. We felt that a story about social construction was being told over and over, regardless of the artifact in question. In recent years, the story has grown more complicated, but it remains fairly predictable: object “X” turns out to be constructed instead of natural. By narrating the process of construction (or diagramming it), the author uncovers a range of interested social actors and, in some cases, the actions of material factors themselves in a web of interconnected causes and effects. The ideal work of social construction restores to things their multifaceted existence: technologies, no longer overwhelmed by their instrumentality, are shown to be artifacts of and in the business of the world. Having restored the artifact to its fullness, the story ends happily. This bind has been quite well unpacked in Ian Hacking’s Social construction of what? Ian Hacking’s probing look at what is being “constructed” in different forms of social constructionism reveals both the power of constructivist theory and how thinly it has been spread. Hacking finds everything from the modern state to Swiss cheese “constructed” in one sense or another. And the senses in which these objects are constructed is very different indeed when one roams from the social sciences into the humanities and on to education. One response to this disparity is to attempt a project of unification, to somehow make these different constructivisms coherent or reducible to one another. Hacking points to the futility of that task and others have pointed out the undesirability of that task (Fuller 2002). But Hacking’s ending is ultimately unsatisfying: he simply asks for the stakes to be better specified. Most tellingly, when the question turns to the politics of truth claims in the science wars, where the old leftists like Alan Sokal claim for themselves the mantle of truth