constructing a constructive critique of social constructionism: finding a narrative space for the...

Pergamon New Ideas in Psychol. Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 209-224, 1996

© 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights re~rved

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C O N S T R U C T I N G A C O N S T R U C T I V E C R I T I Q U E O F S O C I A L

C O N S T R U C T I O N I S M : F I N D I N G A N A R R A T I V E S P A C E F O R T H E

N O N - H U M A N

MIKE MICHAEL ('.entre for Science Studies and Science Policy, School of Independent Studies, Lonsdale College,

Lancaster University, Lancaster LAI 4YN, U.K.

Abstraet--This paper is intended to serve as a critical contribution to the growing literature on the social constructionist social psychology. If social constructionism has tended to narrate its emergence in the intellectualist terms of the "linguistic turn," the paper suggests a number of alternative stories that identify within social constrnctionism a narrative space that can accommodate the "non-human." The first of these alternative stories examines the implications of recent debates around the issue of reflexivity. The second, while taking seriously the notion that SCSP is postmodern, reflects upon what it means to be postmodern and in the process expands the horizons within which SCSP can be practised. A third story is an exercise in embedding SCSP in an historical and institutional context: what are the "pressures" that, on the one hand, have enabled SCSP and cognate disciplines to differentiate themselves from others, and on the other, are perhaps forcing them into closer alignment with seemingly incommensurate (realist or positivist) perspectives. A theme that emerges from these three critiques is the narrative (or analytic) posture of "principled unprincipledness" wherein practitioners of SCSP can retain a political principle whilst eschewing epistemological principledness. This approach is exemplified in the final, concluding section, in which 1 tentatively suggest that Actor-Network Theory can accommodate both the constitutively non-human and the socially constructed as interacting efficacious actors. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

INTRODUCTION

This paper is intended to serve as a critical contribution to the growing literature on the social constructionist social psychology (e.g. Edwards & Potter, 1992; Gergen, 1985; Gergen & Davis, 1985; Henriques, Hollway, Unwin, Venn & Walkerdine, 1984; Shotter & Gergen, 1989). Within this extensive corpus of work much effort has been expended in accomplishing an identity-- political, epistemological and methodological---quite distinct from the orthodox experimental social psychology on a number of counts, including epistemological, methodological and political. If social constructionism has tended to narrate this transition in intellectualist terms (Kendall & Michael, in press), it is also possible to think about its emergence as part of a broader process. Thus, one of the key aims of this paper is to embed this blooming tradition in the context of wider social theory. In particular, I will interrogate some of the underpinning assumptions of the "linguistic turn" so characteristic of much social constructionist social psychology, and ask the question, what, by adhering to the linguistic turn gets missed out?

In essence, my argument is that the prioritization that social constrnctionism affords "the linguistic," and more generally, "the social," can be contextualized as part of particular narratives that suggest that the "bracketing" of non-linguistic, non-human and non-social entities as the constructions of social, linguistic, intersubjective, intertextual, etc. activity is not unproblematic. Underlying the rhetoric of much social constructionism is the idea that its misguided predeces- so r s - the cognitivists, the social representation theorists, the intergroup theorists--neglected to

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address properly the central role of language. In contrast, the achievements of social constructionism (i.e. revealing the process by which such and such is socially constructed) marks a glorious advance that has exposed the real processes that underpin such typical objects of study as sexism, racism, explanation, memory, nationalism, identity, etc. To the extent that this is the (not so) implicit story that grounds the social constructionist case, it is nevertheless a story that is itself constructed. What happens if, in the spirit of social constructionism, we introduce other stories?

This paper suggests a number of other stories: historical, political, pragmatic, philosophical. But there is an overarching reason for this exercise, namely, to identify within social constructionism a number of conceptual (or rather, narrative) spaces that can accommodate the "non-human" (though it should be stressed that it is not a matter of setting out fatally to undermine social constructionism). From within this space, rather than seeing the "non-human" primarily as a social construction, it can be regarded as acting relatively (or contingently) "autonomously" and "efficaciously." As such, in what follows, ! will briefly look at how social constructionist social psychology (SCSP) narrates itself in order partly to show how this narration constitutes an argument, a way of influencing others, quieting would-be dissenters and enrolling ardent supporters. As part of this rhetorical move a number of other narrations are marginalized. What then follows is a number of alternative stories about social constructionism and its context that suggest that SCSP can indeed accommodate the "non-human" as an actor involved in the constitutive processes hitherto reserved for the social, the cultural and the linguistic. The first of these alternative stories examine the implications that recent debates around the issue of reflexivity throw up for social constructionism's privileging of the linguistic and the social. The second, while taking seriously the notion that SCSP is postmodern, reflects upon what it means to be "postmodern" and, in the process, expands the horizons within which SCSP can be practised. A third story is an exercise in embedding SCSP in a historical and institutional context. Here, I explore the "pressures" that, on the one hand, have enabled SCSP and cognate disciplines to differentiate themselves from others, and on the other, are perhaps forcing them into closer alignment with seemingly incommensurate (realist) perspectives. Each of these stories encounters (that is, constructs) a narrative space within SCSP for the non-human. In the final, concluding section, I suggest one tentative model, namely, Actor-Network Theory, within which the human and the non-human, the contingently "rear" and the socially constructed can fruitfully interact.

CONSTRUCTING AND IMPLEMENTING A HISTORY OF SCSP

There are various ways to go about telling the (hi)story of the rise of SCSP. Perhaps most common is the identification of the intractable problems embodied by the "old" social psychology and how they were (or are in the process of being) transcended by more recent social psychology (see, for example, Gergen, 1982; Parker, 1989; Wexler, 1983). These problems are usually a mixture of political (how can we continue to practice experimental social psychology when it is an arm of an oppressive state apparatus?); epistemological (how can we say we have accurately accessed phenomena such as attitudes, stereotypes, identity when these themselves are constituted by the very methodological procedures and theoretical pre-commitments of experimental social psychologists?) and ontological (how can we say it is cognitive process which shapes social behaviour and thought when in reality it is something like the cultural and linguistic conventions that are the overarching structuring factors?).

Narrative space for the non-human 21 !

In the aftermath of the "crisis in social psychology," despite the effort to formulate the "social" in such a way as to preserve core elements of orthodox social psychology (e.g. Forgas, 1983; Jaspers, 1983; Taylor & Brown, 1979), social constructionist approaches have come to privilege the "social" in the understanding of human conduct. Thus, the arguments are no longer about how we integrate the "social" and the "individual"; now they concern how we are to conceptualize the social in its construction of the individual. In the wake of this analytic re-orientation, debates now focus on the meaning of the social and a nexus of attendant terms such as discourse, context, ideology, power and the like (see, for example, Parker, 1990a, b; Potter, Wetherell, Gill & Edwards, 1990).

These debates reflect the disparate textual resources upon which social constructionist social psychology has drawn. These include: the philosophy, history and sociology of science (e.g. Barnes, 1977; Bloor, 1976; Collins, 1985; Feyerabend, 1976; Kuhn, 1962); the "disciplines of difference"--anthropology and history (e.g. Aries, 1962; Heelas & Lock, 1981; Mauss, 1985): sociology of knowledge (e.g. Berger & Luckman, 1966); ethnomethodology (e.g. Garfinkel, 1967); Austin's (1962) speech act theory; Barthes' (1972) semiology; and post-structuralism (e.g. Derrida, 1976, 1978, 1982; Foucault, 1979, 1981).

Now, the central point here is that these forebears comprise narrative resources that can be marshalled to construct a tradition of which one is a part (see Billig, 1987, 1988, for an alternative use of such resources). To some extent such tradition-construction is necessary, after all, it furnishes the reader with the textual and intellectual background that they might subsequently interrogate. However, it also serves to set up a contrast between one's own precursors (Austin, Wittgenstein, Kuhn) and those of one's other (the experimental social psychologists). This contrast tends to be, as I 've suggested, intellectualist (see Michael, 1996, for more detail). What becomes obscured in these stories of intellectual advance are the local historical and political exigencies that enabled or hindered the emergence of these proto-social constructionist perspectives. Such an unreflexive narrative strategy has the effect of producing particular subject positions for readers: readers are being invited to step into a particular way of thinking not only about the emergence of SCSP, but also about the means of change. When one introduces alternative stories about emergence and change, and, of course about reflexivity (for these stories are themselves partial and contingent), one finds that one needs to be more circumspect about the claims one makes about the social constructionist approach. As I shall argue, it turns out that part of this circumspection entails a willingness to entertain (narratively) a role for non- humans in constructionist accounts.

In the rest of this paper, I offer a number of critiques of social constructionism that, while sympathetic, attempt to carve out a narrative space for the non-social and the non-human. These critiques aim to embed social constructionism in alternative contexts that serve to stress its contingency. The first critique, drawing on recent debates around the issue of reflexivity, points to the alternative logical (and political) strategies available for grounding the practice of social constructionism so that it strategically encompasses non-human/non-social actors. The second critique addresses the relation of SCSP to postmodernity to argue an aesthetic case for expand- ing social constructionism's domain to incorporate non-human/non-social actors in its accounts of social processes. To the extent that social constructionism is a strand of postmodern social psychology (K. Gergen, 1992), it can practice a form of narrative transgression in which categories other than the typically social and linguistic are accommodated. But, further, I suggest that such transgression reflects another dimension of the condition of postmodernity, namely, the entrenchment of ambivalence. The third critique builds on the history of disciplines (specifically in the social sciences), in the process focusing upon the institutional dynamics of professional differentiation that might underpin the rise of social constructionism. The implication here is that,

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if events had developed otherwise, constructionism could have been a very different sort of intellectual creature. I also argue that under emergent contemporary conditions there seems to be a gathering momentum toward interdisciplinarity in which social constructionist and realist accounts, especially around such issues as environmental threat, begin to merge. I explore some of the possible versions of this "merging." All these critiques attempt to engage with social constructionism on its own terms----each provides a way of simultaneously problematizing and accepting social constructionism, of holding these in creative tension. The dilemma or contradiction is one that is not resolvable (Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton & Radley, 1988); rather, it is a basis for the breaking down of some of the epistemological strictures imposed by social constructionism. As such, I advocate a more relaxed epistemological posture, one which 1 call "principled unprincipledness." Finally, in the conclusion, I sketch out one possible resource--namely, Actor-Network Theory--available to constructionists interested in pursuing or narrating a role for the non-human and the non-social.

REFLECTING ON REFLEXIVITY

The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) can be justifiably regarded as a major intellectual resource for social constructionist social psychology (e.g. Edwards & Potter, 1992; Gergen, 1985; Kitzinger, 1987). While this is by no means a coherent body of work (e.g. Pickering, 1992; Sismondo, 1993), it has been subjected to thoroughgoing epistemological scrutiny by Woolgar (1988a). According to Woolgar, SSK is infused with an ethos of representation: the practitioners of SSK (and social constructionism in general) have tended to deploy social factors such as "interests" as a means of explaining the way scientists have acted and argued in particular controversies. In comparison, Woolgar argues that such "interests" should be "topicalized"--that is studied in their own right as rhetorical tools used by scientists in the process of argumentation that characterize scientific controversy (cf. Barnes, 1981; Callon & Law, 1982; Mackenzie, 1981; Woolgar, 1981). For Woolgar, practioners of SSK are no less engaged in the practice of representation and social construction than their scientist counterparts. SSK accounts thus have no more privileged status than the accounts provided by scientists. What is needed, then, are forms of writing within SSK (and social constructionism) that can reflect upon their own constituted constitution, to display their own status as constructed representations. The relativism embodied in such textual strategies does not disable the writer, rather it invites celebration--SSK texts should playfully explore their own constructed-ness by using novel textual forms such as multiple voices intervening in the text, encyclopaedias, strange loops and plays. (Ashmore, 1989; Mulkay, 1985; Woolgar, 1988a, b, 1989; however, also see Collins & Yearley, 1992a, b; Doran, 1989; Furhman & Oehler, 1987).

The advocacy of a reflexive sociology of scientific knowledge is tied to another argument that Woolgar (1991) has developed, one that rests upon a key contradition inherent in S S K and social constructionism. If the rise and success of SSK over its major predecessor, Mertonian sociology of science, is viewed in SSK terms, that is, as contingent upon various social conditions, then it follows that SSK could one day be "wrong" (that is, discredited through the appropriate deploy- ment of potent linguistic and social resources). As such, that SSK could one day be ousted, serves to support the basic assumptions of SSK. If, however, SSK's success is regarded as absolute, and therefore not contingent, then SSK would escape the (social, linguistic, cultural) factors that it claims render all knowledge contingent, and would, as a result, be a standing refutation of itself. Again, this argument is about the status of representation (this time about SSK and its history and

Narrative space for the non-human 213

future). Thus, for Woolgar (1988a, 1989) this malaise at the heart of SSK is indicative of what he calls the "ideology of representation." By occluding the operation of agency in the construction of representations, the texts of science and of social science (e.g. SSK) tend to "objectify"-- to obscure their own constructed and contingent nature.

Woolgar's purpose in all this is to problematize the ostensibly transparent connections between the representation and the real, the word and the world by re-introducing agency into the text. All the reflexive techniques he recommends are geared toward this goal of making the reader aware that an author (sociologist or scientist) drawing upon various resources has crafted or constructed the text they are reading. However, if the aim is to show how one's own sociological text is dependent upon a range of social factors, as soon as one begins to identity those factors, one again begins to reify them. That is to say, as one displays that one's own writing is constructed by virtue of various social resources, those resources are again at risk of objectifica- tion. and they too will need to be reflexively de-constructed, and so on, in an interminable cycle. For reflexivists such as Woolgar, Ashmore and Mulkay, this marks a key paradox: construction and representation, the word and the world are co-dependent. The deeper goal of reflexive writing is therefore to render these inter-dependencies and paradoxes transparent.

This version of reflexivity and reflexive textual practice can be criticized on numerous counts. For instance, reflexivity, instead of being the preserve of the singular reflexive author can be viewed as a collective endeavour. To the extent that in this postmodern era, reflexivity is a common condition, however unreflexive some texts are, any academic reader is now culturally predisposed to deconstruct them. This suggests a historical backdrop to the practice of reflexivity, one that needs exploration. One model for such an exploration is Mary Douglas" (1986) useful analysis of radical scepticism--the questioning of the very possibility of an independent reality. Insofar as Woolgar's version of reflexivity can be said to be radically sceptical, problematizing (or, at least, bracketing) the reality of all things by consistently reflexively applying the tools of social constructionism to one's own analysis, it can be allied to practical and political marginalization. This is because without a stable "'real" to act upon, one becomes disengaged from the realm of the political. Douglas exemplifies this thesis by pointing to the relative marginalization of a number of radical skeptics (e.g. Foucault, Brahmins), as against the political powerful realists (e.g. Bolsheviks). However, it is not only the powerful who assume realism; reification of such categories as class, oppression, gender, sexism, racism and so on, can also serve in the mobilization of the disaffected.

Another important point in this context is that Woolgar's is by no means the only version of reflexivity available to us. Some writers have developed what might be called a realist reflexivity. For writers such as Furhman and Oehler (1987), Bourdieu (1990) and Haraway (1991 a; also see Prins, 1995), despite great differences in emphasis and formulation, reflexivity means an interrogation of the real conditions (historical, institutional) that have enabled and constrained one's present knowledge production. These conditions are held to be, at least contingently, objective. The purpose is therefore, if not to transcend these conditions, to engage critically with them in order better to empower oneself (cf. Michael, 1996).

Latour (1988) takes a similar, though typically idiosyncratic, view of reflexivity, which likewise addresses the issue of power. He distinguishes between two forms of reflexivity. The first (illustrated by Woolgar's version), which he calls metareflexivity, is characterized by the worry that readers are only too liable to be seduced by texts, when, ideally, they should be keenly aware of their constructed nature. In contrast, infrareflexivity attempts to avoid, as opposed to encourage, not being believed. Of course, this concern with being believed in fact still applies to metareflexivity: after all, while the reflexive textual strategies attempt to oblige us to become

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sceptical about sociological accounts of science, they nevertheless encourage us to believe in the value of the project of (meta-)reflexivity. In other words, as scientific and social scientific objects are de-reified, reflexivity becomes reified. For Latour, to practice infrareflexivity is to be more fully aware that one is engaged in the political process of persuading the reader. To this end, any viable strategy is permissible, including making realist claims and going onto the side of the "known" (which in the context of SKK, comprises largely of non-humans). As such, one practices a strategic textual realism* in which non-humans can be actors who have effects (as well as being effects, that is, constructions). In contrast to Woolgar's epistemological purity (everything is constructed) and political impurity (don't believe this account; do believe in the value of reflexivity), we can say that Latour practices an epistemological impurity (things are constructed and they are not), and a political purity (make readers believe your text, no matter what). Abstracting from this, we can say that Latour's policy is one of principled unprincipledness. But, such a generalized desire to persuade and enrol readers is not unproblematic. For what exactly is one persuading them about--surely, the "content" that is being rendered so persuasive is as important as the representational form that does the persuading? At issue here is the need for a more situated moral principle. One is not simply interested in persuading p e r se, but persuading to a particular view of the world, both human and non-human.

POSTMODERN AESTHETICS AND TRANSGRESSING NARRATIVES

The preceding section turned reflexivity upon itself to suggest that the doing of politics, in being intrinsic to the uses of texts, is also a key aspect of reflexivity. In the process, there comes to be a dependence upon the "real." I have been particularly sympathetic to Latour's version of reflexivity (infrareflexivity) in which the real is mobilized strategically (or as I have put it, in which there is a principled unprincipledness). However, contra Latour, I have also suggested that part of this process entails a self-reflection in which the analyst incorporates into such mobilization an acknowledgement of the specificities of their own situatedness. This situatedness can be rendered on a number of levels (e.g. gender, class, "race"----cf. Haraway, 1991 a). However, in the next two sections, I will consider this situatedness in relation to two dimensions, the version of (post)modernity within which one is located, and the sort of institutional dynamics in which one's constructionist work is fitted. The present section therefore suggests that, insofar as the social constructionist movement can be brought under the rubric of postmodernism, then the re-introduction of a "real" is allowable as an aesthetic (as well as a political) option. However, over and above this aesthetic warrant, there is the issue that postmoderns are crucially marked by ambiva-

*The idea of a strategic textual realism assumes that the "real" is contingent upon the process and purpose of writing (to enrol, persuade). But further, the Actor-Network approach sees the "real" as always already being an effect of the network (after all, the strategically real is a likewise an effect, in this instance of the writer's network-building). In other words, the "real" is an heterogeneous accomplishment rendered by both human and non-human actors. This stands in contrast to the critical realist (e.g. Bhaskar, 1989) apprehensions of the real (see Michael, 1996, for more details of his comparison). While critical realism and actor-network theory, in their very different ways, share a commitment to effect- ing change, the latter alms to achieve this by demonstrating how "reals" are not unproblematic, but always heteroge- neously constructed. The aim is, in true Foucauldian fashion, to show how things could have been otherwise. In contrast, the former assumes that the intransitive realm of reals--powers, laws and the like--can afford the possibility of positive change (especially as the intransitive realm is held to contain dynamic "entities"). However, as Soper (1995) has con- vincingly shown in relation to Benton's (1993) argument for a critical realist warrant for environmental politics, the "con- tents" of an intransitive do not necessarily warrant an environmental politics; they can just as easily justify wanton ecological exploitation or excuse passivity.


lence---both the word and the world, constructedness and reality are present to us and our writings, rather than aspire to the purity of social constructionist accounts, it is possible to express this ambivalence through a radical mixing of (constructionist and realist) genres.

Michael (1992) has pointed to some interesting disparities in the practice of postmodern social psychology. Modernist psychology, according to K. Gergen ~1992), is characterized by a commitment to a knowable world of mind or behaviour, the empirical discovery of universal properties, and a vision of research as progressive and knowledge as cumulative. With the postmodern turn, K. Gergen suggests, there is a shift toward the study of the role of linguistic resources and conventions in the production of knowledge and psychological conditions, a concern with context, a reconceptualization of method as rhetoric and an interest in value-laden change. For social psychology this amounts to "a professional investment in which the scholar attempts to de-objectify the existing realities, to demonstrate their social and historical embeddedness, and to explore their implications for social l i f e . . , the psychologist is invited to conjoin the personal, the professional and the political" (Gergen, 1992, p. 27). Examples of this sort of academic endeavour are to be found in feminist psychology, social representations, social constructionist psychology, discourse analysis and rhetorical psychology.

Key in K. Gergen's programmatic outline of a postmodern social psychology is the "linguistic turn" in which language is prioritized as the medium by which typically "social psychological" phenomena are realized (e.g. Parker, 1992; Parker & Shotter, 1990; Potter & Wetherall, 1987; Shotter & Gergen, 1989). This is allied with the overt political purpose of transforming prevailing conceptions of the human being and the social world. Thus it is the stated aim of some (postmodern) theorists in social psychology to promote some alternative "self" to the predomi- nant Western, modernist, self-contained individualized identity (e.g. Sampson, 1993; Shotter & Gergen, 1989). If the exact mechanisms of this strategic intervention by social psychologists are somewhat opaque, there nevertheless remains the goal that these writings can attempt to project a subject position (e.g. Fairclough, 1989; Henriques et al., 1984) that contravenes the "centrality and sovereignty of the individual" (Shotter & Gergen, 1989, p. ix).

Michael (1992) has argued that such statements nevertheless yield a modernist subject position. Thus K. Gergen's (1992) chapter is eminently rationalist in its form. In contrast, M. Gergen's (1992) chapter, whilst deploying postmodern techniques to "disorient" the modernist reader, still invite a modernist reading. Despite the textual pyrotechnics, a reader can produce modernist responses to these texts, for example: the author is clearly a fine postmodernist (indi- vidualism); this is an excellent contribution to the postmodernist case (accumulation); look how well modernist assumptions are debunked (truth). The point is that postmodernism need not be characterized just in terms of the linguistic turn (M. Gergen's chapter is partly concerned to display the workings of language). Rather, it can be thought of as a programme of transgression: orthodox genres are mixed to produce hybrid texts that encompass both realist and constructionist accounts, both social and natural scientific modes of discourse.

There are additional reflexive issues that arise here. What in (post)modernity might facilitate the emergence of such hybrid textual forms? One could point to the recent changes in aesthetic sensibilities: the postmodern is often lauded as an era in which pastiche, parody and spectacle have come to characterize our readings, writings and tellings (see, for example, Harvey. 1989). Alternatively, one could say that the mixing of realist and constructionist accounts actually reflects a deepseated ambivalence. Thus, for Beck (1992), Giddens (1991) and Soper (I 995), there is at once a profound distrust of, even disillusion with, the verities of the natural sciences, especially around issues of environmental threat, and a continuing reliance upon such science to inform us of the shape and imminence of (as well, as the solutions to) such threat. As Soper points

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out, anyone engaged in environmental struggles (or what she calls ecopolitics) is, on the one hand, dependent upon a naturalist epistemology in which there is a direct (realist) access to the state of nature, and a culturalist epistemology in which accounts of the state of nature are seen to be both thoroughly interwoven with institutional interests and constituted through the "limited" disciplinary (textual) tools of science. Bauman (1991) extends such a view beyond the specificities of ecopolitics. It is worth quoting Bauman at length on this score:

What the inherently polysemic and controversial idea of postmodernity most often refers to (even if only tacitly) is first and foremost an acceptance of ineradicable plurality of the world; plurality which is not a temporary station on the road to the not-yet attained perfection . . . . a station sooner or later to be left behind--but the constitutive quality of existence. By the same token, postmodernity means a resolute emancipation from the characteristically modern urge to overcome ambivalence and promote the monosemic clarity of sameness . . . . In the absence of the intent to dominate, the presence of mutually exclusive standards neither offends the desire of logical congruity nor triggers off remedial action (p. 98).

I f what Bauman says holds some value, then the mixing of the "mutually exclusive standards" of social constructionist social psychology and natural science not only should no longer offend us (or our modernist sensibilities, at least), it should also be treated as engaging with the necessary multiplicity of the world, its irreducibility as, variously, semiotic, corporeal, material and so on (Haraway, 1995). Thus, to practice postmodern social psychology means not only that one adheres to an epistemological unprincipledness, but that this is guided by a recognition that, in principle, the world escapes any single perspective, that it is, in principle, ambiguous.

Now, it is possible to story such ambivalence in a number of ways. For example, the writings of Donna Haraway (e.g. 1989, 199 lb) entail an interdigitation of a multiplicity of levels, narra- fives, characters and discourses into a single text that seeks neither resolution nor hierarchy. In her book, Primate Visions, Haraway unravels the way that the discipline of primatology reflects and mediates core themes in Western thought and practice: culture and nature, gender and family, race and colour, Western and Non-Western, human and non-human. In doing this, she levels the textual playing field so that the personal (e.g. individuals' biographies or career trajectories) is on the same narrative plane as the structural (ideology, discourse, social position), and accounts of the natural (e.g. the primates and primate groups themselves) are as privileged as accounts of the socially constructed. Stories, descriptions, accounts of both the natural and the social construction of the natural are juxtaposed in a textual mosaic that incorporates the natural as an autonomous, "other-worldly" actor (cf. Haraway, 1992; Noske, 1989) and as a social construction. To the extent that Haraway's strategy is one of narrative juxtaposition (unprincipledness), it is grounded in a political principle, namely, overtly to problematize Western, white, middle-class, masculinist divisions (between the natural and the social, for instance). An alternative strategy, one that I will outline in the concluding section, is to draw upon Actor-Network Theory in order to view these different registers as accomplishments. That is to say, one can begin to trace the ways in which the transformation of actors, from the social to the non-social, the human to the non-human, the micro to macro, agent to object, and back again is conducted, all the while making no a priori assumptions about the "real" nature of the entities (humans and non-humans) being studied.

DISCIPLINING DISCIPLINES

As I have mentioned above, histories of social constructionism that introduce SCSP texts tend to be intellectualist in character. Social constructionism is, often by default, represented as an


improvement on cognitivist or realist accounts--it does more ontological and epistemological justice to persons and social processes. But, ironically, such histories are not recounted in constructionist terms--that is, they are not seen to be constructions in their own right. Contrary to the way that the differentiation of natural scientific disciplines are portrayed (e.g. Brannigan, 1981), the rise of social constructionism has something inevitable, almost, dare one say, natural about it. Such an account not only distinguishes, in both senses of the word, social constructionism, it serves as a form of rhetorical border control. On the one side is the "truth" of social constructionism, on the other, the falsity of varieties of realism. We have already seen in our dis- cussion of Woolgar's (1991) advocacy of reflexivity, the sorts of contradictions that arise from this sort of telling. However, in the present section, I want to sketch, very tentatively and incom- pletely, a story about some of the possible social conditions that have shaped, and are in the process of shaping, the intellectual contours of social constructionism.

We can begin by drawing on Horigan's (1988) analysis that addresses the discursive means by which the "natural" was differentiated from the "social" in an attempt by early social anthro- pologists to distinguish anthropology from its parent disciplines of biology and natural philosophy. Horigan traces how culture has become "the object of the human sc iences . . . (which) . . . stress and defend the autonomy of culture as a uniquely human realm resting essentially on the ability of humans to impose meaning on the world through the use of symbols" (p. 4). This (continuing) prioritization was originally developed by the anthropologist Franz Boas in order to effect a differentiation between "race" and "culture" such that cultural phenomena "could only be understood in terms of culture" (p. 5). The strategic aim was thus to discredit the assumptions of eugenics and racial anthropology and to undermine the related perception that the "'cultural and historical achievements of a people were a product of their racial composition" (p. 5). The hoped- for result was that anthropology would establish itself as a "theoretically independent institution." This prioritization of the cultural continued in the work of Kroeber, White, Levi Strauss and Sahlins such of whom "proclaim(ed) culture as an independent level of reality, championing the cause of anthropology as an academic discipline" (p. 19). In sum, Horigan compellingly shows how the insistence upon the autonomy of culture rested upon a metaphysical distinction between nature and culture, serving in the institutional elevation of cultural anthropology. More generally, Horigan shows that "culture" is not a "natural" category and that cultural anthropology is not a "natural" discipline. Rather both emerged (and were institutionalized) in the process of more or less parochial political struggles. Within these ostensibly unproblematic (what sociologist of science would call "black-boxed") categories is contained the work that had to be done to establish the autonomy of culture and the efforts expended at formulating and institutionalizing a particular disciplinary identity. In the process, resources, materials, roles and skills, networks and relations of power have come to be invested in such categories. No wonder that when eftbrts at interdisciplinary collaboration are made, these can, under the (in)appropriate circumstances, be met with great resistance (cf. Good, 1993; Noske, 1992). The upshot of this (continuing) intellectual-institutional saga, according to Horigan, is that there has been a privileging of social and cultural factors over natural ones in the accounting for human social behaviour and structures. The moral is that we should not assume that the prioritization of the social is not historically contingent. The lesson is that the form of this story applies to SCSP whose prioritization of the linguistic--its "autonomization"----can likewise be narrated in terms of parochial struggles (as well as moves in the broader political terrain). The danger of such de-historicized prioritizations is that they serve as (disciplinary) barriers to a more liberal or pluralistic scholarship that would simultaneously treat seriously the "non-human" as something other than "mere" social construction, while simultaneously taking social constructionism very seriously indeed.

218 M. Michael

However, there is a contradiction here. Horigan's history remains a social and cultural history: he deploys in an un-reflexive prioritization of the social in accounting for the prioritization of the social. While I have neither the competence nor the inclination to provide an appropriate history of the rise of social constructionism, one can at least call for a critical history of the rise of the relevant sub-disciplines, that would scrutinize the social and institutional (and ultimately, perhaps, the non-social and non-human) contexts in which the perspectives developed by such fig- ures as Wittgenstein, Austin, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Schutz, and so on, could become so institutionally entrenched.

Whilst such a programme of reflexive research, albeit so poorly sketched here, problematizes the intellectualist, epistemologized, progressive narrative histories of social constructionism, and thereby raises the possibility of a role for the non-social and the non-human in the constitution of the social, there are other more immediate pressures upon social constructionism. We might thus ask: what are the contemporary contexts of social constructionism and how might these enable different inter-relations between the social, human and natural sciences with their disparate "objects" of study?

One author who has concerned himself with this issue is Benton (1991) who has argued that "nature" has increasingly become the focus of social science research (also, MacNaghten & Urry, 1995; Soper, 1995; Yearley, 1991). In particular, he has attempted to identify some of the conditions under which it might be possible for the social/biological dichotomy (which encompasses such contraries as mind/body, culture/nature, society/biology, meaning/cause, human/animal) to dissolve. Crucial is the influence of such contemporary social movements as feminism and environmentalism that, concerned as they are with the role that "nature" has to play in constituting and delimiting present-day social dynamics, are not satisfied with purely sociological or constructionist accounts. As political actors, these movements must take seriously the "objective" constraints imposed by the "body" and by the "environment," though, as we have seen above, they must also engage in deconstructing such entities (e.g. the "carrying capacity" of the environment as portrayed by government science). Benton notes that, given that many social scientific researchers are active in these new social movements, they will find themselves under pressure to respond to the (realist) environmental concerns of their lay peers (cf. Eyerman & Jamison, 1991).

This is the altruistic scenario: concerned constructionists find themselves in an epistemological dilemma born of ecopolitical commitment. But there are also institutional pressures at work that invoke more instrumental responses. To the extent that there have been governmental calls for interdisciplinary collaboration (for which read, earmarking of research funds) on environmental issues (see Michael, 1996), we might expect social scientists, social constructionists among them to find themselves working with natural scientists. While such collaborations may well be unhappy affairs, they may lead to some valuable intellectual products, ones which will perhaps follow the trajectory of principled unprincipledness outlined above. Here, while co- produced documents will be epistemologically unprincipled (or ad hoc or instrumental--one might suspect a fudging of constructionist and realist or positivist perspectives), they will nevertheless be informed by a common principle (something like "let's save the planet"). The point I am trying to make is that national (and international) political and economic dynamics can engender inter-disciplinary alliances. The subsequent collaborations between natural and social scientists (social constructionists) will be shaped both by common political principles and by institutional factors (such as an increasingly entrepreneurial research culture). But, it is possible to imagine that these conditions will also frame a possibility for pragmatically negotiating and managing, if not transcending, disciplinary divisions. If such is the case, we might expect texts

Narrative space for the non-human 21 t~

in which the "natural," the "non-human" and the "non-social" are afforded equal billing with the social, the cultural, the linguistic--in sum, the socially constructed.

At this point, it is possible to apply my criticism of Horigan to the foregoing speculative account of contemporary pressures toward interdisciplinary collaboration. The above still locates the possibility of disciplinary transgression in certain social and political dynamics. In advocat- ing the re-introduction of the "non-social" and the "non-human," I should have woven into the scenario a role for the non-human (say, emergent environmental conditions). If I have been lack- adaisical in my attempts to incorporate the non-human in the preceding sections, it is because as every academic story-teller knows, one leaves the (intellectual) punchline till last.

CONCLUDING REMARKS: NETWORKS AND NON-HUMANS

This paper has presented a series of interlocking critiques sympathetic to social constructionism, each of which has been self-consciously framed as a social construction. Thus, the exploration of the implications of reflexivity for social constructionism surveyed a number of variants of reflexivity, settling upon a particular version that stressed political, as opposed to epistemological, cogency. Similarly, in extending reflexivity to consider the macrosocial contexts of SCSP, I advocated an alternative to Gergen's "linguistic turn" version of postmodern social psychology, in the process providing a particular, contingent reading of the postmodern condition as essentially marked by ambiguity and ambivalence. Finally, in being reflexive about the institutional context of SCSP, I considered the fortunes of social constructionism (and cognate disciplines)--its disassociation and reassociation with non-constructionist research traditions-- by deploying a range of (informal) sociological textual resources that construed the institutional state of academia in a particular way. The aim in all of this has been to remain within social constructionism, that is, to apply social constructionism to itself in order to excavate a narrative space for the non-human. However, this rhetorical tactic has also been informed by another (emergent) principle recently expressed by a number of authors. Each of these authors, in their very different ways, have eschewed epistemological purity in order to practice a less divisive form of politics. For Latour (1993) it is important to refuse the forms of denunciation routinely found in academic texts in order to ensure a more thoroughgoing dialogue between different traditions (and thus refrain from privileging any single apprehension as to what is human or non-human). For Law (1994), modernity has practised a "hideous purity" in its pursuit of absolutes and truths, excising "others" and suppressing ambiguities and indeterminacies. His preferred strategy is therefore engage in a "modest sociology" that is intrinsically marked by pluralism and uncer- tainty. A final exemplar, this time from a feminist perspective, can be found in Hilary Rose's (1993) criticisms of the (patriachal) tendency to view epistemological options in terms of "either/or" (either constructionism or realism). In contrast, she suggests a (non-patriarchal) "both/and" posture that incorporates multiplicity. In the present context, such positions suggest that social constructionism opens up itself to further avenues of exploration, specifically, a consideration of the constitutive role of the "non-human" and the "non-social".

I have already touched upon Haraway's attempts to generate texts that encompass this multiplicity, that engage seriously with both constructed-ness and reality. Her efforts entail an equal consideration not only of the typically constructionist processes of inter-subjectivity and inter-textuality, but also of inter-objectivity. Non-humans are thus both constructions (effects) and inter-subjective/inter-objective actors. This narrative strategy is both a way of grasping the multiplicity of non-human interventions in the social, and of exploring the ways in which humans

220 M. Michael

(and the social) are also embroiled in an irreducibly complex (constructed and contingently "real") world, being themselves partial effects of the non-human. The broader political purpose is, through such excavations, to enable reflection upon, and political mobilization through, the multiple connections between the human and non-human (cf. Haraway, 1991b, for an explicit example of this political mobilization through the mythic human-non-human character of the cyborg).

Haraway's work is one part of an emergent impetus to provide accounts of the (contingently) constitutive role of the non-human and non-social. Another body of work that takes up this task is that which can be gathered together under the rubric of Actor-Network Theory. In what follows, I will very simply and very briefly provide the bare bones of actor-network theory's treatment of non-humans, particularly those normally considered as technological artefacts (for an application of actor-network theory to natural non-humans see Michael, 1992, 1996).

The world of actor-network theory is partly ruled by the generalized principle of symmetry that Bruno Latour and Michel Callon (e.g. Callon, 1986; Callon & Latour, 1992; Latour, 1987, 1991) have advocated. In essence, this principle repudiates any a priori distinctions between the human and the non-human, agent and object, the social and the natural or the technological. Thus what is to count as "human" or "natural" or "technological" is a matter of struggle between various actors such as scientists, policy makers, lay publics and the like. It is a matter of empirical investigation as to what has emerged as "natural," "artificial" or "cultural." More recently, Latour (1993, 1994) has elaborated this view to argue that human and non-human alike are interfused with all manner of non-humans and humans (the network). Such heterogeneity is characteristic of the modern condition (indeed, of all conditions). Despite our best modernist efforts at denying the "exchange of properties" between humans and non-humans (and such denial, or purification, is evident in the way SCSP keeps humans and non-humans separate--to this extent SCSP is symptomatic of Latour's version of modernity), this heterogeneous process of mingling continues apace. Thus in the recent rise of what Latour calls "political ecology," "Lawyers, activists, ecologists, businessmen (sic), and political philosophers are now seriously talking, because of the ecological crisis, of granting non-humans some sorts of rights and some sorts of standing in court" ( 1994, pp. 795-6).

If such an inter-mixing is the order of the day, the task of actor-network theory is to provide accounts of how this proceeds (accounts which, for narrative convenience, initially retain the traditional, separated categories of the human and the non-human--see below). Here, we can initially draw on Law's (1991) account agency: "on the one hand we live in and are constituted by a set of relations which are organized in a range of different ways and have a series of effects; and on the other hand, we are embodied in a range of m a t e r i a l s . . , one of the best ways of stabilizing r e l a t ions . . , is precisely to embody them in durable materials: relations that tend, everything else being equal, to generate effects that last" (p. 174). But what are these materials, how do they work, and how do they come to embody and mediate social (and non-social) orderings? What is required here is a conceptualization of interaction that captures the range of exchanges between heterogeneous actors, say, the typically human and non-human. Thus, at the very least, such a formulation should be able to address the multiplicity of levels upon which exchanges and interactions between such different actors are conducted. Akrich and Latour (1992) address this multifariousness, by redefining semiotics. For these authors, semiotics becomes:

The study of how meaning is built, (where) the word "meaning" is taken in this original non- textual and non-linguistic interpretation: how a privileged trajectory is built, out of an indefi-


nite number of possibilities; in that sense, semiotics is the study of order building or path building and may be applied to settings, machines, bodies and programming languages as well as texts . . . (p. 259).

Crucial here is the phrase: "building a privileged trajectory out of an indefinite number of possibilities." The point is that the non-humans are active in such structurings (or orderings) of humans (e.g. their compartment) through a variety of media.

Latour (1991, 1992; Latour/Johnson, 1988) has provided the most elaborated account of this non-human ordering process. In Latour 's view, non-humans are necessarily present in all human encounters: "We are never faced with objects or social relations, we are faced with chains which are associations of humans (H) and non-humans (NH). No-one has ever seen social relation by i t s e l f . . , nor a technical relation . . . . Instead we are always faced with chains which look like this H - N H - H - N H - H - N H . . . " (1991, p. 110). As mentioned above, non-humans are no different from humans in one respect-- they are themselves effects, likewise subject to orderings and structurings; they are networks (assemblages of humans and non-humans) in their own right. But the key point in this context is that, given their networks, certain non-humans come to be highly resistant to resistance; their roles, functions, properties and impacts become "natural" or invisible, endowed with an automacity that enables them to act in the processes of mundane social ordering with relative autonomy.

Part of this "naturalness" rests on the way that non-humans can be used in the replacement of human actors who, insofar as they are potentially unreliable in performing their allotted tasks, would require disciplining, training supervision, surveillance and so on. Such continuous monitoring is, Latour suggests, inconvenient and inefficient (though, it should be noted that "inconvenience" and "inefficiency" are themselves historically contingent qualities--under the appropriate economic and cultural network conditions, forms of human servitude are "more efficient and convenient" than the development and application of technological artefacts capable of fulfilling the same function). Within the present networks, then, a more convenient and efficient means of ensuring that certain things get done is to delegate to relatively "reliable" non-humans (technological artefacts). Latour illustrates this point with an analysis of the operation of the door-closer (or g room-- the mechanism which slowly closes the door without slamming). This serves as a replacement for such relatively inefficient and potentially subversive human functionaries as the concierge, the porter or the bellboy. However, this technological artefact also contributes to mundane social ordering, that is, shaping the comportment of human users. For example, according to the strength of its spring and its tendency to slam the door, a door groom would necessitate certain capacities and skills on the part of human users: strength, quick reflexes, ease of movement and so on Latour (1992) phrases the issue thus:

. . . neither my little nephews nor my grandmother could get in unaided because our groom needed the force of an able-bodied person to accumulate enough energy to close the door . . . these doors discriminate against very little and very old persons (p. 234).

In other words, the action of the groom upon the human body serves to shape and discipline the human actor (however, see Pfaffenberger, 1991). This can work in various ways: avoiding the relevant doors, enroling other humans or non-humans to open doors for one, and so on. This process of shaping Latour calls prescription (or proscription, or affordance or a l lowance)-- "What a device allows or forbids from actors--humans and non-human--that it anticipates; it is the morality of a setting both negative (what it prescribes) and positive (what it permits)" (Akrich & Latour, 1992, p. 261). As such, these technological artefacts act as non-human moral agents; they embody a "local cultural condition" (Latour/Johnson, 1988, p. 301), which though

222 M. Michael

largely invisible to the human actors who interact with them, nevertheless shape human comportment.

However, these structurings or orderings are never absolute: they are always contingent. Under certain conditions, they can be resisted or subverted. So, in counterpart to successful pre- s c r i p t i o n - t h a t is, subscr ipt ion-- there is also de-inscription wherein human actors take on or withstand, repulse or undermine the prescriptions or proscriptions of ordering non-humans. According to the state of the network, that is, the range of resources, human and non-human, material and discursive, that human actors can mobilize, it becomes more or less feasible to resist or subvert the "corporeal-moral imperatives" exercised through the operation of technological non-humans. In all this, we can see how it might be that non-humans take on (momentarily or contingently) some of the trappings of moral(izing) agents. Conversely, we can begin to see how humans can become (momentari ly or contingently) "objects" to be efficiently manoeuvred. In other words, there seems to be an "exchange of qualities" through which the technological non- human is no longer the silent partner (or missing mass, as Latour phrases it) in the order of the social; it has become a key (though always contingent) actor.

With this all too superficial account of (some of the aspects of) actor-network theory, a new vista for constructionist inquiry is opened up. As a first step towards incorporating a concern for the role of non-humans it behoves us to review the many social constructionist studies that have investigated such phenomena as sexism, nationalism, identity, memory and so on and to ask the question "where are the non-humans in these accounts?". Such an interrogation will, hopefully, attune us to their contingent impact. Moreover, it will begin to throw up questions about how we might best theorize their interventions and resistances, and the means by which humans variously succumb to, collaborate with, or subvert the moral and political significations embodied in non-

humans.

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