Learning from Sociological Practice:

The Case of Applied Constructionism

Gale Miller and Kathryn J. Fox

Drawing upon field research in two distinct settings, the authors reflect upon the uses
of and problems associated with social constructionism in academic and applied
contexts. Miller's research on brief therapists and Fox's on an AIDS prevention program, both of which utilize the principles of social constructionism, bring into relief
various issues within social constructionism. The authors suggest that academic
contructionists' consideration of applied uses might bear insight into the relationship
between theory and sociological practice. As practitioners of everyday life who are
responsible to practical concerns, social constructionists' knowledge claims are socially contingent. The mutable claims to expertise and authority in applied settings
highlight these contingencies. Moreover, within applied constructionist settings, decisions to priviledge some knowledge forms over others reflect the ontological gerrymandering problem in academic versions of constructionism.
This article is a reflexive c o m m e n t a r y o n the d o m i n a n t s o c i o l o g i c a l o r i e n t a tion to social c o n s t r u c t i o n i s m . It r e p o r t s o n s o m e o f o u r e x p e r i e n c e s as social
constructionist researchers and analysts of human service organizations. The
r e s e a r c h p r o j e c t s - - w h i c h w e r e o t h e r w i s e u n r e l a t e d to o n e a n o t h e r - - w e r e social c o n t e x t s for e a c h o f us c o n f r o n t i n g s o m e u n a n t i c i p a t e d c o n c e r n s a n d d i l e m m a s a b o u t the r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n a c a d e m i c a n d n o n a c a d e m i c c o n s t r u c t i o n ism. Or, p u t m o r e generally, w e b e c a m e i n t e r e s t e d in the r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n
s o c i o l o g i c a l t h e o r y a n d practice. This article is o n e a s p e c t o f o u r reflections on,
a n d c o n v e r s a t i o n s a b o u t , t h e s e e x p e r i e n c e s a n d issues. We a r g u e that s o c i o l o gists' u s u a l o r i e n t a t i o n to social c o n s t r u c t i o n i s m n e e d s to b e b r o a d e n e d to reco g n i z e a n d i n c l u d e a p p l i e d u s e s o f c o n s t r u c t i o n i s t a s s u m p t i o n s a n d principles.

Kathryn Fox is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Vermont. Her areas of specialization are deviant behavior and social control, social problems theory, and qualitative methods.
She is co-author of Ethnography Unbound.. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis with
Michael Burawoy et al. Currently, she is conducting research on a cognitive therapy program for
violent offenders in prison.
Gale Miller is professor of sociology at Marquette University. His recent research has focused on
language use in human service organizations and social problems theory. His recent book,
Becoming Miracle Workers: Language and Meaning in Brief Therapy, is an ethnographic history
of a postmodern approach to human troubles. He has also recently published a book with
Robert Dingwall, Context and Method in Qualitative Research.

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Of course, the term social constructionism, like all categorizations, imposes a

unity on diverse points of view. We recognize the problems that accompany
our use of this language, particularly h o w we are asserting a unity a m o n g
a s p e c t s of s u c h d i s p a r a t e p e r s p e c t i v e s as s y m b o l i c i n t e r a c t i o n i s m ,
ethnomethodology, feminist theory, and poststructuralism. Lacking a better alternative to the language that we have chosen, and since we wish to discuss
general issues that cut across these and related perspectives, we accept the
limitations of our use of the term.
For the purposes of this article, social constructionism is an approach to
knowledge that emphasizes h o w individuals' and groups' senses of reality are
built up, sustained, and changed as people interpret aspects of their lives and
experiences. Social constructionists also stress the importance of language in
reality constructing processes, including the self-constitutive and political implications of people's language use. Knowledge is not, from this perspective, an
e p i p h e m o n e n o n of larger forces, such as autonomous social structures, which
exist separate from individuals' and groups' interpretive activities but which
exert great influence over them. Rather, social constructionists treat persons'
senses of social structure as inextricably linked to their k n o w l e d g e o f - - a n d
experiences i n - - e v e r y d a y life worlds, as well as the language they use to
describe their experiences.
Social constructionists' influence in sociology varies across the discipline's
many subfields. Thus, our comments have more relevance to some sociologists
than to others. An especially important audience for this article is sociologists
interested in social problems theory. The social constructionist perspective has,
over the past 25 or 30 years, emerged as a major paradigm in this area and has
been associated with a host of empirical studies of social problems as claimsmaking activities (Spector and Kitsuse, 1974, 1987; Schneider, 1985). It has also
been a major center for debates and controversies about social constructionism,
including debates about whether social constructionists practice what they preach
(Holstein and Miller 1993; Woolgar and Pawluch 1985). In other words, do
social constructionists apply the constructionist perspective in ways that are
"true" to constructionist assumptions and principles?
While important, these debates suffer from an overly narrow focus on some
of the interests, concerns and activities of academic constructionists. One effect
of this emphasis is to gloss over the concerns, interests, and activities of social
constructionists working in h u m a n service and other nonacademic settings. One
purpose of this article is to take social constructionism beyond the confines of
the university, and into nonacademic settings in which constructionist assumptions are being applied to achieve diverse practical ends. We believe that such
a shift will have important implications for sociologists' understanding of the
constructionist paradigm, and of themselves as social constructionists. For example, this shift in focus is one basis for analyzing h o w academic constructionists are organizational actors. Like their nonacademic counterparts, sociological
constructionists must sometimes work within settings and relationships that are
organized by nonconstructionist assumptions, concerns, and practices.
In the interest of clarity, we make the following terminological distinctions.
We refer to the academic-oriented work of most constructionist sociologists as
sociological constructionism, and the work of nonacademic social construction-

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ist practitioners as applied constructionism. We understand that some sociologists w h o are also practitioners might object to our language, perhaps arguing
that we are devaluing their w o r k by excluding them from the sociological
category. That is not our intent. Indeed, we believe that the issues raised in this
article are ways of recognizing and valuing the k n o w l e d g e of sociologically
trained and other applied constructionists.
Purposes and Concerns

While our orientations to social constructionism are somewhat different, both

authors are proponents of this approach to social life. We have no interest in
undermining or opposing sociological constructionism, particularly its historic
emphasis on empirical research. Rather, we wish to raise some questions regarding sociologists' conventional wisdom about social constructionism, and to
initiate a dialog about the questions. We believe that such a dialog is warranted
because the circumstances under which social constructionism is currently practiced are significantly different than those associated with its initial development in sociology.
For example, we have recently seen the d e v e l o p m e n t of constructionist
approaches in diverse academic disciplines. While not d o m i n a n t - - o r even mainstream--social constructionism is a recognizable perspective in such academic
fields as psychology (Burr, 1995; Gergen, 1994; Potter and Wetherell, 1987),
economics (McCloskey, 1985, 1990), political science (Edelman, 1977, 1988;
Rochefort and Cobb, 1994), and cultural studies (Schudson, 1997; Turner, 1990).
We have also seen the d e v e l o p m e n t of practical constructionist strategies in
such professions as medicine, public health, management, social work, and
therapy (Boje et al., 1996; Efran et al., 1988; Franklin, 1995; Franklin and
Nurius, 1996). Social constructionism is not a purely analytic enterprise. It is
associated with intervention strategies designed to influence people's lives.
These changes signal an important--but not dominant--shift in Western culture toward the adoption of constructionist orientations to diverse aspects of life
(Anderson, 1990). The shift might be characterized as an evolutionary process
involving a variety of (often disconnected) centers within and outside of university settings. While it is b e y o n d the scope of this article to chronicle the
beginnings or the several trajectories of this process, it is significant that, today,
constructionist sociologists may find themselves working in social settings in
which their assumptions are familiar to, if not accepted by, others. Indeed,
constructionist sociologists may discover that ideas, debates, and intellectual
movements that are current in university environs are also significant--although
perhaps in different forms--in the nonacademic settings that they study.
We believe that this ongoing development disallows academic constructioni s t s - i n c l u d i n g ourselves from having the last word about the character and
scope of constructionism. We argue that n o w is an appropriate time for sociological constructionists to begin to take explicit account of h o w social constructionism is an aspect of the diverse social worlds in which we live. For some
sociologists, this shift might involve developing collaborative relationships with
applied constructionists, but our choices are not limited to this option. Working
with applied constructionists might, for example, involve developing social

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action agendas based on constructionist assumptions, documenting and analyzing the practical constructionist strategies used by applied constructionists in
advancing their visions for social change, or perhaps using knowledge gleaned
from experiences in applied constructionist settings to understand better the
complexities of constructionist life within universities.
The latter issue is important for sociological constructionists to ponder. It is a
reminder that, despite our frequent preference for describing ourselves as aloof
analysts of everyday life and our work as theoretically--not practically--oriented, we also manage our lives through the practices that we analyze. Sociological constructionists are, to use Gubrium's (1988) term, practitioners of everyday life. These are people
who, together with others, engage the matter of figuring the meaning of things and events in
their worlds in order to conduct the latter's concrete business. Practitioners of everyday life
not only interpret their worlds but do so under discernible auspices, with recognizable agendas. (Gubrium 1988: 34)
As practitioners of everyday life, sociological constructionists sometimes orient to different agendas distinct from their applied counterparts, but this is not
always the case. Further, in exploring their differences and similarities, applied
and sociological constructionists may create a situation of binocular vision
(Bateson, 1979). This situation emerges w h e n two different, but compatible,
visions are brought together to create a new synthesis and change. Achieving
this goal, however, requires that applied and sociological constructionists take
each other seriously, and be willing to learn from their counterparts' experiences and perspectives, even if the lessons learned are unflattering or otherwise unsettling to their conventional wisdom.
Adopting such an orientation to applied constructionism promises several
benefits for sociological constructionists. It promises to help sociological constructionists develop n e w understandings of, and responses to, some of the
theoretical problems that occupy so much of their time and attention. We consider some of these problems--or, more accurately, debates--in later sections
of the study. A related benefit of academic sociologists taking their applied
counterparts seriously is that sociological constructionists might learn some n e w
lessons about their o w n claims-making (or truth-telling) activities. Too often in
their quest to p r o d u c e generalizable knowledge, sociologists forget that all
reality claims (including our own) are produced within, and shaped by, social
contexts.
We use the concept of practitioners of everyday life, then, to situate social
constructionists' truth-telling activities within concrete, practical social contexts.
For example, sociological constructionists tell truths by writing and lecturing
about h o w reality "really" is socially produced, as well as by making sense of
students' evaluations of teaching performances, discerning the "true" meaning and
significance of university administrators' memos, and justifying tenuro and promotion recommendations to university committees. Indeed, these are only some of the
ways in which sociological constructionists make sense of, and deal with, the
practical--sometimes complex and uncertain--tasks of everyday life.
Sociological constructionists can learn much about these aspects of their professional lives by observing or just talking with applied constructionists. The

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latter constructionists also work in social settings involving diverse, complex,

and contradictory demands, many of which do not fit easily with their constructionist agendas. Thus, constructionist sociologists might learn n e w strategies for
dealing with their "non-constructionist" responsibilities and activities. They might
also develop better understandings of the important differences that make constructionist work in academic and nonacademic settings separate and distinct.
Finally, and central to this study, sociological constructionists might begin to
rethink their prior commitments to social constructionism and/or their exclusive
focus on academic versions of it.
We develop the themes raised in this section in the rest of the article. First,
we situate our concerns in the two practical research experiences that have
greatly influenced our thinking about the present circumstance of social constructionism. These experiences are both social contexts for making sense of
our later remarks, and examples of two ways in which social constructionist
ideas are being applied in nonacademic settings. We begin with Fox's (1991,
1996) experiences as a researcher in the West Coast MDS Project and then turn
to Miller's (1997a) involvement with a constructivist therapy center, the Northland
Clinic. It is important to note that the lessons that we draw from these experiences say as much about each of us as people as they do about the individuals
and groups that we studied. In addition, the specific dilemmas and worries that
we discuss are not inevitable aspects of sociological constructionist research in
applied constructionist settings.
Our concerns emerged over time as we interpreted and linked our quite
different field work experiences to our differing orientations to sociological
constructionism. A major difference involves Fox's and Miller's orientations to
the politics and ethics of sociological and applied constructionism (Fox 1996;
Miller and de Shazer 1998). Specifically, Fox used her experiences in the West
Coast MDS Project as a basis for reconsidering aspects of her commitment to
social constructionism, whereas Miller treated his experiences as opportunities
to extend and diversify his ongoing constructionist activities. But, while we
acknowledge the idiosyncratic aspects to our experiences and interpretations
of them, we also believe that the lessons that we discuss here have general
significance for sociological--and perhaps applied--constructionists.

Situating Applied C o n s t r u c t i o n i s m
The West Coast AIDS Project, in which Fox conducted eighteen months of
participant-observation, was funded as a demonstration research project by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse to study the needle-sharing and drug-using
practices of street-based drug injectors. The project was concerned with testing
street-based outreach as a methodology for impeding the spread of HIV in this
population. To this end, the agency hired "street-wise" outreach w o r k e r s - mostly from the target communities or w h o were former drug users themselves--to comb the neighborhoods of the city dispensing condoms, bleach for
disinfecting syringes, information about HIV testing and risk reduction, and
information about other related services.
Fox worked as a participant observer of both the project outreach workers
and administrators. She participated in all aspects of street outreach, except for

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managing her own client caseload. For example, Fox accompanied the outreach workers on their routine trips through two communities, participating in
their activities by filling bleach bottles, and by distributing condoms and bleach
to community residents. She also helped arrange and coordinate interviews for
the research department, visited clients, attended staff meetings, and presented
in the agency's training seminars for outreach workers. Fox's dealings with
project administrators involved observing staff and supervisory meetings, and
conducting formal and informal interviews with many of the Project staff members and administrators.
The West Coast AIDS Project was administered by professional applied ethnographers, who were positively oriented toward symbolic interactionism and
particularly toward Becker's (1963) labeling approach to deviance and social
control. A major premise of the administrators was that outreach workers and
other health providers needed to understand drug users' definitions of the situation in order to modify their behaviors. The project administrators rejected any
ideas that they assessed as diminishing the salience of clients' expertise about
their own lives. In particular, they rejected the concept of denial, a foundational
concept for many human service professionals' theories of addiction. The project
administrators also emphasized classic sociological arguments about the socially
constructed evils of illicit drugs and their prohibition.
The street outreach workers' sense of reality sometimes contrasted sharply
with the more relativistic approach advocated by the administrators. Many of
the outreach workers suggested that privileging all clients' definitions of reality
was counterproductive to the goals of human service. They criticized clients
who did not think HIV was a viable threat to their health, or who did not place
its prevention high on their list of priorities. From the perspective of the outreach workers, there was a fundamental conflict between the project's emphasis on respecting such client perspectives, and their professional responsibility
to do what they could to reduce the spread of HIV among the agency's clientele.
Thus, the outreach workers oriented to their professional roles and clients in
decidedly non-constructionist ways. The workers, for example, argued that
many clients were in denial about their risk for HIV transmission and that the
outreach workers' jobs required that they enforce a particular view of social
reality in their dealings with clients. The workers' preferred reality emphasized
the risks accompanying clients' continued drug use, and some stressed that
clients who rejected their view were just plain wrong. In this sense, then, the
outreach workers uncoupled clients' experiences and interpretations of their
worlds from the "reality" of clients' practical circumstances, a rhetorical move
that was rejected by the project administrators.
Miller's involvement with constructionist therapy began in 1984 w h e n he
was invited to conduct a qualitative study at a brief therapy clinic. The study is
still ongoing, although some aspects of it have changed over time. Brief therapy,
as the name suggests, is a counseling approach that emphasizes solving clients'
problems as quickly as possible. Brief therapists at Northland Clinic do so by
working with their clients to identify ways in which clients are already adequately managing their lives, and then generalizing those skills and insights
into other aspects of clients' lives. Brief therapists avoid discussions of clients'

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deficiencies or pathologies, choosing to stress clients' strengths, insights, and

choices instead. They state that since social realities are constructed anyway,
why not construct realities that are positive and hopeful about the future?
Northland Clinic is a private organization that is internationally prominent as
a site for doing brief therapy, and for training human service professionals in
constructionist counseling. The clinic staff work with a wide diversity of clients,
including poor and affluent people, inner city residents and suburbanites, young
and old people, as well as clients who voluntarily come to the clinic and those
who have been ordered there by the courts. The range of problems reported by
clients is also diverse. Miller has, for example, observed sessions concerned
with family conflicts, eating disorders, depression, drug and alcohol abuse,
criminal activity, problems at school and work, and schizophrenia.
Central to the kind of brief therapy practiced at Northland Clinic is the assumption that personal problems and solutions are language games (Wittgenstein
1958) which involve very different ways of being in the world. Thus, talking
about problems will not lead to solutions. Such talk, instead, only makes problems worse by objectifying them and by casting them as powerful forces over
which clients have little or no control. For Northland Clinic therapists, the first
step in solving one's problems involves entering a new language game focused
on solutions and on how clients are competent managers of their lives. Northland
Clinic therapists also state that whenever it is possible, clients should be allowed to solve their own problems, meaning that it is up to clients--not therap i s t s - t o decide what changes need to made in clients' lives. Should clients'
goals involve issues that therapists cannot abide, then therapists should remove
themselves from the relationship.
A major focus of brief therapy training at Northland Clinic, then, involves
closely examining h o w therapists and clients use language in their mutual
interactions and in developing practical strategies for orienting the interactions
toward talk of solutions. The clinic staff draw directly from aspects of constructionist sociology and related perspectives in instructing others on these matters.
These lessons are also being applied abroad in some former Soviet republics
where (brief therapy trained) human service professionals are engaged in diverse social reform activities. For these applied constructionists, social constructionism is a pro-democratic and multicultural ideology, and a strategy for
rethinking established institutions and cultural practices.
Some Challenges Of Applied Constructionism

The administrators of the West Coast MDS Project and Northland Clinic therapists have developed practical, constructionist intervention strategies that "compete" with other practical orientations to social problems and change. From a
sociological perspective, they have recontextualized social constructionism by
organizing it within new activities, relationships and concerns. Of course, this
has not been a simple or linear process. Applied constructionists draw from a
number of sources in developing their constructionist ideas and practices, including the work of academic constructionists. The latter connection is expressed, for example, in brief therapists' continuing interest in ethnomethodology
and poststructuralism, and in the West Coast MDS Project administrators' com-

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mitment to labeling theory. It is the recontextualization of social constructionism

within applied constructionist settings that has sparked our recent thinking about
sociological constructionism.
Our orientations to our studies followed similar trajectories. Both of us started
with conventional sociological constructionist research agendas. We were interested in observing and analyzing the West Coast AIDS Project and Northland
Clinic as sites of social interaction and reality construction. Neither of us anticipated the complexities and challenges that our research sites would pose for
us. For Fox, these complexities and challenges involved the relationship bet w e e n the project administrators' and outreach workers' orientations to the
project's mission and clients. Over time, Fox (1991, 1996) began to see herself
as caught in an internal contradiction of labeling theory, a contradiction having
theoretical, ethical and practical implications for her.
The dilemma involved Fox's commitment to two separate, but related, aspects of labeling theory as an analytic and political strategy. On the one hand,
Fox was drawn to labeling theory as a strategy for analyzing drug policies and
programs, and as an intervention methodology. On the other hand, she was also
committed to Becker's (1967) related argument that sociologists should take the
side of the "underdog" in their studies. Fox's problem was that she was working
in a situation in which the social constructionists were in charge, and thus in a
privileged position to define the project's philosophy, goals and priorities. The
outreach workers were employees and, therefore, required to follow generally
the administrators' directives.
If one understands the project's clients as the underdogs, then this situation is
unproblematic. This is h o w the administrators defined the situation. The outreach workers' characterization of some of the project's clients as wrong-headed
and their insistence that the clients take the risk of AIDS seriously was, from the
administrators' standpoint, an unwarranted power play, not dissimilar to those
enacted by the drug treatment "empire." Thus, the administrators' emphasis on
taking clients' definitions of reality seriously was a reasonable and ethical response to the situation. But, as Fox came to realize, an observer might just as
reasonably define the outreach workers as the u n d e r d o g in the project. The
latter view radically transforms the entire situation. Now, the project administrators' insistence that outreach workers follow their directives might be analyzed
as a political strategy designed to marginalize and silence the underdogs. And
the training sessions conducted by project administrators for outreach workers
might be viewed as attempts to privilege an elitist, academic paradigm over the
indigenous knowledge of the targeted population.
Thus, Fox defined her situation as a dilemma involving a choice between
two conflicting groups espousing different social realities and intervention strategies. Making a choice between the groups was important to Fox because she
found it impossible to treat both sets of claims as equally enlightened or useful.
The question she faced was h o w to make this choice. What rhetorical grounds
might she use to describe the situation, assess the competing positions, and
persuade herself that one set of claims was preferable to the other? Was one
side to this disagreement more worthy--if not more truthful--than the other?
This is not, of course, a question that is unique to Fox's situation. Sociological
constructionists make this choice every time they analyze social life, although

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they don't always recognize it. The choice is often obscured in sociological
analyses by sociologists' decisions about the relevant audiences for their analyses (usually other academics) and decisions to organize their analyses as conventional academic texts. Thus, they choose the reality of academic constructionism over other possible realities, a choice that may be made easier by the
distinction frequently made by sociologists between theoretical and applied
sociology. Theory is often written for other academics, and applied work is
often done for more general audiences, including practitioners.
Fox found this distinction to be untenable within the context of her study
where theory and application were inextricably intertwined, especially since
Fox assessed constructionist theory as unworkable in this setting. The project's
administrators justified their approach to practical intervention on theoretical
grounds, and the outreach workers' objections to the administrators' approach
were, at least, partly epistemological arguments. Fox's difficulty was also related to her unwillingness to define her academic theory as the most relevant
kind. She chose, instead, to take serious account of the competing groups with
w h o m she was involved as a participant and observer. The positions in contention were being pressed by embodied people with w h o m she was directly
involved, and their disagreements had clear practical implications for her and
others involved with the West Coast AIDS Project. And, most importantly, epistemological tensions mounted as she saw her own paradigm on the chopping
block, her own image as a sociologist refracted through the administrators. In
this sense, she began to wonder about the bearing that academic constructionism has in the world, and considered that there might be more appropriate
audiences for understanding theory.
Miller's thinking changed over time as he observed Northland Clinic therapists clarifying their constructionist assumptions and implementing them in their
practice. Miller observed, for example, how the therapists slowly reduced the
amount of time that they devoted to talking about problems with clients. Their
logic was both practical and constructionist. As practitioners, they were interested in developing intervention techniques that clients found to be helpful and
which took as little time as possible. The Northland Clinic therapists found that
shifting their interactions with clients away from talk of problems and toward
solutions served this practical interest. And they cited Wittgensteinian philosophy, constructionist sociology, and poststructural theory to explain the success
of their new therapy practices.
The effect of this and similar developments at Northland Clinic--which stood
in stark contrast to Miller's experiences in other human service organizations-was to unsettle his prior assumption that social constructionism was an academic
perspective that was of limited usefulness to practitioners. Miller's concern was not
about taking sides between two competing groups, but about saying something
meaningful about the setting and processes that he had observed. He decided that
for the purposes of this study, the word meaningful meant saying something that
would be interesting--if not useful--to both sociologists and therapists.
Clearly, the therapists were the more problematic audience for him. Miller
was, after all, an academic sociologist and therefore familiar with their "tribal"
ways and storytelling preferences. This was less true for the therapists. Also, he
knew that many sociologists were unfamiliar with the philosophy and practice

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of brief therapy, and would likely find a straightforward descriptive account of

Northland Clinic to be interesting in and of itself. But such an account would not
be news to the therapists. And, finally, Miller's problem was related to the
therapists' practical and theoretical understanding of many of the basic assumptions of constructionist sociology.
Miller's problem may be succinctly stated as a question, "What does a constructionist sociologist say to people w h o self-consciously engage in the practical work of reality construction on a daily basis, and w h o have developed their
o w n literature on h o w to do it effectively?" Brief therapists' "common sense" is
not the same as the " c o m m o n sense" of nonconstructionist practitioners. Indeed, brief therapists are quite likely to respond to constructionist sociological
analyses of their work by asking, "So what?" Something like this occurred to
Miller in a conversation with a Northland Clinic therapist about a sociological
text that Miller had suggested the therapist read. After reading the book, the
therapist stated, "It's a nice book, but we've known that for a long time."
There is also the matter of bracketing (Schutz 1970), which involves suspending belief in the idea that words have essential meanings, and are labels
for something that might be called objective reality. The meaning of words is
determined in the concrete, practical, and observable ways in which people
use language. Studying this process is central to the constructionist project, at
least as it is defined by many sociological constructionists. But what is the point
of instructing brief therapists on this sociological practice or of analyzing their
work by bracketing the social realities that they construct in their professional
relationships? They understand the usefulness of bracketing, even if they don't
use the term. Indeed, they might even be described as applied bracketers.
Thus, we return to the "so what" question, and we might add a new one, "How
does any of this help people to lead more satisfactory lives?"
S o c i o l o g i c a l C o n s t r u c t i o n i s m as a L a b y r i n t h

Sociological and other forms of social constructionism may be analyzed as

interpretive communities (Fish 1980, 1989). These communities are organized
as shared interpretive assumptions and practices that members use in orienting
toward the world. Membership in such communities may be long-term or fleeting, since people join an interpretive community by constructing social reality
in particular ways and leave it by adopting n e w assumptions and engaging in
different interpretive practices. This is not to say that interpretive communities
are without disagreement or conflict. The same assumptions and interpretive
practices may be used to construct and justify different theoretical and practical
conclusions.
Such conflicts are pervasive in academic circles. The practical implications of
these disagreements and conflicts are variable. Sometimes they are sources of
n e w energy for community members, thus invigorating them to work in new
and creative ways. Other times, however, disputes within interpretive communities become intellectual labyrinths which trap community members in mazes
that always lead back to their starting points. The harder the members work to
m o v e on, the less progress they m a k e in getting out of the labyrinth. We
believe, unfortunately, that recent debates among sociological constructionists
have labyrinthian features.

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One debate involves the concept of "ontological gerrymandering" (Woolgar

and Pawluch 1985), and focuses on the implications of sociological constructionists' writing practices. Put simply, this dispute turns on whether sociological
constructionist analyses tacitly cast one definition of reality as objectively true
while relativizing the realities advocated by others. This is ontological gerrymandering. Woolgar and Pawluch (1985), the major proponents of this view,
further suggest that if this "problem" can be remedied, it must be done by
developing new forms of constructionist argumentation and writing. But they
also raise the possibility that ontological gerrymandering is an unavoidable part
of sociological constructionist analysis.
A related aspect of recent debates in sociological constructionism involves
disagreements b e t w e e n strict and contextual constructionists. Strict constructionists state that ontological gerrymandering is not a necessary part of social
constructionist analysis, although it is widely evident in the literature of the
field (Ibarra and Kitsuse 1993). The "problem," as they describe it, is that
p r o p o n e n t s of the constructionist perspective have not applied it properly.
Thus, the solution to the problem is for sociological constructionists to be more
faithful to the initial aims of the constructionist project, which they emphasize
involves not evaluating others' claims about social reality. Through this response, strict constructionists create a situation in which they are easily paralyzed for fear of making claims about truth.
Contextual constructionists, on the other hand, state that ontological gerrymandering may be a necessary part of doing useful constructionist analyses
(Best 1993). Useful analysis, in this case, involves both studying others' reality
claims and assessing the adequacy of the claims. They explain that sociologists
are uniquely qualified to make assessments that are relevant to public debates
about social issues. The contextual constructionist response to the ontological
gerrymandering issue involves creating a situation in which sociologists act as
expert arbiters on what will count as "truth."
It seems that every option for m o v e m e n t within these debates takes the
debaters back to a vision of social constructionism as a purely academic enterprise. Constructionists are defined as researchers, analysts, writers and expert
consultants. Their primary audiences are other academics and those members
of the nonacademic public w h o are interested in such intellectual debates. But
there is more to this issue. The participants in these debates assume that their
knowledge of social constructionism is adequate for the task at hand, and that
the problems endemic to academic constructionism are inherent in this world
view, regardless of context and audience. For us, this is the most significant and
troubling aspect of the debates.
We believe that social constructionists have defined the field in overly narrow terms, thus producing the current labyrinth. For example, h o w can we
k n o w whether ontological gerrymandering is an unavoidable feature of social
constructionism if we limit our inquiry to one version of it? Might it be that this
issue is mostly relevant to written and/or academic versions of social constructionism? And do we really know e n o u g h about social constructionism to say--as
strict constructionists do---that the constructionist project has not been properly
applied? We similarly question the contextual constructionists' claim that useful
constructionist work necessarily involves assessing the adequacy of others' claims.

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Aren't these academic debates premature, particularly w h e n they are taking

place in a world that is increasingly populated with applied constructionists,
such as the administrators of the West Coast AIDS Project, constructivist therapists, and constructivist social activists in Central and East Europe? We also see
these debates as counterproductive. In arguing about these matters, social constructionists narrow their horizons by restricting their vision to familiar versions
of social constructionism, to one institutional setting, and to audiences w h o
share their experiences with social constructionism. We next discuss s o m e
ideas for expanding the horizons of sociological constructionism.
Defining New Horizons

Our first--and perhaps most i m p o r t a n t - - r e c o m m e n d a t i o n for moving forward is that sociological constructionists look to their o w n analytic work and
that of others working within complementary perspectives. Sociological constructionism is not rendered irrelevant by the social and cultural developments
that we emphasize. It will, however, be broader, more varied, and inclusive.
Second, we believe that a useful strategy for developing a broader constructionist vision involves examining the relationships b e t w e e n diverse constructionist ideas and practices, on the one hand, and their institutional contexts on
the other. It involves situating sociological and applied constructionism within
concrete social settings, and treating social constructionists as practitioners of
everyday life.
This strategy must include an ethnographic emphasis. Analyses of the official
rhetoric conveyed in public pronouncements and organizational documents, for
example, cannot address the many complexities and subtleties of the practicecontext nexus (Miller 1997b). Such research is, of course, familiar territory for
some sociological constructionists, although usually they do not study the social
contexts of their o w n or of applied constructionists' ideas and practices (Gubrium
and Holstein 1997). This omission is unfortunate, because it limits the issues
that may be included in discussions and debates about social constructionism. It
also restricts the number and types of groups with w h o m sociological constructionists may work, and from w h o m they might learn.
These r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s are also strategies for d e v e l o p i n g a sociological
understanding of social constructionism as work. The work rubric is appropriate
because social constructionism is a serious activity done by both academic and
nonacademic constructionists. Indeed, they are often paid for their constructionist work. Social constructionism is also a consequential activity, being organized
as careers and having practical consequences for clients and others whose lives
are affected by the decisions and actions of social constructionists. The work
rubric also provides us with a basis for comparing and contrasting the practices
and contexts of sociological and other forms of social constructionism. One
focus for comparative analysis is social constructionists' assumption that knowledge is socially contingent (Aronson, 1984). Social contexts are conditions of
possibility that "encourage" some statements and knowledge, and may also
"discourage" other statements and knowledge.
Further, as Foucault (1972) teaches us, knowledge and power are inextricably connected in social life. Thus, comparative studies of different kinds of

Miller and Fox

65

constructionist work might analyze h o w social constructionism is enmeshed in

power relations. Sociologists, as welt as other constructionists, often have difficulty conceptualizing themselves as part of p o w e r relations. They prefer to
think of themselves and their work as egalitarian, if not liberating and empowering. Becker's (1967) plea for taking the side of the underdog still resonates
with many sociologists. But this view of power and sociological constructionism
rests on two assumptions that we wish to make problematic. The first assumption is that we can clearly distinguish between the underdogs and overdogs in
our work. This is not always the case, as Fox learned in her study of the West
Coast MDS Project.
The second assumption frequently made by sociologists is central to Foucault's
(1972) critique of the conventional Western view of power as a negative force
in society. We typically assume that power consists only of oppressive practices and structures that must be reformed, if not eliminated altogether. Foucault, on the other hand, analyzes power as a process that is endemic to knowledge, discourse, and social relations. Power is central to our being able to act in
society. Sociologists and other social constructionists are e n m e s h e d in power
relations because they are actors in the world. And social constructionists' actions are related to a distinctive discourse through which they formulate, convey, justify, and press constructionist truths.
For example, Northland Clinic may be analyzed as a site for developing
constructionist truths and power relations. These truths and relationships emerge
as brief therapists ask questions that clients answer. The questions ask clients to
imagine and describe future times (after a miracle has happened) w h e n clients'
problems are gone from their lives, as well as to identify h o w aspects of clients'
miracles are already evident in clients' lives. Northland Clinic therapists also ask
their clients to identify personal strengths and successes that the clients might
draw u p o n in changing their lives. Through these interactional practices, Northland
Clinic therapists and clients do the practical work of brief therapy, create distinctive social relationships, and produce social conditions for privileging some
knowledge claims (solutions) over other claims (problems).
Woolgar and Pawluch's (1985) critique of sociological constructionism as
ontological gerrymandering may also be understood as an analysis of knowledge and power. That is, ontological gerrymandering is not just an analytic
practice that may be discerned from the close reading of sociological texts. The
texts are conditions of possibility for privileging sociological k n o w l e d g e by
casting others' truth claims as socially contingent and possibly flawed. Sociologists' truth claims, on the other hand, are treated as uncontingent and, therefore,
credible. Through such writing practices, sociologists construct power relations
in which they and their "research subjects" occupy different social positions
along hierarchies of credibility.
It is unfortunate, we believe, that Woolgar and Pawluch limit their analysis of
social constructionists' work to published texts. These texts form an official
sociological rhetoric. Thus, they are similar to the public pronouncements made
by other claims-making groups in society. In focusing on this rhetoric only,
Woolgar and Pawluch gloss over h o w official sociological rhetoric is related to
research processes involving "data" collection and analysis. Researchers' decisions and actions about these matters may have profound implications for the

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truths that they articulate in their texts. Academic constructionists' work is made
more complex w h e n we consider the many practical considerations that authors
may take into account in writing articles for professional journals or for other
publication outlets. Indeed, there is a sense in which the editorial review process is a negotiation about the kinds of truths that may be asserted in sociological texts.
Social Constructionism

as T r u t h T e l l i n g

The social constructionist insight that the truths we tell are contingent is basic
to many sociological analyses of reality construction in everyday life, including
Anspach's (1987) analysis of ecologies of knowledge. These ecologies consist
of socially organized conditions for knowing reality, and of the ways in which
different orientations to k n o w l e d g e are arranged, expressed, and evaluated
within different social settings. For example, one way of understanding the
differences in the West Coast MDS Project administrators' and outreach workers' orientations to the project's clients and mission is by considering the major
sources of their knowledge about drug use and users.
The administrators' expertise about drug use was largely academic, and focused on the history of drug policy. Although the administrators had years of
experience as urban ethnographers, during Fox's tenure with the project their
activities were restricted to administration, grant proposal and report writing, and
staff management. In addition, while teaching outreach workers the proper line on
drug prohibition, the administrators cited academic sources mostly, drawing less
u p o n their field research. The outreach workers' knowledge, on the other hand,
was based on their own experiences as drug users, as members of the communities
in which they worked, and with the project's clients. The dangers posed by illicit
drugs and HIV, as well as poverty, were objectively real for them.
Thus, while the West Coast MDS Project administrators did not rely on firsthand knowledge of the exigencies of clients' everyday lives, these exigencies
were central to the outreach workers' orientations to, and typifications of, the
project's clients and mission. And, as Fox reports, these differences sometimes
became matters of contention in the project administrators' and outreach workers' mutual interactions. For instance, crack cocaine was the n e w drug on the
scene at the time, and based on their street experience, many outreach workers
claimed that crack was s o m e h o w different or worse than other drugs. The
administrators argued that crack was no worse than other drugs, that the outreach workers' interpretations represented ideology, thereby undercutting the
outreach workers' claims to experiential knowledge. Their debates were about
defining the truth of clients' circumstances, and fundamental to the debates
were disagreements about what should count as a legitimate source of knowledge about drug use and HIV risk. Fox further analyzes these interactions as
organized to privilege the administrators' preferred truth over those of the
outreach workers.
Similar comparisons might be made b e t w e e n brief therapists' and sociologists' orientations to constructionist assumptions, claims, and practices. Brief
therapists orient to these issues as clinical matters. They particularly emphasize
therapists' professional obligation to address seriously their clients' concerns.

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67

Northland Clinic therapists regularly tell members of their training groups, for
example, that therapists are paid to help their clients find solutions to the
clients' problems and that therapists are ethically obligated to keep their end of
their bargain. Brief therapists assume that reality is socially contingent and
produced, but they also state that some definitions of reality are more useful to
clients than other definitions.
Further, for brief therapists, what counts as a useful definition varies depending on clients' desires and practical circumstances. A useful truth for one client
may not be useful for another client, even though the same name might be
attached to their "problems." Like the outreach workers in Fox's study, then,
brief therapists focus on the practical exigencies of everyday life in assessing
whether to treat a knowledge claim as true. The primary source of brief therapists' knowledge about the exigencies is clients' answers to questions asked by
the therapists in therapy sessions.
A major assumption associated with brief therapists' questions is that the
events of life, and our knowledge of the events, are not stable. They state that
we can--if we are asked the right questions--describe times w h e n our problems are not so severe (maybe even absent from our lives), as well as construct
persuasive reasons for expecting that our lives will be better in the future. For
brief therapists, then, the truths that emerge in therapy sessions are mutable.
They are stories in the making and are therefore always, to some degree,
unfinished. The same might be said about social constructionism. It is a story
that may be told in a variety of ways, and to achieve different ends. Thus, the
truthfulness of any version of the constructionist story is contingent on the
circumstances of its telling.
Sociological constructionism may also be analyzed from the standpoint of the
ecology of knowledge. Sociological constructionism is defined by the academic
contexts in which it is nested. We believe that these contexts often encourage a
decontextualized and static sense of sociological k n o w l e d g e production and
use. This is clearly an important feature of recent debates about whether sociological constructionists practice what they preach. Making this claim requires
that the claims-makers construct a stable and unitary constructionist ideology.
These claims-makers also uncouple constructionist ideology from the circumstances of its production, the contexts within and practices through which constructionist research, analysis and writing are done.
Using the concept of ontological gerrymandering to critique sociological constructionists' writings, for example, only makes sense if there is a stable constructionist ideology which claims not to privilege some claims to truth over
others. This assumption makes it possible to erect a single standard for evaluating w h e t h e r sociological constructionists' work practices are consistent with
constructionist ideology. Strict constructionists also embrace this assumption and
logic in arguing that the "true" constructionist p r o j e c t - - i d e o l o g y - - h a s been
improperly described and implemented in empirical studies of social problems
claims-making.
We assume, instead, that the truths that sociological constructionists tell are
inseparable from the circumstances of their production. There are many different ways in which sociological constructionist truths might be fashioned and
told. Sociologists' work, like that of applied constructionists, is complex and

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varied because it is situated in socially organized worlds of practical activity.

These worlds exist in socially organized time and space, the activities that
constitute them are responsive to their o w n contextual demands, and the truths
that e m e r g e within t h e m are dynamic. They are truths in the making. We
assume that social constructionists only k n o w what they stand for by doing
social constructionism.
We also see a decontextualized and static orientation to knowledge production and use in contextual constructionists' approach to assessing the knowledge claims of others. They ask, "Which of the competing claims about an issue
is more accurate?" Accurate claims, for these constructionists, better capture the
practical realities at issue than d o other, competing k n o w l e d g e claims. This
orientation to constructionist truth may be contrasted with that of brief therapists
w h o ask, "Which of the available claims to truth is more useful for the task at
hand?" Accuracy is not an issue in the latter question. Indeed, brief therapists
assume that once their clients orient to their lives in n e w ways, the clients will
begin to change their lives, thus making the clients' expectations of change
accurate. Brief therapists further encourage this self-fulfilling prophecy by asking their clients to describe h o w aspects of clients' miracles are already observable in the clients' lives.
The orientation to social constructionism that we advocate, then, is not a
strategy for avoiding or transcending the making of truth claims. We assume
that making such claims is an inevitable consequence of our language use, and
we accept whatever responsibility goes with our truth=telling activities. We
believe that one of those responsibilities is acknowledging that sociological
constructionism is, itself, e m b e d d e d in the very processes that it analyzes. This
is h o w we understand Fox's dilemma about taking sides in disagreements between administrators and outreach workers in the West Coast AIDS Project. Her
dilemma was one way of orienting to social constructionism as a practical
activity involving its o w n configuration of k n o w l e d g e and power. It is also
through this interpretive lens that we see Miller's frustration with such typical
constructionist "rules" as bracketing in his studies of brief therapists. Rather than
faithfully following all of the old rules, he asks if these studies might be better
used to develop a sociological constructionism that is oriented toward telling
contingent, shifting, and useful truths?
Practically C o n s t r u c t e d Truths

Social constructionists live and work in worlds that include--sometimes are

dominated by---competing forms of knowledge. And proponents of non-constructionist orientations are often consequential actors in social constructionists'
work worlds. In the West Coast AIDS project, for example, administrators pitched
a distinctive reality to their federal funding source in the form of requisite
quantitative data on the epidemiology of HIV in the communities under study.
This version of reality detailed the extent to w h i c h drug using clients had
accepted the program's prevention message and adopted the advocated protocols. The final proof was in the serological testing of HIV statuses of the
interview subjects. So, while the administrators founded the project on the basis
of standard principles of naturalistic ethnography which privileges the accounts

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69

of drug using clients, those accounts were sometimes reconstituted and fit into
quantitative slots.
The constructivist therapists that Miller studied also might be said to compromise in meeting some practical imperatives. Similar to the constraints within the
AIDS project, brief therapists are obliged to conduct outcome studies which
assess and quantify the effectiveness of their techniques. Also, diagnostic categorization is sometimes required by insurance companies and referring agencies. Whether to comply with these requests is a topic of debate among brief
therapists. Some therapists state that making diagnoses is an unwarranted violation of their constructionist principles, whereas others argue for more accommodating responses. The latter therapists often state, for example, that giving
insurance companies and referring agencies some of what they want better
serves clients' interests than outright refusal.
Further, brief therapists usually privilege the accounts of their clients by
deferring to clients' preferred solutions to the issues at hand. However, there
are legal and ethical contingencies to which the therapists must also respond.
One such contingency is the requirement that therapists do something about
k n o w n situations of physical abuse in the home. Thus, the Northland Clinic
therapists explicitly" and directly instruct these clients to remove themselves
from their abusive situations, although some observers might argue that this
action violates social constructionist principles. Responding in this way is, for
the Northland Clinic therapists, an aspect of addressing their clients' interests
and needs.
While we don't discuss them in many of our writings, sociological constructionists also deal with similar practical contingencies in doing their work. For
example, we assess and categorize other people's constructionist work. We do
this in deciding what grades to assign our students' papers, as well as in classifying colleagues' papers within the hierarchical categories provided by our
professional journals. It is also relevant to ask, are GRE scores, grades, letters of
reference, and related materials handled differently w h e n students apply for
admission to sociology graduate programs that emphasize social constructionism than w h e n students apply to non-constructionist programs?
To refuse to work within these interpretive constraints risks the charge of
unprofessional behavior, as well as being left out of the peer review process.
Thus, there are practical professional interests at stake in these academic activities that are not so different from those faced by the AIDS project administrators
and brief therapists. Sometimes constructionist sociologists deal with our "compromises" with non-constructionism by giving explanations and other signals to
others, suggesting that we understand the irony of our situations. But, again, this
does not distinguish sociologists from applied constructionists w h o are also
often quite sensitive to the ironies of practical circumstance.
Academic constructionists tend to treat hierarchies of expertise (and accomp a w i n g knowledge forms) as fixed features of an organizational structure. The
hierarchies become animated through negotiations over meanings. Such a static
analysis neglects the ways that diverse social constructionists--as actors in social worlds--reconstitute themselves and the character of expertise according
to audience demands. For example, in staff meetings as well as professional
presentations, the AIDS project administrators touted the outreach staff as the

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backbone of the agency, insisting that they were the true experts. As ethnographers, the administrators embraced the notion that experiential insight was of
"superior epistemological status" (Anspach, 1987:219). Yet in practice, expertise was a mutable concept.
In applied and sociological constructionist settings, ecologies of knowledge
and discourses of authority are hardly objective facts. They are contextually
variable, and potentially fluid within situations. As such, determining the locus
of power in these settings is not a simple matter of observing the negotiative
rhetoric. The rhetoric used may vary by situation, so power may be shifting. As
we have seen with brief therapists w h o sometimes deal with clients reporting
physical abuse, therapists can wield a higher status or not, depending u p o n the
exigencies of the moment. While some followers of Foucault, unwittingly perhaps, insist that the ability to claim expertise is grounded in hegemonic discourses or diffuse matrices, the social distribution of power/knowledge/expertise is always potentially mutable in everyday life.
Conclusion

While we have focused on social constructionism, we believe that aspects of

our discussion have general relevance for conceptualizing the relationship between sociological theory and research, on the one hand, and applied sociology
on the other. First, we believe that, as academic sociologists, we must consider
our o w n social positions and episteme in the narratives we produce. Yet these
reflections may have meaning only in the state of academic sociology. Beyond
epistemological reflexivity, then, we are inviting a n e w empiricism, a way of
looking at sociology from a social constructionist standpoint. We have discussed
only a few of the myriad questions d e m a n d e d by this internally diverse social
development, such as the dynamic nature of knowledge, power, and expertise.
An additional epistemological implication of our invitation is the reflexivity it
indicates. Most often w h e n sociologists engage in self-reflection on their o w n
k n o w l e d g e production, the images mirrored are of static categories, such as
gender, race, and social class. While not denying the significance of these
variables in forming w h o we are and h o w we see the world, there are other
factors that these categories wash over. The factors that we have stressed in this
paper emphasize the linkages b e t w e e n sociologists' practices and the social
contexts of their work. We have argued for an orientation to sociological reflexivity that treats the truths told by academic and applied sociologists as practical
constructions. The truths are inseparable from the social contexts to which they
are responsive and the practices through which they are produced.
Our "truth as situationally contingent" orientation to sociological reflexivity is
also related to our skepticism about sociological programs that presume to tell
decontextualized truths. We prefer to think of sociology as a project involving
direct engagements with the social worlds described and analyzed. Qualitative
m e t h o d s and research strategies are especially appropriate for this project,
although other approaches might also be used. Our research experiences show
h o w qualitative research may create serendipitous reflection by unsettling researchers' and theorists' assumptions about their analytic and political commitments. Equally important, our research experiences confirm that this serendipitous reflection need not take academic sociologists in any single direction.

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O u r a p p r o a c h to sociological troths a c k n o w l e d g e s the significance o f ideolo g y in s o c i o l o g i c a l t h e o r y , r e s e a r c h a n d p r a c t i c e . But w e treat s o c i o l o g i c a l

i d e o l o g i e s as internally diverse a n d m a l l e a b l e social c o n s t r u c t i o n s that are res p o n s i v e to practical circumstance. To u s e Berger's (1981) term, w e are intere s t e d in h o w sociologists d o ideological w o r k in m e e t i n g their practical r e s p o n sibilities as m e m b e r s o f a p p l i e d a n d a c a d e m i c settings. A related p o i n t is that a
useful strategy for e n h a n c i n g sociologists' u n d e r s t a n d i n g s o f t h e m s e l v e s as practical-ideological w o r k e r s is to s t u d y their c o u n t e r p a r t s in a p p l i e d settings. T h e s e
settings p r o v i d e sociologists w i t h refracted, b u t fresh a n d s o m e t i m e s clearer,
visions o f their o w n assumptions, practices a n d a c c o m m o d a t i o n s to the practical
e x i g e n c i e s o f e v e r y d a y life. A p p r e c i a t i n g the lessons that o t h e r s m i g h t t e a c h
us, h o w e v e r , r e q u i r e s that sociologists take their c o u n t e r p a r t s ' k n o w l e d g e a n d
practices seriously, not as f l a w e d versions o f the "real" truth.

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