Conversational Realities
Shotter's Conversational Realities lays the claim that psychological and sociological realities are socially constructed, sustained and perpetuated by every day conversations. Using interdisciplinary analysis, and borrowing heavily from psychology, he focuses on the construction processes of the nature of "things" that we tend to talk about in our lives and the meaning they take on as a consequence of their construction and implication within ourselves. Shotter moves away from the forms of knowledge that exist outside of ourselves and delves deep into the third kind of knowing; the kind that involves "knowing from within" and one, in contrast to the other forms of knowledge which are disciplined and orderly, and sustained by systematic discourses, is disorderly and undisciplined. In essence, Shotter's analysis focuses on the sui generis, knowledge of its own kind rather than that which is theoretical or technical, and hence outside of ourselves.
The shift in Conversational Realities is from how we understand objects to how we understand each other given its concern with the dialogical version of what Shotter defines as social constructivism. He states: "my aim is to release psychology from its colonization by an ahistorical, asocial, instrumental, inidividualistic cognitivism...and to open it up for a more large-scale, participatory or dialogical form of research activity (p.9). His focus in particular is the rhetorical-responsive version of social constructivism which embodies practices, and our immediate, spontaneous ways of responding to each other's speech intertwined activities. Shotter argues that the conversational activities we engage in is not simply an activity; rather, they are foundational- our lives are in them and shaped by them and provide the basis for everything we do. given the dynamics of the rhetoric responsive version of social constructivism therefore, Conversational Realities focuses on not just how we constitute and reconstitute the common sense background in the context of which we communicate, but also how we make and and recreate ourselves in the process. This constant creation and recreation of selves and the interaction in conversations, Shotter points out is an attempt to coordinate our physical activities and costruct different kinds of living social relationships. It is these conversationally developed and developign relations and the events that take place within and between them that are critical, since they create the context for constructed social relations and lend them their meaning.
Two questions may be posed in trying to understand the essence of Conversational Realities:
a. first, is it possible, through the dialogical intercourse, to grasp the inner lives of individuals and their positioning as Shotter suggests?
b. wherein lies the similarities and divergence between Searle's understanding of the social construction of reality compared to Shotter's in the case both are discussing the construction of reality for the purpose of communication and legitmization of one's view and conceptualization of the world?
c. can nonverbal communication provide the same kind of interplay of socially constructed relationships as shotter ilustrates is conducted through nonverbal communication?
The shift in Conversational Realities is from how we understand objects to how we understand each other given its concern with the dialogical version of what Shotter defines as social constructivism. He states: "my aim is to release psychology from its colonization by an ahistorical, asocial, instrumental, inidividualistic cognitivism...and to open it up for a more large-scale, participatory or dialogical form of research activity (p.9). His focus in particular is the rhetorical-responsive version of social constructivism which embodies practices, and our immediate, spontaneous ways of responding to each other's speech intertwined activities. Shotter argues that the conversational activities we engage in is not simply an activity; rather, they are foundational- our lives are in them and shaped by them and provide the basis for everything we do. given the dynamics of the rhetoric responsive version of social constructivism therefore, Conversational Realities focuses on not just how we constitute and reconstitute the common sense background in the context of which we communicate, but also how we make and and recreate ourselves in the process. This constant creation and recreation of selves and the interaction in conversations, Shotter points out is an attempt to coordinate our physical activities and costruct different kinds of living social relationships. It is these conversationally developed and developign relations and the events that take place within and between them that are critical, since they create the context for constructed social relations and lend them their meaning.
Two questions may be posed in trying to understand the essence of Conversational Realities:
a. first, is it possible, through the dialogical intercourse, to grasp the inner lives of individuals and their positioning as Shotter suggests?
b. wherein lies the similarities and divergence between Searle's understanding of the social construction of reality compared to Shotter's in the case both are discussing the construction of reality for the purpose of communication and legitmization of one's view and conceptualization of the world?
c. can nonverbal communication provide the same kind of interplay of socially constructed relationships as shotter ilustrates is conducted through nonverbal communication?
posted by Anonymous at 11:11 PM
1 Comments:
Up until this point, I’ve been pretty well charmed by the social constructivists. Having been trained in, though never quite thoroughly indoctrinated by, the kind of Enlightenment philosophy which Shotter throughout the book criticizes and indeed, aims to dismantle and displace, I usually find the constructivists very refreshing. But with Shotter, I have some worries:
(1) Why won’t postmodernists ever commit? Or at least admit that they have a commitment problem? Shotter denies that he’s forwarding a theory with predictive powers, positing “true knowledge,” studying reality as “atomic matter in lawful mechanical motion,” treating the world as “external,” “physical,” subjected to truth-value proofs, and so on (166). Instead he prefers to call it an account, a series of “instructional statements” (34). When pressed to demonstrate the difference between theory and account, Shotter further distinguishes between “finding” and “making,” and explains the problem of theory to be its “claims to be able to identify ahead of time the structures of social life”—structures which constructivists would never try to predict, but would instead “maintain are, in reality, still contested” (65). But it seems very clear that he’s forwarding a certain kind of theory about the world, albeit an always-already, always-going-to-be world, a theory which he would champion over other theories (i.e., realism). I like page 74, when he counters Bhaskar with “Precisely!” basically continuing with, “You’re wrong, why won’t you listen to me?!”
To relate the above to Julie’s concerns on the usefulness of Shotter’s non-theory, I believe he would say that his insights are useful insofar as it serves as an “enablement” to future social scientists, including IR theorists, pushing at the limits of their epistemological/ontological horizons to usher in different conversations, and hence, different realities. In a Giddensesque sense, Shotter’s non-theory is useful if it enables personal agency, as Bea describes, to re-frame subject positions, break the imaginary, but only to enter immediately into yet another imaginary!
Furthermore, I think Shottter would say that a “finding” approach amounts to a Foucauldian exclusionary practice insofar as it claims to have discovered and know absolutely the absolute truth. And as such, it robs others the right to speak and to participate dialogically in constructing their own reality. It institutes a hegemony on reality, knowledge, being, and hence constitutes a kind of violence.
(2) It appears to be linguistically-deterministic. If I understand Taz’s first question correctly, I think we’re concerned about the same thing: is it really possible, necessary, or desirable to fashion an entire ontology out of conversations? To be sure, from one perspective, insofar as ontology is the study of what’s “really out there,” it’s a non-issue for Shotter; hence, there is some sense in the realist’s evaluation that constructivists, especially pragmatists, confuse ontology with epistemology. Relatedly, to address Taz’s third question, there wouldn’t be “nonverbal communication” to begin with, because human form, for as long as we’ve known and as far as we’re aware, has always used some manner of language or symbolic signage to communicate and interact. Even things like gestures and movements are understood only because there is language to conceptualize the events mentally. It’s helpful, at this point, to ask whether it’s possible to think without language. In a very real way this question doesn’t matter. But it does bring us closer to the problem (or innovation?) implicit in Shotter’s reliance on language as the constitutive element of social being: something is real if we say it is real.
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