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Social constructionism originated as a concept to address the nature of reality. It emerged 35 years ago, has origins in sociology, and is associated with the post-modern era in qualitative research. Critics view social constructionism as an anti-realist, relativist stance. Social constructivism is the manner in which people or groups socially construct the world of experience and make meaning of it. With an emphasis on language as the primary conduit by which meaning is made, social constructionism bears similarity to symbolic interactionism and shares common philosophical roots with the ideas of George Herbert Mead (1934).
Both constructionists and interactionists focus on the process by which meanings are created, sustained, negotiated, and modified. Proponents of each view seek to understand the world of lived experience from the perspective of those who live it. Both arose as a challenge to the scientism of modernity. An important difference is that interactionists, while valuing human subjective experience, seek to develop an objective science to study and describe it. They attempt to apply a logical empiricist methodology to human inquiry (Charon, 2006).
Constructionists view knowledge and truth as created, not discovered by the mind. This view is not incompatible with realism: One can believe...