The Social Construction of What? [Paperback]

For the most part I endorse the thoughtful review sent in by the reader from London. I want to make a gentle amendment to her/his careful characterisation of the book. I'm not so sure that Hacking is 'Clearly on the side of the constructionists'. To put it thus is, of course, a useful corrective to the absurd implications of Daniel Johnson's review of this book in the New York Times Book Review. There Johnson tries to portray Hacking as sharing Johnson's own contempt for social constructionists, which Hacking clearly does not. But I see Hacking as doing something more than simply siding with one group against the other.

In this book Hacking carefully disentangles the various arguments being made by both parties in the culture/science 'wars'. Unlike those who indulge in knee-jerk scepticism about constructionism (a.k.a., many believe, 'postmodernism'), he finds much of value in the consciousness-raising motivations of social constructionists. He also applauds their attention to historical detail and their treatment of intellectual/theoretical pursuits like the natural and social sciences as ongoing social activities, with important, often unintended effects on our everyday lives. On the other hand, Hacking suspects that much of the current vogue for the language of social construction is simply a case of bandwagon-jumping, and explicitly states that he has seldom found that language useful in his own work. He does not hesitate to expose certain claims made by both sides as 'tomfoolery', but is careful in so doing to point out that there is an important kernel of insight in the reasoning of thinkers as starkly at odds as Steven Weinberg and Bruno Latour. As Hacking makes clear in his chapter on the natural sciences, there are important intuitions buried in the metaphysical convictions of scientists and constructionists. When it comes down to putting his money where his mouth is, Hacking's self-evaluation puts his own commitments squarely in the middle. He scores himself a 2, 3 and 4 out of 5 on the three 'sticking-points' that are at the heart of the disagreement over social construction in the sciences.

But is Hacking just sitting on the fence? I don't think so; in fact, I think he offers us a third way, so to speak. You get a taste of this third way in his discussions of 'interactive kinds', 'forms of knowledge', 'styles of reasoning', 'self-vindication', 'making up people', 'looping effects', and other unfamiliar concepts. These make up part of Hacking's own attempt to grapple with human knowledge, and they are subsumed by neither social constructionism nor mainstream analytic philosophy -- which isn't to say he hasn't drawn a lot from both.

A word to the prospective reader: be careful when interpreting Ian Hacking. His clear and polished prose can be deceptive. His own views are so sophisticated and fine-grained that it is easy to pigeon-hole him into irrelevant categories. But don't let that stop you from reading him yourself -- with some patience, you will find your efforts well rewarded.

Those rare science warriors, on either side of the debate, who polemically espouse the perfection of their cause will therefore be disappointed. For the rest of us, Hacking's careful commentary on the issue comes like a gust of fresh air. Hacking really admires science, and he understands it pretty well, too. But remember the rubric: "taking imperfect knowledge seriously". Hacking certainly doesn't think that all that's true and can be said about science is said by science or dogmatic scientists themselves. Some of the social constructionists have exposed important if imperfect historical truths, too.

Those who are interested in broader debates on social constructionism will certainly profit from this book. I will not say more, as I think the reviewers from New York and London have summed things up well. Although this book is topical and has a nice, shiny cover, I will say that if you are mainly interested in getting acquainted with Hacking's style of philosophy, one of his earlier books will serve you better. Representing and Intervening is probably your best bet.

One more thing: while Hacking is serious, as the reviews suggest, he can also be extremely funny, if in a dry way. Hacking's books, unlike some philosophy, are a joy to read.

Emotions, knowledge, the mind, the economy, the deficit, gender, mental illness, even facts and reality, all have been subjected to literary claims that they are "socially constructed."

Hacking provides an interesting perspective on this whole trend by de-emphasizing the social aspect and focusing on the construction aspect. He views this simply as a way of arguing against the inevitability of something. For example, arguing about 'social construction' of our understanding of quarks in physics, part of the standard model, the question becomes whether an alternate equally successful science could have arisen that had no such concept as a quark. Hacking then struggles with what a successful science means, and how we would recognize it. There are many examples that follow this pattern, each discussed in terms of whether X was inevitable, and thus how else it could have been constructed in our minds and in culture.

Hacking goes as far as an offhanded treatment of nominalism and essentialism relevant to this inevitability question (essential qualities are those that are seen as inevitable). He breaks down difficult questions into relatively simple ones using this same kind of straightforward procedure. In analyzing the social construction of X for many examples, he looks for those elements of X that were inevitable, and those that serve "extra-theoretical" purposes and could have been constructed differently.

One particularly unique aspect of hacking's work here, the prototype of social constructionism here is not the sociology of science in general. He uses Pickering, LaTour, and Woolgar as his prime examples, rather than folks like Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, who are often considered in the same category. Hacking considers them distinct for his purposes, and this reveals some interesting distinctions.

What I liked best about this book is that while it is carefully done, there is an offhanded air about the points Hacking makes. He makes some very difficult analyses seem very easy by pulling particularly useful examples from the literature. He navigates a lot of difficult philosophy by asking deceptively simple questions, like "what is the point ?" rather than "what is the meaning ?"

There are some interesting sweeping gestures here like claiming that social construction can simply by thought of as an argument against the inevitability of X, and then analyzed for how committed the author is to claiming X is bad and overturning X. Another interesting example is Hacking's description of essentialism as simply a way of talking about inevitability.

This book is somewhat disappointing if you're looking for simple answers to each of the questions posed, "is X socially constructed or not ?" However, it provides an extremely helpful way of looking at each case and trying to decide whether a 'social construction' critique actually has any value, or whether it just gives the history of the topic. Perhaps most useful is Hacking's "3 sticking points" with which to address the construction of a concept: contingency, nominalism, and stability.

This is a thinking person's book, but not nearly as incomprehensible to the layman as most works of modern philosophy, and much easier to read and more helpful than most of the "social construction" literature itself.

I'd go as far as to say that in many cases, we could replace the "social construction of X" arguments with Hacking's style of analysis about inevitability and the 3 sticking points, and come up with a more enlightening answer about the reality of the X in question.

If there is any flaw that I found here it is that I didn't think there was enough detail provided on any one topic to resolve the questions asked, they are pretty much all examples, and more questions are raised than answered. That can get maddening when you are just getting interested in the topic.