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The Social Construction of What? (Paperback)

by I Hacking (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £17.95
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Product details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press; New edition edition (1 Nov 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0674004124
  • ISBN-13: 978-0674004122
  • Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 15 x 1.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 117,319 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review
[A] spirited and eminently readable book...Hacking's book is an admirable example of both useful debunking and thoughtful and original philosophizing--an unusual combination of good sense and technical sophistication. After he has said his say about the science wars, Hacking concludes with fascinating essays on, among other things, fashions in mental disease, the possible genesis of dolomitic rock from the activity of nanobacteria, government financing of weapons research, and the much-discussed question of whether the Hawaiians thought Captain Cook was a god. In each he makes clear the contingency of the questions scientists find themselves asking, and the endless complexity of the considerations that lead them to ask one question rather than another. The result helps the reader see how little light is shed on actual scientific controversies by either traditionalist triumphalists or postmodern unmaskers. -- Richard Rorty "The Atlantic"

Product Description
Often lost in the debate over the validity of social construction is the question of what is being constructed. Particularly troublesome in this area is the status of the natural sciences, where there is conflict between biological and social approaches to mental illness, and in other areas. Ian Hacking looks at the issue of child abuse, and examines the ways in which advanced research on new weapons influences not the content but the form of science. In conclusion, Hacking comments on the "culture wars" in anthropology, in particular the spat between leading enthnographers over Hawaii and Captain Cook.

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38 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The Last Constructionist, 5 Jul 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Social Construction of What? (Hardcover)
Having published a book with an all too obvious social constructionist title (Rewriting the Soul, Princeton, 1995), Hacking has come around to speak authoritatively about all the confusions on which social construction(ism) trades. He goes so far as to spend the longest chapter (Ch.5) of the book to criticize harshly the fuzziness of a single statement in his previous book about child abuse being both real and socially constructed, while maintaining that: (1) this confusion is a common weakness of social construction talk; and (2) his readers have responded positively to the very statement in question and its ambivalence is precisely what makes social construction talk fruitful. With all the typical clarity of Anglo-American analytical philosophy at its best, no doubt this book will be received by many as a definitive statement of what social construction(ism) really is and is not. For Hacking, the job of a philosopher is to clarify and analyze. And his method is traditional enough in the trade of analytical philosophy: regimentation or divide-and-conquer. Numerous philosophical distinctions (whose problematic status Hacking does not deny but defend them as necessary for the task at hand) are introduced such that the combatants of the Science Wars can be conveniently lined up between three fronts: (1) contingency; (2) metaphysical structure of the world; and (3) explanation of stability in science. Useful as Hacking's illumination definitely is, what is most dubious is not his ambivalent position in between the social constructionists and their detractors on these issues (which he charmingly embraces by giving himself 2, 4, and 3 scores respectively out of 5 on each of them), but his disappointing under-treatment of the "interactions" of metaphysics and politics - or what he calls the political consequences of metaphysics. Even Hacking says that he does not attempt to write a social history of the Science Wars, he does end up saying quite a lot about what are really at stakes in them - precisely the very point most fiercely contested in the whole debate. His reliance on the divide-and-conquer tactics when applied to his separation of the metaphysical from the political sticking points in the Science Wars proves to be most objectionable. The former are millennia-old metaphysical problems, therefore (no wonder!) they are irresolvable (as if the entire history of western philosophy is an endless rambling masquerading as "rational discussion"?). The latter are 'sticky points that provoke anger more than debate' (p. 92), and he implies that they are not irresolvable as such but only that they cannot be solved by rational or philosophical means (as if everything political is irrational?). While trying to sort out the ramifications of these political/ethical and metaphorical sticking points, Hacking loses his way and gives up. Simply because the dichotomy of left vs. right does not nicely align with the protagonists of the Science Wars. Both sides lay some claims to the position of the left: the scientists in virtue of their support of the oppressed by their defense of (scientific) truth, the constructionists by unmasking the established (scientific) order. Regarding the difficult politico-metaphysical question of the necessity of the scientific ideology of objectivity and truth in the service of fighting injustice, Hacking's counsel is against dogmatism because he admits that he himself is torn between the appeals of both sides (p. 96). In the end, Hacking is strong in analysis but weak in synthesis. It all comes down to a single question: how should one respond to the Science Wars responsibly as an intellectual? And Hacking is far from oblivion of the weight of the burden. But his soul is as it were divided, schizophrenic perhaps. On the one hand, he says 'Philosophers of my strip should analyze, not exclude' (p. vii), so writing the book (and writing it in this way), and to risk fuelling rather than cooling down the public feuding of the Science Wars, is to fulfil the philosopher's responsibility. On the other hand, when he speaks as a sympathizer (or co-traveler) of a moderate, reconstructed social constructionism, as someone who appreciates multifarious "interactions" in the real, human world, he concedes that 'We analytic philosophers should be humble, and acknowledge that what is confused is sometimes more useful than what has been clarified' (p. 29). He fails precisely in connecting the metaphysics which he so competently clarifies and their political repercussions he so shyly avoids. If the three metaphysical sticking points are merely metaphysical why should they provoke such kind of animosity between the protagonists of the Science Wars as is never witnessed among philosophers themselves when they debate the very same issues? In the last analysis, Hacking philosophizes and de-naturalizes the Science Wars. Philosophers will be happy enough to continue their endless resolution of those "irresolvable" sticking points, and keep taking Hacking to task for the ambivalent position he takes on them and the arguments (or the lack thereof) he puts forward. The reaction from the other side, I surmise, would be equally mixed with dissatisfaction and amazement. Kenan Malik's review of the book in The Independent (99/06/17) insinuates that Hacking performs a nice social constructionist critique on social constructionism. Far from it! Hacking's characterization of social constructionism is idealized and sanitized, remote from its reality (or social construction, which happens to be the same thing in this case). Does he ever realize that "social constructionist" is also what he calls an "interactive" kind - that the very attempt to define it changes what it means because the people to whom the label is assigned can and will react reflectively, even to actively disown it? Notwithstanding Hacking's repeated avowal of distancing from social constructionism, he may end up being the only "social constructionist" in the town, not because his is a version no one in the real world subscribes to (well, this is hard to tell), but because he may be the first and the last person to espouse it so clearly, and so forcefully.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Hacking muses on social construction and philosophy of science, 11 May 2009
By M. A. Krul (Utrecht, Kingdom of the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Ian Hacking's "The Social Construction of What?" is aptly titled, as it deals with the question what the ever so popular phrase 'socially constructed' actually means, if it means anything.

In his typical upbeat tone, making use of short, almost staccato sentences, Hacking reviews several possible meanings of the phrase 'social construction', notes the "sticking points" that are the core of the disagreement, and takes some cases from sociology, geology, anthropology and physics to illustrate the problematic. Although Hacking is a fine and accessible writer, and anyone at all can read this book with pleasure, he does tend to be meandering; there is little overall structure to the book, which reads more as a series of musings by an intelligent observer on a difficult question than as a definitive stance on the issue, which Hacking doesn't really have. It's also not always clear what the relation is between the examples of scientific research and debate he cites and the philosophy of science question of social construction.

Nonetheless, his philosophical talk is always entertaining and interesting to read, and some people will definitely find a virtue in the fact Hacking never pushes an opinion on the reader, preferring to 'teach the controversy' instead. If there's a sort of philosophical popular science, this would be it.
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