VIII. Conclusion: Evaluation of the Social Construction of Crime
In general, social constructionists have been criticized depending on how realist or nominalist their core assumptions are. Pro-realists accuse constructionists of being nihilistic and unscientific; anti-realists ridicule any attempt at science as just another truth claim that is using scientific ideology to claim legitimacy for its own political ends (Woolgar & Pawluch, 1985). Anti-realists argue that claiming to be able to observe and document the variability in claims about a condition assumes the objectivity (i.e., reality) of the condition without reflexively subjecting one’s own analysis to the same questioning. Contextual constructionists counter that a strict antirealist reading is an illusion that cannot be transcended by developing new language and discourse, because language is embedded in society (Best, 1995). Best (1995) called for a “weak reading” of the constructionist position, pointing out (a) that it is actually useful to locate social constructions in real cultural–structural contexts; (b) it is unavoidable and not helpful to be exclusively reflexive; and (c) that focusing on theory rather than the substance of problems may undermine and paralyze the critical edge of their constructionist position, inhibit their evaluation of false claims, and even prevent their creation of new claims.
More broadly, pure or strict social constructionism has been criticized for implying that problems of crime and deviance are merely fabrications, which is protested by the individuals suffering their consequences, even though constructionists argue that there are often real consequences of acting toward constructions as though they are real. The point of constructionism is that revealing how what is taken to be real can be deconstructed enables the possibility of it being reconstructed differently through replacement discourse; when social problems, deviance, and crime are subject to a deconstructionist analysis, they can be reframed in ways that enable their reproduction to be slowed and even reversed such that they become differently and less harmfully constituted (Henry & Milovanovic, 1996). The question—indeed, the challenge—for constructionists is how to demonstrate the value of this kind of analysis in bringing about changes in objective conditions while maintaining that these conditions are only as real as we allow them to be. The value of social constructionism is that it seeks not only to understand the way humans constitute their world and are constituted by it but also to use that knowledge to help them transform the world into a more comfortable place.
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