Until a very few years ago, I had never heard the term "social construction." Much less had I become acquainted with its implications for scholars and instructors of literature and composition, or its implications for those of us interested in broader educational issues such as the future of humanistic studies and liberal education in general. During the past three or four years, pursuing some of these implications, I discovered that social constructionist thought can positively affect the way we address professional issues that increasingly interest many of us today. But I also discovered that attempts to address these issues in this way are limited because many of us-myself included-have not yet read deeply enough the relevant scholarly literature. In this respect we are not alone. Although social construction has a venerable history in twentieth-century thought and although writers in a number of fields are engaged in an effort to develop the disciplinary implications of a nonfoundational social constructionist understanding of knowledge, that history remains largely unacknowledged and the effort fragmented. Terminology proliferates. The result is that in some cases positions not only similar but mutually supportive seem alien to one another. Writers find it difficult to draw upon each other's work to pursue their own more effectively. Many of the most sophisticated and knowledgeable texts that I discuss in this essay-not only work in literary criticism and composition studies but in philosophy and the social sciences-evidence a lack of awareness of fertile, suggestive, parallel work in other fields. One cause of this situation is that there seems to exist no bibliographical guide that brings social constructionist texts together in one place, presents them as a coherent school of thought, and offers guidance to readers wending their way through unfamiliar territory. This is the need I hope this essay will fill. An Introduction to Social Construction Most of us have encountered the assumptions of social construction at one time or another under other rubrics: "new pragmatism," for example, or Kenneth A. Bruffee is professor of English and director of the honors program at Brooklyn College. He was for four years a member of the editorial board of Liberal Education. His publications include Elegiac Romance and several articles in College English. His Short Course in Writing was recently published in its 3rd edition.
IN THE WORLD which surrounds our classrooms, people today are challenging and revising many social and political traditions which have heretofore gone unquestioned. They are making this challenge not as individuals alone, but as individuals working together in collaborative ways. The social organization they are substituting for traditional forms is likewise in many respects collaborative. Indeed, classrooms remain todav one of the few places where people do not organize themselves for collaborative activity. On campuses everywhere, right outside the classroom door, students form their own academic clubs for collaborative study, organizations for self-government, "free university" classes, social groups, film societies, political discussion groups, and activist organizations. Elsewhere, everywhere, collaborative action increasingly pervades our society. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Louis R. Bruce, has begun a fundamental reform of the Bureau of Indian Affairs that is intended to put the future of the nation's Indians into their own hands.. .. The Commissioner. .. said it was acknowledged that Indian communities Kenneth Bruffee is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Freshman Writing Program at Brooklyn College. He is author of "The Way Out" (CE, January, 1972) and a textbook, A Short Course in Writing, published by Winthrop.
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