Читать книгу The Sage Handbook of Social Constructionist Practice - Группа авторов - Страница 17

As outlined, in challenging the assumption of value-free knowledge, the constructionist dialogues thrust issues of human value back into the center of social science concern. Where positivist science had seen moral and political values as biasing research outcomes, scholars began to place values at the center of their efforts. Scholarly work could serve as a vehicle for social transformation. One of the most visible results was the emergence of curricula in critical studies – in education, psychology, economics, management studies, sociology, cultural theory, race theory, social work, and nursing among them. These were accompanied by relevant innovations in research methods, including critical discourse analysis, feminist methodology, critical text work, decolonized methodologies, and more. For some scholars, the chief goal of qualitative research is equated with social justice.

As this recognition of the values inherent in otherwise commonplace practices circulated among practitioners, a new source of innovation was unleashed. No longer, for example, were therapists content to embrace a therapeutic practice by virtue of its evidence base. Rather, they pressed on to develop new forms of therapy that might favor a more just, compassionate, or egalitarian society. Practices aimed at supporting and empowering women, minorities, and immigrants, are illustrative, along with practices that legitimated spiritual beliefs, and non-Western ontologies. Both narrative therapy (White and Epston, 1990), and social therapy (Holzman, 2014) indeed functioned as consciousness-raising practices, tracing individual ills to societal problems. In many schools, these ideological energies gave rise to new practices of inclusion, critical pedagogy, restorative justice, environmentalist curricula, and anti-bullying activities. For many businesses, a range of new initiatives began to emerge, variously invested in environmental sustainability, social equality, and the well-being of the laborers who served them. The Business as an Agent of World Benefit initiative is emblematic, in its efforts to support just such activities.