K.J. Gergen – författare

3. Greater sensitivity to European work: We have can cut common experience so close to the bone. long felt very close to European social psychol­ In the present volume we wish to share what we ogy, and the European responsiveness to the first believe to be some of the most significant and edition suggested that we were communicating stimulating insights to emerge from social psy­ with this audience. Further, there has been a chology, from its birth to the present. Our writ­ steadily increasing awareness among American ing has been guided in particular by the follow­ and Canadian social psychologists of significant mg concerns: work in Europe. We thus made a special effort in the second edition to reflect this work. No, we Theoretical coherence The emphasis on the­ did not succeed in capturing all the work of im­ oretical ideas begins in the first chapter; we portance. Space limitations and organizational compare the behaviorist, cognitive, and rule­ requirements also meant that work of many wor­ role orientations. We believe that these para­ thy colleagues in the United States and Canada digms form the generating context for subse­ was not included. However, we do feel that the quent chapters. We show how these perspectives present volume is superior to all others in its have influenced the questions that have been integration across continents. asked and the explanations that have been of­ fered for various kinds of social behavior.

This volume grew out of a discussion between the editors at the Society for Experimental Social Psychology meeting in Nashville in 1981. For many years the Society has played a leading role in encouraging rigorous and sophisticated research. Yet, our discussion that day was occupied with what seemed a major problem with this fmely honed tradition; namely, it was preoccupied with "accurate renderings of reality," while generally insensitive to the process by which such renderings are achieved. This tradition presumed that there were "brute facts" to be discovered about human interaction, with little consideration of the social processes through which "factuality" is established. To what degree are accounts of persons constrained by the social process of rendering as opposed to the features of those under scrutiny? This concern with the social process by which persons are constructed was hardly ours alone. In fact, within recent years such concerns have been voiced with steadily increasing clarity across a variety of disciplines. Ethno­ methodologists were among the first in the social sciences to puncture the taken-for-granted realities of life. Many sociologists of science have also turned their attention to the way social organizations of scientists create the facts necessary to sustain these organizations. Historians of science have entered a similar enterprise in elucidating the social, economic and ideological conditions enabling certain formulations to flourish in the sciences while others are suppressed. Many social anthropologists have also been intrigued by cross-cultural variations in the concept of the human being.

This volume grew out of a discussion between the editors at the Society for Experimental Social Psychology meeting in Nashville in 1981. For many years the Society has played a leading role in encouraging rigorous and sophisticated research. Yet, our discussion that day was occupied with what seemed a major problem with this fmely honed tradition; namely, it was preoccupied with "accurate renderings of reality," while generally insensitive to the process by which such renderings are achieved. This tradition presumed that there were "brute facts" to be discovered about human interaction, with little consideration of the social processes through which "factuality" is established. To what degree are accounts of persons constrained by the social process of rendering as opposed to the features of those under scrutiny? This concern with the social process by which persons are constructed was hardly ours alone. In fact, within recent years such concerns have been voiced with steadily increasing clarity across a variety of disciplines. Ethno­ methodologists were among the first in the social sciences to puncture the taken-for-granted realities of life. Many sociologists of science have also turned their attention to the way social organizations of scientists create the facts necessary to sustain these organizations. Historians of science have entered a similar enterprise in elucidating the social, economic and ideological conditions enabling certain formulations to flourish in the sciences while others are suppressed. Many social anthropologists have also been intrigued by cross-cultural variations in the concept of the human being.