scholarly journals Why They Know Not What They Do: A Social Constructionist Approach to the Explanatory Problem of False Consciousness

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Wilson

Abstract False consciousness requires a general explanation for why, and how, oppressed individuals believe propositions against, as opposed to aligned with, their own well-being in virtue of their oppressed status. This involves four explanatory desiderata: belief acquisition, content prevalence, limitation, and systematicity. A social constructionist approach satisfies these by understanding the concept of false consciousness as regulating social research rather than as determining the exact mechanisms for all instances: the concept attunes us to a complex of mechanisms conducing oppressed individuals to mistake social understandings of themselves as natural self-understandings—the limits lie where these overlap, or are entirely absent.

Hypatia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Lee Wilson

Abstract Social philosophers often invoke the concept of false consciousness in their analyses, referring to a set of evidence-resistant, ignorant attitudes held by otherwise sound epistemic agents, systematically occurring in virtue of, and motivating them to perpetuate, structural oppression. But there is a worry that appealing to the notion in questions of responsibility for the harm suffered by members of oppressed groups is victim-blaming. Individuals under false consciousness allegedly systematically fail the relevant rationality and epistemic conditions due to structural distortions of reasoning or knowledge practices, undermining their status as responsible moral agents. But attending to the constitutive mechanisms and heterogeneity of false consciousness enables us to see how having it does not in itself render someone an inappropriate target of blame. I focus here on the 1889 antisuffragist manifesto “An Appeal against Female Suffrage,” arguing that its signatories, despite false consciousness, satisfy both conditions for ordinary blameworthiness. I consider three prominent signatories, observing that the irrationality characterization is unsustainable beyond group-level diagnoses, and that their capacity to respond appropriately to reasons was not compromised. Following recent work on epistemic injustice, I also argue that culpable mechanisms constituted their false consciousness, rendering them blameworthy for the Appeal.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 100545
Author(s):  
Flávio Notomi Kanazawa ◽  
Marina Lourenção ◽  
Jorge Henrique Caldeira de Oliveira ◽  
Janaina de Moura Engracia Giraldi

2021 ◽  
pp. 155868982098627
Author(s):  
Diego Romaioli

In order to enhance core mixed methods research designs, social scientists need an approach that incorporates developments in the social constructionist perspective. This work describes a study that aimed to promote occupational well-being in hospital departments where employees are at risk of burnout, based on a constructionist inquiry developed starting from the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Taking this study as an example, we define a “generative sequential mixed methods approach” as a process that involves consulting quantitative studies to identify criticalities on which to conduct focused, transformative investigations. The article contributes by envisaging ways to mix qualitative and quantitative methods that consider a “generative” and “future-forming” orientation to research, in line with recent shifts in social psychology.


2017 ◽  
pp. 123-146
Author(s):  
Robert Blundo ◽  
Roberta R. Greene ◽  
Paul Gallant

2022 ◽  
pp. 898-919
Author(s):  
Gennaro Iorio ◽  
Marco Palmieri ◽  
Geraldina Roberti

Secondary analysis for quantitative data is a social research method traditionally employed for statistical analysis of administrative data. In the new digital society, this old research method that pre-existed the emergence of the new digital environment has been digitized to carry out its valuable activity in doing science. In this chapter, the secondary analysis for digitized data is illustrated. Thanks to the growing availability of datasets digitized on the web, the scholars of social well-being use the secondary analysis to inquiry this phenomenon through a cross-national perspective. The authors present the empirical study of World Love Index, in which the utility of the secondary analysis in finding and selecting valid indicators of social well-being is experienced.


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