Knowledge as socially located

Research studies make knowledge claims and seek to contribute to ‘public knowledge’. A personal constructivist perspective on knowledge sees it as constructed and located within individual minds. However some social constructivists reject this view (or reject the value of giving primacy to this view) and see knowledge as socially located or distributed.

Gergen (1999) is a social constructivist who argues that "scholars increasingly seek ways of understanding scientific knowledge as the result of relational processes - emerging from the interchange of persons, objects, physical surrounds, and so on. Individual scientists, in this case, are not so much pawns to social forces, but full participants in a range of complex relationships out of which common understandings emerge." p.55

Gergen, K. J. (1999). An Invitation to Social Construction. London: SAGE Publications.

Bodner and colleagues (2001: 13) consider that Gergen rejects the notion of personal knowledge:

"Gergen’s social constructionism focuses on the role of language in the development of knowledge. Gergen is unique in rejecting the notion that knowledge resides within individuals. He takes a more extreme position, arguing that the processes by which language is used and meaning is constructed are social processes, which reside within groups or societies, and that these processes constitute knowledge."

Bodner, G. M., Klobuchar, M., & Geelan, D. (2001). The Many Forms of Constructivism. Journal of Chemical Education, 78 (Online Symposium: Piaget, Constructivism, and Beyond), 1107.

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