Knowledge, Consequences, and Experience: The Social Construction of Environmental Problems |
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| Authors: | Jerry Williams |
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| Institution: | Is an assistant professor of sociology at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. His primary research interests include the phenomenology of environmental problems, and constructionist sociology |
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| Abstract: | Perhaps one of the most obvious yet difficult questions confronting sociologists concerned with large-scale environmental problems is an epistemological one: How do we know what we know about the state of the environment? This paper explores the realist and constructionist approaches to environmental-social problems and finds both inadequate as currently formulated. A case is made for a phenomenological constructionism that moves beyond relativism and simple definitional constructionism by exploring how we actually experience the world. This approach recognizes the existence of a natural world independent of our constructions, yet suggests that our knowledge of it is always mediated, indirect, and pragmatically motivated. |
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