The Study of China in Universities: A Comparative Case Study of A ...

The interpretative constructivism adopted is not that in which all things are constructed and all knowledge can be dissolved as a semiotic version of imaginations. Constructivism, according to Delanty (1997), means that reality can only be known by our cognitive structures, but such a position does not deny the existence of external reality itself. Thus, while I adopt constructivism, it does not mean that social and physical reality cannot coexist with constructed meanings at the same point in time in the same place. That is to say, the constructivism that I adopt is that constructivists do not deny the existence of social reality as an objective entity. The stress of constructivism in general, as Delanty argued, is on how social actors construct their reality and the implications that this has for social sciences, rather than on the reduction of social and physical reality that surround social actors into some kind of semiotic imagination. The debate between realism and constructivism, for Abbott (2001), as well as for Delanty (1997), appears to be a false dichotomy, and the two sides should be interpreted in a reconcilable fashion. For example, Abbott (2001), using the question “Who are the True constructionists?” argued that “constructionist theory itself allows the turn to realism…similarly realists unconsciously allow for the turn to constructionism” (p. 84). He gave examples such as “finding better measures,” “using context-specific indicators,” and “separating attitudes and behaviours” (p. 84), which can all cover what are essentially constructionist moves. Furthermore, according to Delanty (1997), the realists such as Bhaskar, while advocating the objectivity of the social world and the social reality being composed by the so-called generative mechanisms, do not deny a dimension of constructivism in knowledge, either. Delanty further commented that Bourdieu’s constructivism also resists the dangers of objectivist structuralism and subjectivist hermeneutics. In arguing for both a subjectivist and constructivist account of how social actors constitute social reality in the production of meaning, Bourdieu self-consciously adopted constructivist methodologies but also accepted a realist ontology (Delanty, 1997). What is meant by this is that both Bhaskar’s realism and Bourdieu’s intervention constructivism have objective and subjective dimensions.