Methodological Individualism

162 Society as subjectively meaningful interaction(Wisdom, 1973: 263). The problem with this view is that Popper’s so-called ‘situationalindividualism’ is a creation of Wisdom, himself. Popper, as we shall see,advanced two separate methodologies: methodological individualism and institutionalism,which he never joined and could not join without changing hismethodological individualism, so as to make it compatible with his institutionalism.This was achieved, instead, by his pupil Joseph Agassi, who createdinstitutional individualism. Situational individualism is, I believe, more or less,identical with institutional individualism. After this short digression, is it possibleto pass judgement on Wisdom’s suggestion? Yes, I believe, it is possible to seeBerger and Luckmann’s theory of society as compatible with the weak version ofinstitutional, or situational individualism, but not with the strong version ofmethodological individualism, as formulated by Popper.Social constructionism today is an influential position in many areas of thehuman sciences, but especially in sociology and social psychology. The areasmost influenced by social constructionism are, probably feminism, sociology ofscience, the theory of organisations and the theory of the personality, or self.I believe that the most fertile use of social constructionism has been in feminism,where it has been part of a struggle against patriarchy, or male dominance(cf. Hacking, 1999: 7ff). I have already quoted the famous words of Simone deBeauvoir: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’. This statementcaptures the ‘kernel’ –it would be wrong to use the word ‘essence’ –of socialconstructionism. The question remains, of course, how one becomes a woman,and on this point opinions diverge. The early Sartre would probably have maintainedthat human beings of the female sex chose to become women. DeBeauvoir suggested that they had little, or no choice at all, to escape from being‘women’ in the traditional sense. It is possible to divide also recent socialconstructionism into two main streams: one flowing from the interactionist andintersubjectivist tradition I have treated in this chapter, the other from Frenchstructuralism and post-structuralism. 49 A good illustration of the differencebetween these strands of social constructionism is provided by two influentialfeminist works: S.J. Kessler and W. McKenna, Gender. An EthnomethodologicalApproach (1978) and J. Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminsim and the Subversion of Identity(1990). In the former work, the authors approach the social construction ofgender in an ethnomethodological manner, as a matter of gender attribution inthe everyday interaction between members of society. In the latter work, thetheoretical framework is provided by structuralism and post-structuralism and thesocial construction of gender is the work of culture and discourse, even if Butlerhas to find a place for agency in order to make room for the possibility of change.As expected, sociologists have tended to prefer the objectivist and structuralistversion of social constructionism, whereas social psychologists have tended tofollow the subjectivist and interactionist version (see, e.g. Sarbin and Kitsuse(eds), 1994). Most common is, perhaps, to attempt some kind of synthesis, or viamedia, between the two versions. Kenneth J. Gergen and Vivien Burr, forinstance, opt for a methodology that avoids the pitfalls of both methodologicalindividualism and social holism. The former suggests that we should concentrate