Part I: A Rhetorical-Responsive Version of Social Constructionism

[In this book w]e shall...shift from a focus upon how we understand objects to how we understand each other...(p.6)...  [because] this book is concerned with a special dialogical or conversational version of social construcionism (p.6)...[U]ntil  recently, this ... kind of knowledge [of each other]...has remained in the background, awaiting elucidation in terms of yet to be discovered... [We will look for this knowledge within conversation practices because it is] within this flow of responsive and relational activities and practices [(i.e.,joint-action)]...[that] significant dimensions of interpersonal interaction...originate and are formed.   My aim is to try to release psychology from its 'colonization' by an ahistorical asocial, instrumental, individualistic 'cognitivism'..., and to open it up to a more large-scale, participatory or dialogical form of research activity (p.9). 

[To that end, I claim] that [psychology] is not a natural but a moral science [and thus we should abandon our ] the attempt simply to discover our supposed 'natural' natures, and [turn instead] to the study of how we actually do treat each other ... in everyday life...(p.23)...[For example, one of the things we do that is a violation of people is that we impose our meanings of terms on them.]  Indeed, to insist words have pre-determined meanings is to attempt to rob people of their rights, both to participate in developing a conversational topic with others, and to their own individual way of making that contribution (p.28).  [In sum, by insisting on the definition of terms we rob them of their way of accounting for things.] 

[How can we understand the social construciton that takes place in our conversations?  In many human conversations,] what is being talked about is ...a developing and developed event, an event that is only properly known from within this development by those who are producing it (p.34)  And crucial in that struggle [to account for things in the event] is the 'basic' language [we use for doing so, especially] the terms in which we justify our actions to others when challenged by others to do so so (p.34).   [I will be] suggesting a change in [that] language in terms of which we currently conduct our debates in psychology about our own psychological nature, (34) [a change in the terms in which we] unknowingly construct between ourselves (35).  [The social construction that has my attention takes place in what is] a zone of indeterminancy (38) [which I call joint action].  Joint action has 2 major features: [It is action different people produce together which has] unintended and unpredictable outcomes (39) but, nevertheless, the action has an intentional quality to it.  [This collaborative joint action creates a social bond.]  For individual members of a people can have a sense of 'belonging' in  people's 'reality', only if the others around them are prepared to respond to what they do and say seriously; that is if the are treated as a proper participant in that people's 'authoring' of their reality, and not excluded from it in some way.  For only then will they feel that the reality in which they live is as much theirs as anyone else's (39)...[And I ] claim that the primary human reality is conversation (40)  Unformulated in words, a thought-seed remains vague and provides only the possibilty of having a meaning (44) 

[In one of these important socially constructing conversations.  N]o matter how systematic the speech of each may be while speaking, when [that person] has finished speaking and the other can respond, the bridging of that 'gap' is an opportunity for a completely unique, unrepeatable response, one that is 'crafted' or 'tailored' to fit the unique circumstances of its utterance (53)  [It is in this way that the social construction becomes collaborative.[  [B]ecause in [the] incomplete...structure...[of each speaker's utterance] we offer initially unconnected premises [in our accounts of things] that (most of) our audience will be able to connect up for us -- and feel that it is they who have 'seen' the point! (56)  [Up until recent postmodern times (56) we have tried to portray our psychological worlds in terms of natural science description, but this is bankrupt.  In order to do better, we must learn to question how we have come to see ourselves as consisting of ] inner representations of outer states of affairs (57)...[This has been] basic to our way of being in the world, ...we (almost) do not know how to doubt it.  It is basically what we 'are' to ourselves and what the world 'is' for us.  Yet doubt it we must if want to grasp (57) the nature of [this]...kind of knowing.  But how might we provoke such a doubt within ourselves, let alone the task of giving it intelligible expression? (58)  Here we must turn to Wittgentsein's account of our language use. (58) ... We must search for a new kind of understanding....[we must search for what Wittgenstein calls] 'perspicuous representation' (58).  [This new form of perspicuous representation will be dialogical., that is not deaf to the other person's response.]  With a monologic approach...another person remains wholly and merely an merely an object of consciousness.  Monologue is finalized and deaf to the other's response, does not expect it and does not acknowledge in it any decisive force.  [If we work to make our conversations more dialogic] we can expect contests between different perspicuous representations (63). ... Further, such claims will not just be critical of the mainstream, but of each other also (63)...there will be political struggles over which representations of a 'worldview' should be 'literalized' into an 'world-order.' (63)  We are moving into a new world of problems posed by a genuine recognition of the importance of differences rather than similarities, and the / importance of that world in influencing the character of the questions we now feel it crucial to pursue (63/64)

Part II: Realism, The Imaginary, and a World of Events
Notes to be provided later

Part III: Conversational Realities
Notes to be provided later