The Co-creation of Meaning

Overview

This module can be a bit challenging for students since it questions certain basic assumptions about what people often consider to be “facts” and “truth.” Despite the abstract nature of this week’s topic, there are some pretty clear touchpoints to focus on and it introduces an important, and very different, way to approach conflict insight.

A starting principle underlying social constructionism (the co-creation of meaning) is the premise that many of the things we take to be “real” and “true” in our social lives are actually only “real” or “true” because enough people agree or believe they are real to create a “subjective certainty” as opposed to an objective external reality. For purposes of this class at least, it helps to distinguish among physical “truth” (e.g. your body may cease to function if a big enough tree falls on it), moral “truth” (e.g. there is only one God whose law orders the universe), and social “truth” – the way we understand, judge and act on our social experiences. For purposes of this class, we are focusing on “social truth” in relation to the experience of conflict. Discussions of physical and moral truth, while interesting, go well beyond the scope of this class and could distract from the primary purpose for this module: To better understand how people, groups and communities make sense of their social experiences – their social “truths” – in ways that can clash (be incommensurate) with others’ social truths.

Two examples of “social truth:” The first is what can be commonly called a $50 bill. I may be holding a small rectangular piece of printed fabric with ink on it (a physical fact) but it has no meaning unless and until enough people agree on what it stands for – a certain type of value (a subjective certainty). In this case, the subjective certainty of its meaning likely is almost universal within the culture that uses this kind of paper money and thus not questioned. Nevertheless, its meaning is still socially constructed. How about cryptocurrency like bitcoins?

The second example is a bit closer to our study of conflict: Imagine paint on a canvas (a physical fact). If enough people agree that it is “art,” it might be acquired by and hang on a museum wall. The “fact” that it is art is socially constructed. Chances are, there will be some, who would claim it is not “art” at all. Think of “artists” such as Banksy, Caravaggio, Robert Mapplethorpe, Chris Ofili, Piero Manzoni, Yoki Ono, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol, among others.

This second example may not have quite as broadly accepted “subjective certainty” about what constitutes “art” as the “subjective certainty” of a $50 bill. In this second case the “meaning” may be more clearly subjective and more private than the $50 bill, but the principle between the two examples is the same: There is an important distinction between “facts” and “meaning.” A “fact” is something that is consistent with objective reality and stands independently of human interpretation (such as exists in the physical world or that can be proven by evidence). In contrast, “meaning” is the significance of facts as to how we interpret, judge and engage in our social lives.

For law students in particular, the importance of this distinction is important but can be confusing. From their first legal writing course, law students are trained to identify “facts” and apply them to principles of law. Anything other than facts is often characterized as “opinion.” However, outside a legal context, and particularly in day-to-day life, people function and interact with one another based largely on the “subjective certainty” of their lived and social experiences. Thus, when human conflict arises, it can, and often does, include different lived experiences that lead to different and conflicting social “truths.”

All of this is for the following point: In whatever way they express it, students should be able to articulate that social constructionism refers to the ways we understand, explain, and act in our social worlds based on the “meaning” we make through social experience, and the subjective certainty we experience as “facts” and “truth.”

As this relates to conflict, it is possible that different parties come to a conflict from different social worlds (different systems of “meaning” such as family background, community and cultural differences) and, as a result, all the parties are grounded in their own “truth” about the same conflict. While this does not mean we should fall into the hole of moral relativism, it does mean that, when it comes to conflict, parties can (and often do) have deeply embedded systems of belief and meaning that lead them to different – likely incommensurate – understandings of what is “true,” “right” and what “must” happen in the conflict. This is not the same as holding different “opinions”. This is a different way to look at conflict than the theories we have studied up to this point.

A “Macro” v. “Micro” view of Social Constructionism. A second point that is covered in this module is how “meaning” can be understood either from a “macro” point of view or a “micro” point of view. The “macro” view looks at how social groups make meaning as a whole and, typically, through time. “Culture” is a classic example of a macro view of constructed meaning.

In contrast, a “micro” view of social construction looks at very minute interactions and how they can shape meaning in real time as an interaction unfolds. Think of an argument where, at a particular moment, your counterpart says something unexpected. It causes you to pause, re-think, and react something like “ooohhhhh, so THAT’S what you mean! Now I get it! Nevermind!”…. and everything changes.

Put differently, the “macro” and “micro” views of social construction are both looking for the same thing – evidence of how meaning is made. The only difference is whether you use a telescope or a microscope in search of relevant data. We are looking for evidence that students understand this distinction.

Finally, the social constructionist view is profoundly different than what we have studied so far. In particular, it is different from the individualist theories, (such as the biological, psychodynamic and behavioral theories). For example, the individualist theories focus primarily on the individual themselves without comparing how two individuals might experience the same conflict situation based on deeply different “truths”.

Impact on conflict work. This is the “so what” question. Here are some sample insights students might take from this perspective:

I will listen differently (and without judgement) to understand the deeper assumptions or premises on which the parties base their “truths” and “meaning.”
I will work to facilitate building a new shared language to bridge the different worldviews between parties (note: this is not the same as building “common ground” or “shared interests” since those can only occur if the parties already actually share the same underlying “meaning” or “worldview”.
I will not (immediately) focus on solving the “problem” since there is not even a shared understanding of how even to define or frame what the problem is.

Readings and supplemental resources

Primary readings:

Perspectives on Conflict, chapter 8 – The Co-creation of Meaning

Supplemental resources:

Kenneth Gergen, An Invitation to Social Construction: Co-creating the Future (Sage Publications, 2023)

W. Barnett Pearce and Stephen W. Littlejohn, Moral Conflict: When Social Worlds Collide (Sage Publications, 1997)

Classroom Handouts

Figure 1.1 – Overlapping Cones (PDF)

Classroom Activities, Discussion Prompts, and Assignments

Meaning-Making: How We Co-create Meaning Through “Supplements” (PDF)