Abstract
The metaphor of “social construction” is currently in vogue in social analysis. Consequently, the term “construction” becomes increasingly polysemous and ambiguous. Besides being an idea that implies methodological guidelines for social research, it now has epistemological implications that endorse a certain line of social criticisms. In order to assort the present discussions on “social construction” and to make my own methodological points, I use the concept of “empirical researchability.” However, being empirical is not so simple a matter nowadays. Regarding the ways to conceptualize empirical researchability, both the positivist orthodoxy and interpretive alternatives have been criticized from various camps. The major difference in their methodological understandings can be categorized as (1) understandings that entail epistemological (and sometimes ontological) “folding backs, ” and (2) understandings that do not. The contrast between the two types of understandings becomes clearer when their approaches to the issues such as fact/value distinction and reflexivity are closely examined. In order for a research program to be empirically researchable, I argue that it should focus on methodological understandings that do not “fold back” (such as those of ethnomethodology). Even for enterprises of applied sociology and critical sociology, being empirical is a serious matter unlike some recent postmodern arguments, and the empirical constructionist inquiry that I propose should have important implications for those enterprises.
