170 Neill Korobov
interactional/contextual phenomena. Social constructionism is, however, a
meta-theoretical orientation, not a methodological one. Second and third,
then, are the systematically detailed empirical grounding of interactional
identities in ethnomethodological (see Sacks, 1992) and discursive
positioning (Korobov, 2010) approaches. Ethnomethodological and
discursive positioning approaches provide an interactional vocabulary and
empirical method for studying the practices by which people order their
everyday lived realities, including their identities. These three pillars—
social constructionism, ethnomethodology, and discursive positioning—
work synergistically to form the backdrop for a critical approach to
identity.
Social Constructionism and Relationality
Social constructionism reflects the radical prioritization of
relationality—a view that attempts to reverse the longstanding idea in
psychology that relationships are derivative of individual minds; instead, to
borrow from Vygotsky (1978), relationality precedes individuality, and
makes it possible. Following in the tradition of Vygotsky’s (1978) social
developmental theory, continental phenomenology (see Schutz, 1970), the
dialogism of Bakhtin (1986), Wittgenstein’s (1978) emphasis on language
use/games, as well as theories of the interpolated self and performativity
(Austin, 1962; Butler, 1990), social constructionism posits that the
interior/internal world of the individual is not only fashioned within social,
cultural, and historical webs of interdependent relationality, but is a
constitutive feature of relationality. Identities are not decontextualized
entities which stand outside of relational contexts. It is later, in processes
of reflection and abstraction that identities appear reified and objectified as
internal phenomenon that we experience and label as private and
individualized.
Further, social constructionists capitalize on what Gergen (1999) refers
to as a ‘crisis of representation,’ which is purportedly a failure of the
traditional (mimetic, mirroring) responsibility of language, as well as on