ABSTRACT
In Chapter 19, the authors provide a step-by-step description of Domain Analysis, their PAR adaptation of George Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology. The key assumption of this method is that people understand a context-specific domain by dividing it into its main elements (behaviours, problems, actors, factors, activities, life forms, etc.) and ‘constructing’ degrees of similarity and difference between them, with a view to identifying obstacles to new learning and creating opportunities for collaborative problem solving. The approach is a radical departure from comprehensive systems that classify elements using expert-based definitions of shared attributes, with no immediate application in sight. The authors illustrate Social Domain as one possible application of the generic method, drawing on work with Bangladeshi farmers struggling to move out of tobacco farming. They conclude with a commentary on constructivist theory and a critique of ‘local systems of knowledge’ fixed in social history – the opposite of hybrid systems that continue to borrow and evolve over time. Social construct analysis shows a fundamental limitation built into the ‘invention of tradition’: the construct hides the fact that bodies of knowledge can be different from each other at the same time as they are profoundly mixed-up, just like humans.
