ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a critique of radical constructionism that emphasizes the discourse of actors as artfully producing reality, as featured in the notions of “doing things with words” and “talking reality into being.” The critique is specifically targeted at the Gubrium-Holstein model, which exemplifies certain key features of such constructionism in understanding family experience. The author’s critique is mainly based on the works of Schutz and Garfinkel, of which Gubrium and Holstein claim their own model shares “abiding concern,” and is further supplemented by the work of Bourdieu. This chapter carries a commitment to rebuking the postmodernist emphasis on the discursive by highlighting that the pre-predicative structure of the lifeworld – which is non-discursive in nature – constitutes the primordial, albeit insufficient, basis of the nomos pertaining to experience as constituted.
