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Re-visiting George Kelly: Social constructionism, social ecology, and social justice – all unfinished projects.

Shotter, J.

Keywords:
personal construct theory, social constructionism, social ecology, social justice

Abstract:
A long time ago, in late 1968, Don Bannister invited me to contribute a chapter to his Perspectives in Personal Construct Theory (Bannister, 1970). Central to the whole chapter was George Kelly’s emphasis on the first-time creativity of our own living encounters with events around us – “It is by his actions that man learns what his capabilities are...” (Kelly, 1969a, p.33). As I see it now, we can find in George Kelly’s early ideas much of what later appeared under the umbrella of what came to be called ‘social constructionism.’ However, in that 1970 paper, I was simply claiming that “Kelly did not sufficiently work through the powerful implications in his own position, even though the comments littered about his writings were obviously informed by an intuitive appreciation of them” (Shotter, 1970, p.235). Here, I would like to return to that paper to claim that this is still the case – that there are still undeveloped themes in Kelly’s work to do with his emphasis on the consequential nature of our actions in the social sphere that need our attention. Attention to these themes can help us to understand inadequacies in current versions of social constructionism, and also why, currently, we find it so difficult to provide persuasive arguments in favour of social justice and against social injustice.