“Socially-Constructed” Does Not Mean “Not Real:” Knowledge-Making and the Meaning of Subjectivity in the Social Sciences

In any kind of research, there is more than one way to interpret what we are observing. The Positivist intent though, would be to find the “correct” interpretation that would lead one to the objective, universal truth, discarding all other interpretations as the useless results of human bias, error, and preconception. But what if, instead, we stopped searching for the One Truth (which may or may not even exist, and even if it does, humans might not be able to directly access it) and began to view truths as plural. That each piece of knowledge we gain is really a part of something larger, with a whole picture that only begins to come into focus the more of these partial truths we amass and fit together.