Beginning with the question of why the social constructivist approach to psychotherapy excludes uniqueness, whereas the dialogical approach, which is also a social construct, includes it, I reject the eitherlor of a substantive, essential self on the one hand and mere role playing on the other. I also demonstrate that Gergen’s “dialogue”, which is really the dialectic interplay of minds, cannot lead to harmony unless it is embodied in a real, caring community that confirms concrete otherness. As a third alternative to the social constructivist’s eitherlor, I put forward the “dialogue of touchstones” with its integral relation between dialogue and uniqueness and the tension between personal calling and social role that follows from it.

In this chapter, we will present various research projects dealing with children’s perceptions of other cultures, the word “culture” referring primarily in this instance to other national or ethnic entities. The issue of perceptions of other cultures is important in that it is linked with children’s constructions of their identity and may eventually determine their attitudes and behaviour to many others. Children construct social images of the groups they belong to and of other groups at an early stage of their socialisation. These early representations are acquired without them being aware of the processes at work. This is why representations often resist modification. This issue is difficult to deal with in schools and the tendency is for teachers to keep away from it. Outlining the nature, characteristics and role of social perceptions and representations of otherness in cross-cultural communication is a first step towards a fuller understanding of this area. We agree, however, with Goldstone who warns that researchers who identify difference merely reify it. We suggest strategies in line with the constructivist philosophy of the Primary Curriculum to promote pluralism. Relevance: This chapter is about identity construction in different cultures. It provides evidence of the variations in such constructions depending on the cultural context.

Key words: Children, identity, social representations, stereotypes, prejudices

This article proposes a possible synthesis between the concept of structural coupling with the milieu, derived from the thought of Maturana and Varela, and the concept of semeiosis derived from Peirce. The purpose is to develop a vocabulary and conceptual framework in which to envisage the relationships among autopoietic systems i.e. organisms, against which communication can take place. By showing how the sign emerges from structural coupling, this article hopes to encourage (or reinforce) a gestalt shift in scholars of communication, away from a conduit metaphor of sending and receiving communications, and towards a grounding of communication in the relationships among organisms and their environment(s), which include other organisms. When these organisms engage habitually in what Maturana calls the “coor-dination of coordination of behavior,” and especially when this involves languaging of the human type, then the environment to which they are coupled also involves a system of signs, which, as Peirce demonstrates, is continually changed by the very interpretive actions which constitute it. Human languaging is “the play of signs” because play is a process of “co-imagining” in which organisms generate a repertoire of potential behaviors by placing themselves outside the immediate (‘serious’) context of adaptation/ structural coupling. But within the cooperative domain of human work i.e. the human collaborative structural coupling with its shared environ-ment or milieu, this “play of signs” can pass or fail the test of effectiveness. Humans engaged in cooperative work co-coordinate their structural couplings by way of conversationing, a co-coordination which depends upon their shared encounter with a Secondness or “otherness” with which they grapple together – an “otherness” which can never be known directly, but only approached by the work of fallibilist human cooperation.

In the spirit of second-order cybernetics, human communication is reconceptualized by including in the process not only its theorists but also their observed Others without whom social reality is inconceivable. This essay examines several versions of otherness, how the voices of Others survive social scientific inquiries, the dialogical spaces made available for people to build their home, and the kinds of citizenship encouraged. The essay draws attention to the epistemological limits of different inquiring practices and seeks to expand the range of possibilities for humans to see each Other.

Key words: cybernetics, human communication, languaging, embodied practices, re-entry, accounts, social theory, social inquiry, otherness, observer, i, it, you, thou, trivial/ nontrivial machines, dialogue, agency, emancipation, epistemology, methodology, politics o

The book features 18 of Klaus Krippendorff’s key papers on constructivist, second-order cybernetics, and dialogical approaches to social phenomena, organized in four sections, named in the title of the book. Part 1 offers a sketch of social constructivism, epistemological and conceptual issues of communication. Part 2 concerns the otherness that theorizing creates, the use of pronouns in social relations, power and emancipation. Part 3 critiques semiotics from a constructivist perspective, develops conceptions to come to grips with cultural artifacts and proposes a theory of discourse. Part 4 reviews information theory, and applies it to research processes, the internet and cyberspace more generally and to social memory.