The Institute for Emancipatory Constructionism
For a Multidisciplinary New Critical and Social Constructionist Theory
Founding Director, Mark A. Foster, PhD, sociologist, journalist & historian
Sententia Vocum
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Words are only breaths of the voice (from Roscelin's letter to Abelard)
A spoken word, which is numerically one quality, is a universal; it is a sign conventionally appointed for the signification of many things (from Ockham's Summa Logicae)
 GIn a spirit of radical inclusion, The Institute for Emancipatory Constructionism™ welcomes a diversity of voices to our conversations. IEC™ serves as a theoretical, praxical, researching, and educational agency. Among its substantive concerns are sociology public, clinical, and religion and advocacy journalism. You are invited to join the IEC think tank and to add yourself to the group map.

 As framed by Emancipatory Constructionism™, the institute's new critical theory, the construction (naming) of tropes (attributes) is contingent upon cognition and volition. Dominative structurizations, as socially constructed dialectics, are accepted, with or without utility, from oppressors. Through concerted action, as a radical praxis and a critical pedagogy, they can be deconstructed (denamed), revealing their contradictions, and reconstructed (renamed) into emancipatory structurizations.

 This neo-Marxian paradigm draws from three nominalist-cum-particularist categories. First, out of medieval nominalism comes a discourse on universals as names. Second, Marxian with Lockean, trope, and other modern nominalisms are employed. Finally, social constructionism with cultural sociology, postmodernism, poststructuralism, critical pragmatism, and other postisms are utilized to express an incredulity toward, and to oppose the dominations of, essentialisms, foundationalisms, and metanarratives.

The Institute for Emancipatory Constructionism is © 1996- Mark A. Foster, Ph.D.
Dr. Foster is a sociologist (Ph.D. and M.A.) and a journalist (A.B.J. and A.A.).