Constructionist perspective of social vulnerability. approaches and intervention in vulnerable groups

Social constructionism is interested in the communication and relations between people and in the process of producing meaning in social interactions. A point of departure is represented by the fact that people, in the same circumstances, are capable of producing very different social constructions of the same reality. The behaviours characteristic to vulnerable individuals are the result of defining the situation they find themselves in. In order to truly identify the type of vulnerability affecting an individual, we consider it is important to detect the way the individual defines his/her situation in relation to the accepted social value, to the attitudes towards social values, to the expected result and to the instrumental process through which this result is appropriated. The situation of an individual in relation to a certain social context can also be described from the point of view of vulnerability to the specific conditions of the situation. The paper presents how we can use the social constructionism for explain, understand and intervene for social change.