Filling the World with Self-Esteem: A Social History of Truth-Making

Over the last one hundred years the concept of self-esteem has grown from a fragile idea used to ground the newly emerging discipline of psychology to a basic truth about human experience and motivation. In this paper, I examine the historical construction of the concept of self-esteem and its rise to the status of undeniable truth. Borrowing from actor-network theory in science and technology studies, I argue that truth-making can be seen as an ongoing process involving the mobilization of human and non-human actants and the construction of an encompassing network of truth. This approach is used to show how self-esteem slowly came to dominate discussions of the self in the twentieth century. The paper also uses actor-network theory to critique other contempo- rary accounts of truth, particularly those found in scientific realism, postmodern textualism, and social constructionism.