Social epistemology can be split into two broad camps: the radical and the non-radical.
1) The non-radical is essentially the study of what significant contributions are made by various social mechanisms to our gaining of knowledge or other epistemically valuable qualities (e.g., justified or rational belief).
One central topic in social epistemology is "testimony," construed broadly i.e. the habit we have of learning from other people. One central question in social epistemology is: assuming that we are very often justified in believing something based on the testimony of other people, where does this justification come from, and in particular, does it necessarily come from observations we have made regarding other people's reliability?
2) The radical aims at a new conception of knowledge: knowledge as a "collectively accepted system of belief" (Relativism, Rationality and Sociality of Knowledge, Barry Barnes and David Bloor, p. 22). Many followers of this radical conception see the real role of epistemology as providing a sociological account of how actual communities knowledge-production systems work, rather then providing a normative account.
Socially constructed reality is seen as an ongoing, dynamic process; reality is re-produced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge of it.
Social constructionism is dialectically opposed to essentialism, the belief that there are defining transhistorical essences independent of conscious beings that determine the categorical structure of reality.
Within social constructionist thought, a social construction, or social construct, is an idea which may appear to be natural and obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society.
Socialepistemology is theoretically significant because of the central role of society in the knowledge-forming process.
Socialepistemology would identify and evaluate social processes by which epistemic subjects interact with other agents who exert causal influence on their beliefs.
The social character of Longino's approach is reflected in her insistence that objectivity is a characteristic of a community's scientific practice rather than a characteristic of an individual scientist, for objectivity refers to the avoidance of individual subjectivity or bias.
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