Talk:Social construction

Definition

The article defines social construction as

A social construction, social construct or social concept is an institutionalised entity or artifact in a social system 'invented' or 'constructed' by participants in a particular culture or society that exists solely because people agree to behave as if it exists, or agree to follow certain conventional rules.

This is wrong, as:

(i) They don't necessarily 'agree'. They might be socialised into it and never have any choice - or conceive there could be any other way. They unconsciously accept it and experience it as their 'reality'. See for example Bourdieu's notion of habitus.

(ii) it is not always easy to point at a single artefact as a social construction - the whole social system is socially constructed and deeply intertwined in a complex manner

(iii) it is not always 'invented' (in the sense of deliberately and volitionally constructed) by particpants - this can happen, but more often it doesn't. The construction is more often tacit and subtle and evolves with the interaction of many people rather than the clear actions of one person. It may or may not be an intended outcome of the actions. See for example Bhaskar's work (he argued that society is always transformed, never created) or Berger & Luckmann's account of social construction

(iv) the page is about social construction, not social construction*s*. Why is the definition focused on social construction*s* rather than social construction?

The definition needs an overhaul - athe least, we need a valid definition, not one with as many fallacies and holes in it as this one. I might have a look at it in a week or two, if it has not been fixed by then.

---

(i),(iii): How about "any entity or artifact in a society, that exists purely because the participants in the society behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules." -Pgan002 04:06, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

(ii): Can you give examples, and an alternative definition? -Pgan002 04:06, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

(iv): The phrase "social construction" has two related meanings: (1) any entity that is socially constructed; and (2) the process of creating such entities. I think the first meaning is more basic, and should be used as the definition at the start of the article. The second meaning can also be discussed afterwards, of course. -Pgan002 04:06, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Why are "invented" and "constructed" in quotation marks in the definition? -Pgan002 04:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

What is the difference between "invented" and "constructed"? -Pgan002 04:08, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Links policy?

I noticed that someone added Wikipedia internal links (the double square bracket ones) for the TMSA and other items, that did not go anywhere (i.e., went to an empty page with only the link title, saying there was no page - please make one).

I would have thought it would be better to leave it unlinked, unless one was going to actually at least add a stub of some sort into the link destination page. For example, a sentence "The Transformational Model of Social Activity" is a critical realist model relating volitional activity of social agents to the development and articulation of social structure - which in turn shapes the articulation of human agency in social systems." By contrast, linking to an empty page seems to me to be either pointless or lazy. If you want to make a link for something, put something in it! :)

What are others'thoughts on this? What is Wikipedia policy?

LMackinnon 05:07, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Perspectives

Obviously, I have written the initial version of this article heavily under the influence of Ian Hacking. This is because he is the first author I found offering a somewhat coherent explanation of what calling something "social construction" means. Hacking should not get the last word, however; other perspectives need to get incorporated somehow.

Which ones? Well, browsing the web, I found references to Kenneth J. Gergen's An Invitation to Social Construction and Social Construction in Context. These might be helpful? (I don't know much about them, beyond the name.)

I also found Nancy Nelson Spivey's The Constructivist Metaphor: Reading, Writing, and the Making of Meaning. It looks filled with too much postmodern jargon about "texts" and so on for me to understand. But maybe not.

I also found Andre Kukla's Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science. Looks like an interesting consideration of the philosophical positions behind the "science wars". I'm not sure what is meant by the difference between social construction and social constructivism. I do know the book opens with a response and revision of Hacking's characterization of "social construction"; Kukla is looking for a definition, and points out some flaws in Hacking. (The first few pages can be seen for free on amazon.com.)

Hacking mentions the work of Sergio Sismondo. The following, among other things, argues that "social construction" (or is it "social constructionist") is not one concept but four, and give an analysis of the four. The argument is somewhat specific to the "Social Studies of Science".

Sismondo, Sergio. 1993. Some social constructions. Social Studies of Science 23:515-553.

Sismondo also has a longer book, which, I think, has the same content, but exanded. Hacking says it looks for some kind of reconciliation between extreme constructivist positions and totally naive views of science:

Sismondo, Sergio. 1996. Science without Myth: On Constructions, Reality and Social Knowledge. Albany: State University of New York Press.

There are probably other perspectives. --Ryguasu

Issues with Hacking

Hacking's book is very important (although I wish this article ad more about Berger and Luckman), but since the article is about social construction, and not about Hacking per se, I cut this:

If the conflict between this vision of "social construction" and Hacking's is not clear, consider Hacking's claim that

You do not find books on the social construction of banks, the fiscal system, cheques, money, dollar bills, bills of lading, contracts, tort, the Federal Reserve, or the British monarchy. (Hacking 1999, p. 12)

I cut it because Hacking here is wrong -- although Simmel and Marx do not use the term "social construction," their books The Philosophy of Money and Capital[ are most definitely about the "social construction" of money. Corrigan and Sayers work is about the social construction of the British monarchy. So Hacking's claim here is just wrong. If this were an article on Hacking, I'd say, keep the mistake and analyze why he makes this mistake and what it means. But since this is an article on social construction, it is better to keep the focus on that, and correct claims about it. Slrubenstein

This is a sensible cut. Hacking's analysis, of course, was based only on books and articles with "construction" in the title, so it is natural that he didn't include this. I wonder to what extent this decision of his has negatively affected his analysis. In any case, some of this should probably be moved to a separate article about the Hacking book in particular. I've yet to learn enough about others' ideas, though, to make this article more general. --Ryguasu 06:12 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

Scientists

Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure that most physical scientists *would* disagree with the statement in the paragraph on strong social construction. For example, many scientists aren't bothered at all that religious people who claim that the world is 6000 years. The attitude is that they have their version of truth and that's perfectly fine. What does bother scientists is when creationists say that it is scientifically demonstrable that the world is 6000 years old. This then becomes a problem not because Creationists are claiming that the world is 6000 years old, but they are claiming that using the rules of science, it can be shown the the world is 6000 years old.

But that is just the point. When religious people claim that this planet is only 6000 years old, that in itself is a claim about physical reality, it is a scientific claim. Scientists don't care when people making this claim keep to themselves, but as soon as people making this claim atempt to convince others that it is true, and atemnpt to present this view as factual, then scientists get very worried, and strive to debunk this claim. RK

Many of the scientists I know are deeply religious and they manage to be good scientists by compartmentalizing "scientific truth" with other forms of truth, and it's not necessarily the case that all scientists think that science is the prefered route to truth in all cases (some do, but not all). So its not clear that scientists generally oppose strong social construction. User:Roadrunner

Could you clarify what you mean by "other forms of truth". Other forms of truth about what? Scientists do think that science is the only road to discovering the truth about the physical, natural world. There are no other ways (i.e. mysticism, literary deconstructionism, etc, revelations from Egyptian or Asian gods, etc.) that tell us anything about the natural, physical world. In contrast, strong social constructionists claim that all ways of learning about the natural, physical world (such as the ones I just listed) are equally relevant, and equally true. And this is what all scientists reject. Remmeber, scientists themselves do not claim that science can provide us with all answers about all questions; it is limited to providing questions about the natural, physical world. RK 14:52 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think, RK, you are too quick to speak on behalf of "all scientists". I'm sure you could define scientist in some way that excludes everyone who finds some validity in postmodern critiques, but this would not necessarily be a NPOV way of going about things. Aside from the points Roadrunner was trying to make, I think that anyone who accepts that "social scientists" are indeed "scientists" is going to end up seeing a certain amount of overlap between scientists and "social constructionists". --Ryguasu 22:03 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Let me be clear: When I talk about scientists, I mean people who do science. Physicists, Chemists, Biologists, Geologists, Biochemists, Biophysicists, Astronomers, Forensic engineers, etc. I am clearly not talking about what you call "social scientists". And I am not speaking for scientists; they speak for themselves, and they do so quite clearly. You seem uncomfortable with the fact that the great majority of them reject hard social constructionism as nonsense. RK 22:51 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Let me be clear: I have no trouble with "the great majority" your physical scientists rejecting hard social constructionism. The main thing that bothers me is that you appear to assume that the words "science" and "scientist" are not in the least bit problematic, which may make some of your writing less than NPOV. Since people do not agree on matters such as whether or not "social scientists" are "really scientists", we need to be careful and be explicit, in the articles, about exactly which scientists we're talking about. Statements such as "Scientists and historians generally do not attempt to refute the idea that most (or all) of the world is a social construction" are needlessly ambiguous. --Ryguasu 23:46 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Also, and I ask more out of curiosity than malice, could you tell me how you have come to your conclusions about what most physical scientists think? Do you "just know"? Are there interviews and surveys involved? Have you looked at a study of science curriculums? Perhaps you know lots of scientists? Or perhaps you can't conceive of someone living the paradox of seeing the world through both lenses at once? Although I imagine most physical scientists aren't too keen on social constructionism, it occurs to me I don't really have much evidence that could convince anyone. --Ryguasu 23:46 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Weak social constructionism

RK, can you clarify, here or in the article, what "weak social constructionism" is about -- in general, not just in the consideration of hard science? I certainly don't think Pinker should remain the centerpiece of that section. The main point of mentioning him, in my vision, is to show how some people who aren't part of the postmodernist movement in any sense use the term. The question is: what do the people who definitely are part of the postmodernist movement yet don't qualify as "hard" social constructionists say? If we can't answer that question, then I think the split into "hard" and "soft" is not as useful as the organization I gave the article previously. --Ryguasu 00:12 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

POV

The article seems horrible POV (in recurse of the reality standards of science). In my opinion, the reality standards of social science should be included into the argumentation. There should be references to social constructivism (or constructionsm), i.e. to Berger/Luckmann, sociology of knowledge et al., and there should be references to radical constructivsm (or constructionsm). In my opinion, the list of things that could be called social constructed in the beginning of the article is ridicioulos -- the reason why gender, quarks, nationalism (including Zulu nationalism) all can be seen as social constructs is because they are -- human beings doing something -- created as social artefacts in the same way. But this article should be about the general rules how human beings create something socially (Socially constructed reality (Berger/Luckmann) could be a good starting point for this debate, phenomenology another one), and these rules shouldn't be ridiculed or pictured only from the very specific view of reality-believers like "hard" scientist. -- till we *) 14:26 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Intro request

I ran across this page, and was thoroughly confused what this topic was really about. Would it be possible to put some sort of (obviously rough) definition at the top, to at least get the gist across?

I shall attempt. Pjrich 00:41, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Gergen

Personally, I have found Kenneth Gergen's work to be very informative and often very very dense. It is often oriented towards psychology/sociology due to his own background as a social psychologist. His book "Realities and Relationships" is probably the most complete version of his thoery. Some of his papers are also availble online at his website. Gergen

I would also suggest John Shotter who has similar ideas, but with his own twist and has often criticized Gergen as developing a theory that is too academic and not practical enough to actually bring about the changes he is promoting.

Also a very good, but definitely not laymen book, is "Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature" by Richard Rorty. Wow, is that a great book, but very challenging.

Finally, to get an idea of how these theories have begun to be implemented in the "real world" I would suggest looking into the works of David Cooperrider on Appreciative Inquiry. You can google for that and find lots of great information. It talks about the social construction of corporate realities and how Appreciative Inquiry leads to the development of a new corporate culture, not through problem solving, but through the building of an entirely new culture.

Merge

I'd like to propose that this article be merged to Social constructionism. Social construction seems to be more about social constructionism than social constructions per se. Also, social constructionism would greatly benefit from some of the material here. -Seth Mahoney 07:44, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I tend to agree, social construction is more about social constructionism than social constructions themselves. But it seems that there should be a social construction article really on social constructions.... Velho 16:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's enough to warrant an article, really. Maybe a section in social constructionism would be more appropriate. -Seth Mahoney 18:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Merging is a bad idea. It's like merging Empire into Imperialism, or Race into Racism, or Gene into Genetics. The need for an explanation of the concept of a social construct transcends any -ism, no matter what the history of the idea may have been. Peak 19:32, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I actually agree with you, in principle. However, as discussed above, the content of social construction is currently about social constructionism and not social constructions or social constructs. If you are willing to develop content that is specifically about social constructs and not just a rehash of social constructionism, then by all means do it! Of all the articles merged into social constructionism today, this one I am the least sure should remain just a redirect. However, its status as a full article depends on good and useful content, which it currently does not have.

As far as there being insufficient discussion, the consensus has largely been in favor of a merge (there is more discussion on Talk:Social constructionism). I'd say at this point the most fruitful avenue of discussion is in terms of what the content of each article should be. I've already thrown out ideas of what this one should not be (which happens to be exactly what it is now). You seem to agree, at least to a point. Since you want to retain social construction as an article, what would you like to see here? -Seth Mahoney 19:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Merge social constructionism to social construction?

If there's going to be a merge, I'd rather not see it go this way, but from social construction to social constructionism. -Seth Mahoney 02:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, as far as someone does do it. The content of the articles is almost the same!Velho 02:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Edits by Sethmahoney

I think this was a very good edit, but at the same time some relevant information might have been lost. I noticed that some of the examples of obvious social constructions were deleted. I guess there is no reason for that and I'll put them back. We should check whether there are some other losses. Velho 04:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Of course I'm ready to delete some of the examples if somebody reasonably thinks that they're not obvious. Velho 04:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The only reason I didn't add all of them is because the list is long, and I didn't want this page to become a list of lists. Hopefully there will be a way, as more edits are made, to add them back as content rather than just as items in a list. -Seth Mahoney 05:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I had put them back (in the introduction) so that somebody who doesn't know anything about SCs could come here and have a good grasp of their pervasiveness in everyday life. Velho 09:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Another thing: I suppose the first sentence ("...an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society which exists solely because people agree to behave as if it exists, or agree to follow certain conventional rules...") is a bit inaccurate:

• SCs are artifacts but it is quite debatable that all or most of them are "inventions". Is a language an invention? Aren't inventions intentional and conscious? Isn't there a more or less exact moment when an invention is invented?

• Right, hence the or. Some, like games, clearly are inventions. -Seth Mahoney 19:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• People often do not "agree" to behave as if SCs exist, nor to follow certain rules. Languages are not the product of agreements, and we can certainly say the same about governments, titles, money, etc. Searle uses "believe" where the article says "agree". Even if that is not everybody's view, I suppose it would be better.

• Agreement can be implicit or explicit. To take the example of a game again, agreement is explicit. Gender performance, on the other hand, rarely involves conscious, explicit agreement, though it may, or may involve explicitely not agreeing to the rules. I follow what you're saying here, and while I think the agreement part should stay, I would be fine with a revision of the wording to make the point more specific. -Seth Mahoney 19:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• The relation between SCs and conventions is difficult to state. Aren't they the same? And the very nature of conventions is much debated. I would prefer that the introduction to SCs kept "conventions" out. Velho 09:30, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• I wouldn't say they're the same. Social constructions rely on convention, certainly, though often they seem to be more than that. The reason convention is brought into that particular sentence is to make a distinction between conventional rules - those which adhere because we agree to them - and non-conventional rules - those which adhere because, say, some powerful person or group has imposed them on us by force (though there is, of course, some blurring between the two categories). Regardless, while I appreciate your taking the time to discuss your proposed changes here, you are, of course, free to edit the article any way you wish. -Seth Mahoney 19:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• Actually, one more criticism of that sentence that should probably be added is that it is LONG! I'm really bad about that sort of thing, so if someone wants to break it up a little, by all means do it! -Seth Mahoney 19:21, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Heh! I altered the first sentence anyway (before I saw this discussion). Hope it reads ok with you guys. I made a few other changes as well - I added an account of what B&L actually said, and reorganised the ordering for clarity (there was no reason for games and gender to come before definition of the term). Also I reorganised the introduction paragraph for clarirty. HTH LMackinnon 03:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Nicely done! I don't know if these were your changes or not, but I felt the bold + italics was a bit much, so I went ahead and unbolded them. -Seth Mahoney 03:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Social construct examples

Is law a social construct? (What about natural law?) Neutrality^talk 19:31, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Law as "lex" is certainly a social construct. It is debatable that law as "ius" or law as an interpretive concept (or as "integrity") is (just) a social construct. If there is such a thing as natural law, it has the same status as morality. Velho 19:43, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Law as in the legal system, political and legal institutions and laws on the books are certianly socially constructed IMO. LMackinnon 03:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

If you want a classic example of a social construct look no further than 'God 'Lejon (talk) 13:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Gender edits

I cleaned up some POV issues, removing a semi-rant about gender and replacing it with a more academic bit. I also added a bit about the John/Joan case there, as when I was reading it, I kept thinking about that. I hope that's okay. I'll be adding this page to my watch list, as I hope to clean it up a bit more in time to come.Minidoxigirli 06:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I've changed things a bit (1) to comply more closely to the actual history of the John/Joan case. One of the things Money was criticized for was the coercive methods he used during this child's early years to try to make the constructed gender identity stick. (2) to try to get at what it seems to me is often the crucial fact about social constructs that are the most socially potent -- that they have a basis in reality, but lots of stuff is constructed on that basis that comes from somewhere else, e.g., it is obvious that the average of 1000 Chinese people is going to look different from the average of 1000 "white" people. There are genetic reasons for the differences as there are genetic reasons for the similarities. But lots of claptrap gets added that are stereotypes that may derive from all sorts of strange places. The "squinty eyes" provide a "reason" to say that the Chinese are sneaky, but nobody ever made a real measure of sneakiness and correlated it with a real measure of the squintiness of eyes. It's just a "likely story." P0M 17:26, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Small Font?

Why the smaller font on this page? --142.204.31.41 19:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Debate section

Why is the debate section empty but with a stub notice? some one fill it in. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.27.231.250 (talk) 22:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

ADHD only medical example

Surely there are more examples of theories of social constructions in medicine than just ADHD. I don't personally subscribe to these views, but I have more than once heard autism and PMS described as social constructions. If this information were to be included, we could rename the section to not be ADHD specific. RobertJWalker | Talk 15:55, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Questioning The Redirect from this page.

Why should the term0 "social construct" not isntead redirect to Social constructivism? FatalSubjectivities (talk) 07:02, 20 December 2022 (UTC)