Social construction - Citizendia

A social construction or social construct is any phenomenon "invented" or "constructed" by participants in a particular culture or society, existing because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules. Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic A society is a Population of Humans characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive Culture and Institutions A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted Standards norms social norms or criteria, often taking the form of One example of a social construct is social status. In Sociology or Anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in Society (one's Social position)

Social constructionism is a school of thought which deals with detecting and analyzing social constructions. Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological and psychological theories of Knowledge that consider how social phenomena develop in

Definition

Main article: Social constructionism

Emile Durkheim first theorized about social construction in his anthropological work on collective behavior, but did not coin the term. Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological and psychological theories of Knowledge that consider how social phenomena develop in Émile Durkheim ( April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) was a French Sociologist whose contributions were instrumental The term " collective behavior " was first used by Robert E The first book with "social construction" in its title was Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality, first published in 1966. Peter Ludwig Berger (born March 17, 1929) is an American sociologist and Lutheran theologian well known for his work The Thomas Luckmann (born October 14 1927) is a German sociologist of Slovene origin The Social Construction of Reality is a Book about the Sociology of knowledge written by Peter L Year 1966 ( MCMLXVI) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. Since then, the term found its way into the mainstream of the social sciences. The social sciences comprise academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups and individuals including Anthropology, Communication studies

The central idea of Berger and Luckmann's Social Construction of Reality was that actors interacting together form, over time, typifications or mental representations of each other's actions, and that these typifications eventually become habitualized into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these reciprocal roles become routinized, the typified reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized. In the process of this institutionalization, meaning is embedded and institutionalized into individuals and society - knowledge and people's conception of (and therefore belief regarding) what reality 'is' becomes embedded into the institutional fabric and structure of society, and social reality is therefore said to be socially constructed. For further discussion of key concepts related to social construction, see social constructionism and deconstruction. Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological and psychological theories of Knowledge that consider how social phenomena develop in Deconstruction is a term used in Philosophy, Literary criticism, and the Social sciences, popularised through its usage by Jacques Derrida in

Social constructs and language

Pinker (2002, p. Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18 1954 is a prominent Canadian - American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author 202) writes that "some categories really are social constructions: they exist only because people tacitly agree to act as if they exist". He goes on to say, however: "But, that does not mean that all conceptual categories are socially constructed" (italics his). Both Hacking and Pinker agree that the sorts of objects indicated here can be described as part of what John Searle calls "social reality". For other uses of Object see Object. In Philosophy, an object is a thing an Entity, or a Being. John Rogers Searle (born July 31 1932 in Denver Colorado) is an American Philosopher and the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University In particular, they are, in Searle's terms, ontologically subjective but epistemologically objective. Informally, they require human practices to sustain their existence, but they have an effect that is (basically) universally agreed upon. The disagreement lies in whether this category should be called "socially constructed". Hacking (1997) argues that it should not.

Definition

Social constructs and language

See also