Social constructionism
Social constructionism is a theoretical framework that examines how social norms and concepts that we often accept as natural or objectively true are, in fact, shaped by cultural and societal influences. It posits that knowledge and reality are not inherent but are constructed through social interactions and communication. This perspective draws from various disciplines, including phenomenology, ethnography, and feminist theory, and is closely linked to symbolic interactionism, which emphasizes that individual identities are formed through social exchanges.
Modern social constructionism emerged in the early twentieth century and has evolved to explore how experiences, beliefs, and knowledge are formed and interpreted within specific cultural contexts. It suggests that what societies accept as "truth" is largely influenced by collective understandings and interactions, leading to norms that might seem natural yet are socially created. Within this framework, different branches exist, such as contextual constructionism, which recognizes an objective reality influenced by social contexts, and radical constructionism, which argues that knowledge is entirely subjective and cannot accurately reflect reality.
Despite facing criticism for its relativist stance, social constructionism remains a valuable lens for analyzing various social phenomena, including issues of identity related to gender, class, and race, as well as the impact of media on societal perceptions. Its emphasis on the role of communication in shaping shared meanings highlights the dynamic nature of reality as it is experienced by individuals and communities.
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Subject Terms
Social constructionism
The term social construction is used by contemporary scholars to explain how norms that are taken for granted as natural or objectively true are often—at least partially—socially and culturally constructed. Rather than a concrete theory, social constructionism draws insights from a variety of philosophies and social science theories, such as phenomenology, ethnography, and feminist theory. A social constructionist framework can enable scholars to explore the idea that individual and group identity positions, such as gender, ethnicity, and race, are built within a structure of social relations rather than biologically determined.
To make sense of the social world around them, constructionist theorists consider all knowledge as constructed. As such, social constructionists focus on the nature of knowledge and how it is created by culture and society. Moreover, society is viewed as existing both as an objective and a subjective reality. Cultural meaning and significance in a society are created and shared endeavors, which, in turn, become a taken-for-granted reality.
Background
Many different disciplines and thinkers have contributed to the development of social constructionist theories. Social constructionism traces a path that encompasses the work of humanist philosophers in the Enlightenment era all the way to twenty-first-century theorists. Its modern origins are rooted in the work of George Herbert Mead, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Alfred Schütz, among others. Mead, one of the creators of symbolic interactionism, is the common link among twentieth-century social constructionists.
Symbolic interactionism posits that an individual’s sense of self is a social construction or product of the interactions with other people. Social constructionist theory has developed a wide spectrum of ideas and methods that seek to explain how sociocultural processes provide the material that alter one’s perception of reality. It argues, for example, that what one does consider as reality is never objectively knowable and is based on socially constructed systems that are subject to change over time. These social constructs form the trove of information and practices that are considered as knowledge. Knowledge, then, is a set of beliefs in which people have reasonable trust and confidence, based on received information and personal perceptions and experience. All of these elements are rooted in social exchange. As individuals and groups interact with each other, they contribute to their common stock of information and beliefs, in this manner creating consensual notions of what constitutes knowledge, reality, and truth. Social constructionism is closely related to social constructivism, which is a psychological rather than sociological theory of knowledge concerned with how individuals learn and create meaning from the interaction between their existing beliefs and new ideas.
Social constructionists are often criticized as relativists and for not offering concrete academic contributions. Relativism is a set of views that, in general, posits that reality is, to different extents, relative to one’s experience—therefore, there is no one true reality. There are different versions of relativism. Strands of descriptive relativism are common in the social sciences, for example, because some social structures, behaviors, and beliefs are rooted in a people’s history, culture, and even geography. Strands of extreme relativism, however, argue that all notions of truth, ethics, and morality—and even reality itself—are purely cultural and subjective to the people holding those views. Despite these criticisms, social constructionists aim to provide an objective and logic-based interpretation of the subjective experiences of people.
Social Constructionism Today
Social constructionism developed as different disciplines in the social sciences attempted to understand the nature of reality and how it is perceived. In its modern form, social constructionism emerged in the early twentieth century. Its most contemporary strands, in the field of postmodern theory, emerged in the late-twentieth century. Many social constructionist scholars focus on human subjectivity, while they also seek to develop an objective interpretation of human experience. Social constructionist scholars attempt to apply empiricist quantitative or qualitative methodologies to social research to find out what is culturally and socially meaningful to people. Constructionist underpinnings consider that knowledge and truth are, to different degrees, created or constructed, rather than inherent to humans or discovered by the human mind. Thus, social constructionists’ main interests tend to lie in the nature and construction of knowledge, how it develops, and how it comes to have meaning for people and societies.
One of the principal factors in the construction of reality is social interactions and communication. Frequent behaviors that can be repeated and reproduced without major effort eventually become patterns, allowing people to engage in improvement and innovation. Communication, such as everyday dialogue, is the most common and important way of developing, sharing, and maintaining a subjective reality. Subjective reality, then, is constructed of notions and beliefs that can be shared easily with others. Shared meanings and understanding create norms that appear to be “natural” and often unimpeachable. In this manner, concepts used and produced in everyday life become a reality generally taken for granted.
Among the most common social constructionist branches are contextual and radical constructionism. Social constructionism can be contextual. Contextual constructionism recognizes the existence of an objective reality and its influence while also acknowledging that much of what is considered objective knowledge is based on culture and social interactions, or the social context. On the other hand, radical constructionism is a branch that argues that human knowledge can never accurately represent reality. Radical constructionism maintains a strongly relativist position. It states that the world can only be known in relation to subjective experience and never separate from that experience. In this view, there are many different realities, and all may be more or less equally meaningful. This position, along with related issues of the conflict between realism and relativism and the fact that scholars themselves may also engage in subjective interpretation of research results, is typically the greatest source of criticisms of social constructionism.
Despite its critics, social constructionism is used by many academic and practical fields. Social constructionism is useful to study social phenomena and how it is understood by people. Its research interests are also influenced by current issues in society. Among common areas studied by social constructionists, for example, are the division of labor in societies along gender, class, and other social variables; the emergence of increasingly complex methods of knowledge and what they mean for economic development; media effects; issues of self-identity, such as class, gender, ethnicity, and race; perceptions of social status and appropriation of culturally valued kinds of knowledge, among many others.
Bibliography
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Burr, Vivien. Social Constructionism. Routledge, 2015.
Elder-Vass, Dave. The Reality of Social Construction. Cambridge UP, 2012.
Gergen, Kenneth. An Invitation to Social Construction. 4th ed., Sage, 2023.
Gergen, Mary M., and Kenneth Gergen, editors. Social Construction: A Reader. Sage, 2003.
Haslanger, Sally. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford UP, 2012.
Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. Oxford UP, 2012.
Leon-Guerrero, Anna. Social Problems: Community, Policy, and Social Action. Sage, 2013.
Lock, Andy, and Tom Strong. Social Constructionism: Sources and Stirrings in Theory and Practice. Cambridge UP, 2008.
Nickerson, Charlotte. "Social Constructionism Theory: Definition and Examples." Simply Psychology, 14 Feb. 2024, www.simplypsychology.org/social-constructionism.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.
Ore, Tracy. The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality. McGraw-Hill Humanities, 2013.
Weinberg, Darin. Contemporary Social Constructionism: Key Themes. Temple UP, 2015.