Social Constructionist Theory Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

Social constructionist theory is a paradigm based upon uncovering the methods by which individuals and groups participate in the creation of their perceived reality. The approach involves examining how social phenomena are created, institutionalized, and made into an agreed-upon tradition. Social construction is understood as an ongoing process, as reality is constantly being (re)produced through the interactions of people and their knowledge of that reality.

Social constructionist theory is most notably a critique of two significant assumptions in Western classic philosophy. First, the tradition of the individual knower (the rational, self-directing, and knowledgeable agent of action) is questioned. The notion of the individual knower is foundational to Cartesian dualistic thinking, most noted in the phrase cogito ergo sum (“I think therefore I am”). Social constructionist theory challenges this individualist tradition and invites an appreciation of knowledge as a communal agreement. Second, this communal view of knowledge represents a major challenge to the view of an essential “Truth,” “Real,” “Good,” or the possibility that one way of viewing the world is more or less objective or accurate in its depiction of reality than another.

Social constructionist theory’s implications for the study of social problems are that supposed problems are simply a construction relative to the structure of a specific social context. For instance, some believe social problems are straightforward factual issues concerning what is right or wrong or in need of address via a moral framework; however, social constructionist theorists suggest that social problems are never self-evident. For instance, C. Wright Mills once defined politics as the public construction of private troubles. The sociologist Herbert Blumer stated that social problems have no existence in some objective, a priori state but are instead produced in the process of collective definition of recognition: legitimation, mobilization, formulation of proposed responses, and implementation. Despite various strands of thought, social constructionist theories examine the meaning-making of both problems and solutions as fluid, changing, contextual, and often disputed.

Social constructionism varies in its strength: from weaker versions in which there is still some underlying objective factual elements to reality, to stronger renditions in which everything is socially constructed. Further, radical social constructionists are concerned with how social processes influence the very things thought of as most objective: science and technology. For instance, radical social constructionist theory claims that the meaning of science and technology, including facts about its proper working, are themselves social constructs. This strand of social constructionist theory has given rise to the development of postmodernism—the concept that stresses the ongoing building of worldviews that comprise the imagined worlds of human social existence and activity, gradually reified by habit into institutions, given legitimacy by mythology, maintained by socialization, and subjectively internalized in one’s identity.

Bibliography:

Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila F. Glaser. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon.
Gergen, Kenneth J. 2001. Social Construction in Context. London: Sage.
Lakoff, George and Michael Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, ed. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by G. Bennington and B. Massouri. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press.
Potter, Jonathan. 1996. Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction. London: Sage.

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