Social constructivism

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Reason: The article on social constructivism unfortunately leaves it completely open as to what it can be understood as. He also leaves the main reference authors Berger / Luckmann almost completely out of sight. Nor is the conceptual problematic of social constructivism presented. In this respect, a revision is urgently necessary and reference should be made to the shortened presentation in the article in the meantime. - Vincent Amadeus von Goethe ( discussion ) 1:49 p.m., May 2, 2020 (CEST)

Social constructivism describes a metatheory in sociology that is based on the 1966 book The social construction of reality (original title: The social construction of reality ) by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann .

The focus of social constructivism lies in tracing the ways in which social reality and individual social phenomena are constructed . The associated sociological method examines how people create and institutionalize social phenomena and transfer them into traditions by passing them on to new generations . It is about the description of institutions, about social action etc., but less about the search for causes and effects. Social reality is seen as something dynamic, process-like, which is constantly produced and reproduced through the actions of people and their related interpretations and their world knowledge .

Many later research directions such as gender studies and cultural studies refer to concepts of social constructivism.

definition

Social constructs or social constructs describe the side effects and consequences of human decisions, a connection with “divine” or “natural” laws is not assumed. Social constructs are not radical indeterminism , but social constructivism sees itself as the opposite of essentialism .

Social constructivism mainly tries to describe the life courses and participation of individuals and groups in the world. This includes, for example, how social phenomena arise, how they become reality (“objectify”), institutionalize and ultimately become traditions and cultures.

The social construction is therefore a constantly progressing process of change and adaptation that is accepted by people and also promoted through active participation. The interpretations, motives and knowledge of the people forms the basis of this process. Since social constructs are not naturally created, they must be constantly supported and maintained by human actions and awareness.

The process of social construction also includes changes, as new generations can modify and redesign social constructs with their participation. For example, the meaning of terms such as “justice” or “law” can change over time.

Applications

Disaster sociology

In the sociology of disasters , given the variety of " catastrophes ", a social constructivist approach is obvious. In 2003 Robert Stallings examined various radical and moderate approaches analytically and practically (in: Lars Clausen et al., Ed ., Horrible social processes , Münster 2003).

Sociology of technology

For application to the sociology of technology, see the Social Construction of Technology .

Sociology of Science

In the sociology of science , "social constructivism" denotes the idea that scientific facts are actually the result of processes of construction and depend on the social situation of the laboratory, the research facility and the negotiation of research results within the laboratory.

criticism

Alan Sokal

See also: Sokal affair

The Sokal affair is cited not only as an argument against postmodern tendencies in science as a whole, but also as an argument against social constructivism. It is argued that Alan Sokal's article Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity , published in the journal Social Text in 1996, demonstrates in the form of a scientific joke or a parody that social constructivism itself is only socially constructed. As with radical constructivism, there would be the risk of an internal contradiction: The general validity of the principle “Reality is the reality we construct” would be defined as objective truth, since precisely because of this, no knowledge about the true nature of things is gained could, this “objective” definition itself would not be possible either.

Indeed, Alan Sokal points to this circular argument of constructivism and tries to use several examples to show that the social environment can have a (mostly only temporary) effect on scientific theory, but that the far more important and influential criteria for or against scientific theory Theories basically come from repeatable experiments and observations. Karin Knorr-Cetina replied in 1984 that the conception, implementation and evaluation of experiments are carried out by scientists who are also social beings and thus the possibility would be given that the natural sciences could also be caught in a “circularity of the categorical ”.

Finally, Sokal argues that due to a lack of specialist knowledge, outsiders are usually unable to judge the reasons for which one explanatory model was preferred over another. Results that supporters of social constructivism describe as “socially motivated” actually usually have a plausible scientific basis, which, however, is not immediately apparent to a layperson. However, it is precisely this plausibility that is an investigated social science object, since it deals with the closure (and thus social processing) of scientific controversies.

Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens accuses the inventors of social constructivism Berger and Luckmann of neglecting the effects of social structures and the aspect of the passage of time. These two aspects are fundamental to the use of social structures. Giddens' alternative proposal is his theory of structuring published in 1984 .

Ian Hacking

In the context of a discourse analysis, Ian Hacking criticizes the now very broad and diverse tradition of social constructivism, among other things, the inflationary and often unreflective use of the metaphor of “social construction”.

Hacking refers to an abundance of studies that investigate a wide variety of phenomena along the lines of “The social construction of X”. It is true that the proof that something is socially constructed, e.g. B. have a liberating effect in the face of the supposed "nature of things"; the metaphor of social construction had also had a shocking effect for a long time, as an alternative was held up to a ruling ideology.

In the meantime, however, the metaphor has worn out. In the meantime, it is questionable how the phenomena examined could be constructed in any way other than “social”, and what role the meaning of “construct” in the sense of “building” or “assembling from parts” actually plays. Hacking calls for a more differentiated use of the idea of a social construction, which would clearly limit social constructivism.

Ulrich Kutschera

In his monograph “The Gender Paradox”, the evolutionary biologist Ulrich Kutschera criticizes social constructivism from a scientific perspective. With reference to gender studies , Kutschera argues: "Humans and other living beings do not construct themselves, but evolve over millions of years of unpredictable, environment-dependent, symbiogenesis (cell fusion) events, the tectonic plate dynamics and directed natural selection-driven descent processes". Kutschera also suspects that social constructivists confuse their interpretation of reality with the neurobiological concept of radical constructivism. In this bioscientific discipline, the main question is whether "whether reality, which is independent of the cognitive apparatus, is brought about by our perception (and thus researchable neuronal brain processes)."

literature

Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann: The social construction of reality . Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1980. ( ISBN 3-596-26623-8 )
Burr, Vivien: An Introduction to Social Constructionism , London: Routledge, 1995. ( ISBN 0-415-10405-X )
Paul R. Gross, N. Levitt: Higher Superstition. The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8018-5707-4
Hacking, Ian , The Social Construction of What? , Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-674-00412-4
Noretta Koertge (ed.): A House Built on Sand. Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science , New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-511726-3
Horst Stenger: The social construction of occult reality - A sociology of the "New Age" , 1993, ISBN 3-8100-1035-9
Ophelia Benson, Jeremy Stangroom: Why truth matters , Continuum, 2006

Web links

Rob Mallon: Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Remarks

↑ Essentialism describes special phenomena as "innate" fundamental characteristics that shape and determine the reality that exists independently of human consciousness.
↑ A social construct is defined as the “world” that these individuals and groups form from their perceptions .

Individual evidence

^ Hacking, Ian : The Social Construction of What? , Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press 1999.
↑ Hacking, Ian , ibid., P. 61.
↑ Hacking, Ian : Social construction taken literally , in: Vogel & Wingert (ed.), Knowledge between discovery and construction , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2003
↑ ^a ^b Kutschera, Ulrich : The gender paradox. Man and woman as evolved types of people. Lit-Verlag: Berlin 2016, pp. 395–396.

[Essenzialismus-1] Essentialism describes special phenomena as "innate" fundamental characteristics that shape and determine the reality that exists independently of human consciousness.

[Welt_als_Sozialkonstrukt-2] A social construct is defined as the “world” that these individuals and groups form from their perceptions .

[3] Hacking, Ian : The Social Construction of What? , Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press 1999.

[4] Hacking, Ian , ibid., P. 61.

[5] Hacking, Ian : Social construction taken literally , in: Vogel & Wingert (ed.), Knowledge between discovery and construction , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2003

[Kutschera_Gender-6] Kutschera, Ulrich : The gender paradox. Man and woman as evolved types of people. Lit-Verlag: Berlin 2016, pp. 395–396.