Main Concepts and Principles
In psychology, social work, and philosophy, there are many ways to explain how people view themselves and their place in the world. Some take a cognitive approach to reasoning while others rely on emotions. Each have strengths and weaknesses in their perspectives yet none can be described as “wrong”. One such theory is the social constructionist theory. This theory is one of world making; where people create their own images of reality and use stereotypes to make sense of this image (Schneider and Sidney, 2009). More technically defined, the social constructionist theory is “an approach that focuses on how people learn, through their interactions with each other, to classify the world and their place in it,” (Hutchison,
…show more content…
The entire premise of the social constructionist theory is that both consciousness and a sense of self is shaped by social interaction and how individuals perceive that social interaction (Hutchison, 2013). The keyword is: individuals. The individual creates the idea and meaning behind the social interaction and then together, people create a common understanding of what this means for the world and their place within it (Hutchison, 2013). The idea of the social constructionist theory at the micro level goes even further when examining radical social constructionists views. They state that there is “no reality beyond our personal experiences,” (Hutchison, 2013). This would mean that the macro and mezzo level cannot exist without the micro level coming into place. Even the sense of self would be derived from social interactions. This concept, known as the “looking-glass” self, has three components (Hutchison, 2013). An individual must imagine how they appear to other people, imagine their judgement of them, and then develop a feeling about themselves as a result of these imaginings (Hutchison, 2013). The idea comes back to how the individual is observing and learning from the world around them in order to create their perception of the …show more content…
Vagueness as a fallacy means that descriptions of progress measures, causes, concerns, and hoped-for-causes tend to be vague and lack detail (Gambrill and Gibbs, 2009). For example, as Gambrill and Gibbs (2009) state, if a patient were to make progress without any progress indicators accurately and clearly defined, then it would be impossible to reason if any progress had actually been made. This is the problem with the social constructionist theory. There is no definition of a one-truth; in fact, the notion of an absolute or one-truth is denied (Hutchison, 2013). The theory tries to take an objective approach to the reality around individuals yet argues that reality is subjective; it “criticizes grand theorizing while presenting a grand theory on human behavior,” (Hutchison, 2013). Furthermore, because of how individualized and objective the social constructionist theory tries to be, it lacks clarity in how to define aspects of life and social situations. Motyl (2009) states, "How can constructivism demonstrate that the language of agents – whether now or in the past, whether here or elsewhere in the world – actually constructs their world and not our interpretation of their world, without using the language of interpretation, construction, and the like to make the
One of the major criticisms of Kellys Personal Construct Theory is that he finds it hard to explain why constructs are laid down in the first place and why one would rigourously defend the threat to a core construct. What kick starts the Construct system into defending itself when motivation is clearly and explicitly lacking in his theory?
The way in which the body is viewed is a complete social construction, dependent on the society, history and wider cultural attitude of a given group. Social constructionism can be defined as the ways in which society, culture and history builds up and dictates social norms. It shapes the way we think, behave and interact with our environment. The social construction of bodies is, therefore, the way in which society ascribes significance to different parts of the body and influences our understanding of it as a whole. The social construction of the body feeds into and reinforces inequalities to a great extent, on a number of levels. Gender inequalities and the issues of racism and colourism are good examples of inequalities that are fuelled
Social constructivism is defined as the perspective that focuses on people's collective efforts to impose meaning on the world (1). The experiences a person goes through on a daily basis helps shape there perspectives. There are several benefits with social constructivism along with a few disadvantages. The main benefits being that it helps students learn and enjoy more when they are involved rather than sitting behind a desk and just listening
The Social Construction Theory is defined as the event of individuals and or groups perceive real life events and objects and put a meaning to them. Social construction is an ongoing process and views can be modified because the concept is relying upon the communication from one person to another and different people can interpret things differently. One way society has constructed ideas is with animals. Throughout history people have created stories using animals as characters and those stories were passed down from generation to generation. Those stories can influence how people feel about the actual animals.
Social constructionism can been seen as a part of the postmodern ideology, the concept behind the postmodern concept is that reality stresses and builds upon worldviews by individuals in a dialectic interaction with society at a time. Dialectical interaction with society at given point in time. This theory assumes that knowledge is not developed within the individual. This theory assumes that human beings rationalize their experiences and knowledge by forming a model of the functioning social world, this theory also assumes language is the most important aspect by which they construct reality. Several theorists talk about the concept of religion as not being cultural or universal but has emerged because of historical and political conditions.
Watching a young child grow from infancy to toddler hood, we marvel at the amount of learning that has allowed her to understand her expanding environment. Those early years provide the basis for language, physical dexterity, social understanding, and emotional development that she will use for the rest of her life. All of this knowledge is acquired before she even sets foot in school! This child has taught herself by gathering information and experiencing the world around her. This is an example of constructivism. Constructivism emphasizes the importance of the knowledge, beliefs, and skills an individual brings to the experience of learning. It recognizes the construction of new understanding as a combination of prior learning, new information, and readiness to learn. Individuals make choices about what new ideas to accept and how to fit then into their established views of the world (Brooks & Brooks, 1995).
The concept describes that our knowledge is something to be constructed internally rather than reflected from external realities. After the initial proposition of constructivism there came about the idea that “a reasonable conclusion is that at least three levels of constructivist advocacy appear frequently in contemporary educational literature”, according to Null 2004. Those three levels include epistemological constructivism, which focuses on issues like race, gender, and class and how issues like these need to be fixed. Next is instructional constructivism, which focuses on individual learning in the classroom. The last is prescriptive constructivism, which focuses on the relationship between teacher and student and proposes that teachers instruct with their students rather than at their students. No matter what level it is being taught, the basis of constructivism is to move away from the traditional practice of teaching the classroom through lecture primarily, and to adopt teaching the classroom through
Almost all of us live daily with the effects of social construction, whereby one is observed through their cultural or social practices. Society discriminates against us depending on skin colour and social class. Carole Vance in her article “Social Construction Theory”, has a unique approach to social construction of gender. She painstakingly points out that these cultural influences affect individuals on a personal basis, but society as a whole.
Social constructivist theory focuses on how people construct meaning, a sense of self, and a social world through their interactions with each other. They learn, through their interactions, to classify the world and their place in it. People interact with each other and the physical world based on shared meanings, or shared understandings about the world. The emphasis
Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge which reflects the notion of everyday phenomena, objects, science and even reality itself not existing a priori but rather being socially constructed between individuals. Extending this argument, language is considered as the basic means by which social processes take place and reality is re-constructed (Leeds-Hurwitz, W. 2009). The following paragraphs will present the basic premises and assumptions of social constructionism, its historical multidisciplinary roots, a brief criticism of traditional psychology and the application of social constructionism in psychology. The main line of argumentation followed is that social reality and social phenomena are not fixed and do not reflect the character
In conclusion conceptual relativism sets out to explain the world in term of the human mind to construct realities, and is concerned with truth and knowledge and radical Social constructionism is concerned with the idea that a variety of phenomena’s are socially constructed. This is then linked with the idea of radical anti-realism in relation to reality and the validity of science. Both are definitely problematic for any claim that the social sciences produce reliable knowledge for if knowledge is only meaningful to one group how can that have the same meanings to another group each individual sees the world through their own glasses so each and every individual holds a different opinion and no one opinion can be correct. How can any methods of research be correct if there is no real truth?
Many theories have been developed over the years in attempt to explain how and why the human race interacts in the ways that they do. One of these theories is called the social construction of reality. Also referred to as social constructionism, this theory explains how humans come to understand knowledge through the sociological and communicative developments of these jointly constructed disciplines. Social constructionism became famous in the United States when Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote the book entitled, The Social Construction of Reality in 1966. In their theory, Berger and Luckmann assert that all knowledge, including the most basic of everyday reality, is derived from social interactions.
When it comes to comprehending or understanding any concept to why individuals may do some of the things they do, there are social theories out there to help better explain those actions. Sociological theories help to focus more on the aspect of social life, as well as explain behaviors that can be driven by passion, tradition, self-interest, religion, and the laws we have set out today in stone. “Unlike scientific theories, social theories tend to be more evaluative and critical than the theories in the natural sciences” (Appelrouth A. S.; Edles D. L 2012) Today, an analytical frame is used to help guide the comparing and contrasting of the several theoretical perspectives and traditions. In simpler terms, this four way frame is basically used to help compare and contrast theorist better. There are four main cells that make up this analytical frame which include, individual-rational, individual-nonrational, collective-rational, and collective-nonrational. Also included into this basic theoretical orientation or framework, are the core classical theorists. Those influential theorists included into the framework are Mead, who falls into the individual-nonrational side, Durkheim whom falls into the collective-nonrational side, Weber whom falls into the collective-rational side, and Marx who is also included into the collective-rational side.
Ethnographic accounts of incongruent cultures as provided by anthropologist are used to defend the argument that the self is socially constructed through socialisation processes (Sapsford, 1996). For example, Markus and Kitayama proposed that with the existence of social influence, there is a greater sense of autonomy in western cultures as compared to the eastern (Wetherell & Maybin, 1996). Therefore, the social constructionist point of view is that our personal private worlds are fused with our external environment's social contact. On the other hand, the self will continue to develop through the utilization of multiple internalisation's of social identities.