Social Construction of Child and Childhood

Social construction of child and childhood

To start with an overview of social constructionism in very general terms leads to build understandings of child and childhood in a social world more explicitly. Notion of social construction is defined in diverse disciplines and instead of generating a description there are a number of thoughts. “It is sometimes called a movement, at other times a position, a theory, a theoretical orientation, an approach; psychologists remain unsure of its status (Stam 2001, p. 294)”. Vivien (1995, p. 10) points the origin of social constructionism stems from two to three hundred years ago in the period of enlightenment, modernism and postmodernism. By all means, Berger and Luckmann’ (1966) book The Social Construction of Reality as a first book have a title of “social construction” has influential contributes in recent studies (Hacking, 1999). In this book, questioning everyday life realities and giving examples from it, shows the importance of social relations and language that we used. Hacking’ The Social Construction of What? (1999) offers up-to-date and logical instances which supports to comprehend those aspects. He listed a number of things to be socially constructed and X as a generic label is used by him to work things as they are. First X does not exist or it is not generated by any natural thing then X existed by history, social interactions and with similar things. He discussed all too often after this process, using theory of social construction results in to change or destroy X render ‘normalisation’. Gender is one of the good examples that he gave which always come to mind whether it is constructed or not. Put it in a simple way, when X is gender; inequalities between men and women caus...

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...ook the back of the book (Miller, 1995). Cognitive inability to realize other’ perspective and lack of social conversation are propounded by Piaget the reasons of the egocentrism. Children talk while they play with peers however; this communication does not necessarily related to each other that even in group self communication can exist. He suggests based on his own observations such this speech decrease with age. In other words, egocentric thinking transition from autistic to social thinking and when child start to think silently egocentrism disappear (Piaget,1950). Vygotsky’ view departs from this point; in contradiction age decline he claimed initial mission of egocentric speech is cognitive self- guidance rather than social communication (Rubin, 1973). In commonsense, egocentrism is shaped by development of thoughts but, Piaget attributed it genetic roots.