A social construct is a concept that exists not in objective reality, but as a result of human interaction. It exists because humans agree that it exists. Show Some examples of social constructs are countries and money. It is easier to see how countries could be social constructs than it is to see how money is a social construct. Countries would not exist were it not for human interaction. Humans have to agree that there is such a thing as a country and agree on what a country is. Without that agreement, there could be no countries. Money also would not exist without human interaction. If we think about objective reality, we might think that the money does exist. After all, we can touch the paper or the coins. However, unless humans agree on what the paper or the coins represent and can be used for, the paper money is just paper and the coins are just metal disks. Social construct theory says that humans create constructs in order to make sense of the objective world.
One way humans create social constructs is by structuring what they see and experience into categories. For example, they see people with different skin colors and other physical features and create the social construct of race. Or they see tall plants with very thick stalks that branch out at the top and have leaves growing on them and "create" the construct of a tree. Those two examples help illustrate how humans use social constructs and how different some social constructs are from other social constructs. Do trees exist outside of the social construct? If we didn't agree on the construct of a tree, would we see those plants any differently? What about race? Does race exist outside of the social construct? Would we treat people of different colors differently if we did not have the social construct of race? A social construct can include values and beliefs that humans have about the construct. Humans can alter the construct as they continue to interact with the world.
Attitudes toward those of different skin colors have changed over the last 100 years and they continue to change. The construct of race still exists, but what the construct means has changed. A little more than 50 years ago, people believed that men and women had specific gender-related roles determined by biology: Women are more nurturing so they were best suited to be mothers who stayed at home to raise children. Men are more aggressive and less nurturing, best suited to go out to work and provide for the family. We don't believe that anymore about men and women. The social construct of gender illustrates the nature/nurture debate about human behavior. If gender is only a social construct, it means that men and women act differently only because society has dictated their roles to them. They have learned how they should behave and what they should sound or look like. The “nature vs nurture” debate remains contentious when it comes to sex and gender differences. But most researchers believe that, whatever role inherent biological factors play, environmental factors are a major influence that can affect the development of the brain itself. The first work to cover social constructionism was "Mind, Self, and Society" by American sociologist George Herbert Mead (1934). He argued that as social beings, we construct our own realities through our interactions with each other. Building on this, sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann coined the term "social construction" in their 1966 book "The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge." Their work brought the idea of social constructionism to the forefront of mainstream sociology.
Since that time, social constructionism has become a widely accepted and studied theory, although it has taken on varying shades of meaning. In 2012, preeminent psychologist Dave Elder-Vass published "The Reality of Social Construction," which posited that social constructionism is compatible with—not opposed to—realist social theory, and that both viewpoints have a place in sociology.
Having a disability is part of the human experience. If we live long enough, most all of us will experience having a disability at some point in our life. The general public tends to think about people with disabilities as a separate group with “special” needs, (I’ll come back to this later) who must have things done for them and not seen as part of the universal community. These attitudinal barriers push people to the outer limits of inclusion and participation in our American life. For centuries, philosophers and sociologists have pondered the idea of reality. Sociologists generally accept that reality is different for each individual. The term social construction of reality refers to the theory that the way we present ourselves to other people is shaped partly by our interactions with others, as well as by our life experiences. How we were raised and what we were raised to believe affect how we present ourselves, how we perceive others, and how others perceive us. In short, our perceptions of reality are colored by our beliefs and backgrounds. Our reality is also a complicated negotiation. What is real depends on what is socially acceptable. Most social interactions involve some acceptance of what’s going on. While we participate in the construction of reality, it’s not entirely a product of our own doing. A shorter version is that we socially construct our social environments and the way we understand and interact with people by the words we use and the actions we take in social situations. The social construction of how we think about people with disabilities gets played out in cultures using two models of thought, the social or medical model of disability. The social model of disability identifies systemic barriers, negative attitudes and exclusion by society (purposely or inadvertently) that mean society is the main contributory factor in disabling people. While physical, sensory, intellectual, or psychological variations may cause individual functional limitation or impairments, these do not have to lead to disability unless society fails to take account of and include people regardless of their individual differences. This is in contrast to the medical model of disability which tends to believe that curing or at least managing illness or disability revolves around identifying the illness or disability from an in-depth clinical perspective and learning to control and/or alter its course. By extension, the medical model also believes that a “compassionate” or just society invests resources in health care and related services in an attempt to cure disabilities medically, to expand functionality and/or improve functioning, and to allow persons with disabilities a more “normal” life. In other words, people with disabilities are defined as the medical condition with the “person” part getting put on the back burner of policy and interaction. Words Matter. Over time the words we use to describe people and our interactions with each other, has the power to craft our culture. People-first language is a form of linguistic prescriptivism, aiming to avoid perceived and subconscious dehumanization when discussing people with disabilities. In linguistics, prescription or prescriptivism is the practice of championing one variety or manner of speaking of a language against another. It may imply a view that some forms are incorrect, improper, illogical, lack communicative effect, or are of low aesthetic value. The term people-first language first appears in 1988 as recommended by advocacy groups in the United States. The usage has been widely adopted by speech-language pathologists and researchers, with ‘person who stutters’ (PWS) replacing ‘stutterer. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is the basis for ideologically motivated linguistic prescriptivism. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis states that language use significantly shapes perceptions of the world and forms ideological preconceptions. Strong versions of this linguistic relativity were popular during the 1960s and 1970s, reflected in practices such as cognitive therapy and neuro-linguistic programming. In the case of people-first language, preconceptions judged to be negative allegedly arise from placing the name of the condition before the term “person” or “people.” Proponents of people-first language argue that this places an undue focus on the condition which distracts from the humanity of the members of the community of people with the condition. As part of the effort to end discrimination and segregation — in employment, education and our communities at large — it’s important to eliminate prejudicial language. Every individual regardless of sex, age, race or ability deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. It is time children, people with disabilities or any other segment of our communities who have traditionally been underserved, to be more fully and consistently integrated into preparedness and planning efforts at every level of government. This means equal opportunity to be full partners at the problem-solving table and classrooms of the homeland security enterprise. We hear it all the time — ‘special needs’ and ‘vulnerable.’ Both terms do damage. When people with disabilities are thought of as ‘special,’ they are often thought of as marginal individuals who have needs, not rights. The word ‘vulnerable’ has a similarly unfortunate effect. Vulnerable people must have things done for them; they’re recipients, not participants. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” — Mark Twain Recently, I had the opportunity to meet and visit with Stella Young, a disability rights advocate, comedian and journalist from Australia. Stella is particularly articulate in expressing the social construction concepts related to people with disabilities. To understand more about these concepts listen to Stella who happens to go about her day in a wheelchair — a fact that doesn’t, she’d like to make clear, automatically turn her into a noble inspiration to all humanity. In this very funny talk, Young breaks down society’s habit of turning disabled people into “inspiration porn.” Take a listen also to Sue Austin, an artist who tests the perceptions of what disability supports are and couches them in a new social construction. When Sue Austin got a power chair 16 years ago, she felt a tremendous sense of freedom — yet others looked at her as though she had lost something. In her art, she aims to convey the spirit of wonder she feels wheeling through the world. Her video includes thrilling footage of an underwater wheelchair that lets her explore ocean beds, drifting through schools of fish, floating free in 360 degrees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdFOm8SmlMAIn Sue Austin’s artistic underwater adventure, she transcends the paradigm into a completely new moment of experience…… seeing an object that people have no frame of reference for, transcending the frames of reference they have with a wheelchair. People then have to think in a completely new way. These moments of new thought perhaps creates a freedom that spreads to the rest of other people’s lives.
This thought shift is a powerful vehicle for transformation. In fact, Sue Austin’s underwater adventure is called, “Portal,” because it’s literally pushed her through into a new way of being, into new dimensions and into a new level of consciousness. The invitation then is for the Homeland Security Ecosystem to do the same. |
Which of the following questions could we ask ourselves to determine if something is socially constructed?
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