On Day One of the Spring 09 Semester, I introduced the concept of SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS using a map upside down. How did you learn that north was up? North is not UP in the physical universe, is it? Read a previous post explaining social constructs.
The definition I shared in class was "an idea (time), a concept (masculinity) or an artifact (money) that seems natural or obvious to those who accept it but in fact is an invention of a particular culture or society."
The most well-known example is the "earth is
flat". While the earth may appear to be flat to our everyday perceptions, in reality we cannot see the whole earth and its curvature. Thus, the social construct is not the condition of the flatness we see, but rather the view itself that people share. This view affects people's behaviors, thoughts, feelings and actions. It is a context from which people may live their lives.A more common social construct that seems invisible to us is money. Money is not real in the way we view it. It is worth much more than the material it is printed on but by social agreement in any country we assign it certain values.
"Mathematics is a social construct. Numbers are words and ideas, not physical laws. Math is used to describe the physical universe, so it is shaped into a form that matches the universe as well as possible, giving it a framework. All things we would call math use this same framework. But describing a Law and being a Law are different things. Math measures things that exist, and it does this very well. It can also do things that the universe that it is describing cannot. The truth in numbers is not fundamental. It is built by humans." (http://everything2.com/node/163462).
Here are definitions from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction):
A social construction or social construct any phenomenon "invented" or "constructed" by participants in a particular culture or society, existing because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules. One example of a social construct is social status. Another example of social construction is the use of fiat money, which is worth more than the paper it is printed on only because society has agreed to treat it as valuable.
Pinker (2002, p. 202) writes that "social constructions: they exist only because people tacitly agree to act as if they exist".
One of the main theses of gender theory is that genders and gender roles are mere social constructs, and that there is nothing natural about being a man or a woman, a heterosexual or a homosexual, or even a transsexual, since genders are mere social appearances and built-in ideas, not unlike men's clothes or women's clothes.
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6 comments:
One social construct today may be that of separate bathrooms for female or males...could be for privacy or hygiene but there really isn't such a big mystery about the opposite sex. Another social construct in our society, which many still believe to this day ,is that a female should remain in the household, doing basic household chores and raising their children. Although this social construct is not as widespread there are still many countries (such as Hispanic countries) where this believe is held strongly.
I was thinking about the social construct of the seperate bathrooms is not about the anatomy so much today as a chance of anoymity. But I think that we do have a social construct regarding anatomy espically with children. I cannot stand to see/hear a mother refering to her son's penis as his peepee, weewee, weiner or some other cutesy name (I cannot think of a name for a young girls vagina, but that maybe because it is not as physically apparent to a child). I think that it is a sad, sad world where parents are afraid to teach their children propper medical terms for their body parts.
I know it might be a repeat but paper money is a social constuct that really fasinates me. It really puzzling that the majority of the world would exchange goods for simple ink on paper. It is society that allows such exchanges to occur but to imagine the consequences if we lost faith in the dollar or other currencies. Our culture as we know would fall apart.
A really obvious social construct is race. We all see people as belonging to a certain group or race, and we are judged on that view.
I had recently heard one of my friends speak about how much she loves her boyfriend and that when they get married, i will be the maid of honor. I was thinking to myself.. Isn't marriage somewhat a social construct? Perhaps to those that don't believe that marriage is an institution set up by God.
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