What is the significance of calling something a social construction?
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  What is the significance of calling something a social construction?
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Author Topic: What is the significance of calling something a social construction?  (Read 647 times)
The Mikado
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« on: October 15, 2014, 02:53:17 PM »

I've seen this with race for years now, and a few days ago a post about sin also used the phrase and it got me wondering on the subject.

People seem to use "it's a social construction" as a way of saying 'it isn't real.'  To my eyes, though, a social construction is necessarily something that was, well, look at the term.  Constructed by society.  To me that implies that it's not necessarily natural, but no less real nonetheless.  Maybe it exists via societal fiat, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  Therefore, what is the point of attempting to dismiss something by calling it a social construction?  It doesn't mean that the thing is non-existent, and saying that a position is only held by societal fiat doesn't mean that the position is wrong anymore than your father's pacemaker is harmful due to its status as an "artificial" and "man-made" foreign object inside of his body.
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afleitch
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« Reply #1 on: October 15, 2014, 03:04:31 PM »

People seem to use "it's a social construction" as a way of saying 'it isn't real.'

I think most people tend to argue not that it isn't 'real' because the worth of a concept can be measured in a variety of ways, but that is isn't self-evident and therefore by extension, immutable.
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politicus
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« Reply #2 on: October 15, 2014, 03:05:17 PM »
« Edited: October 16, 2014, 06:45:28 AM by politicus »

Its basically just a rhetorical trick to avoid taking unpleasant realities into consideration in your argumentation.

EDIT: That is of course how it is used, and not what it means, but others have explained that well.
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Figs
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« Reply #3 on: October 15, 2014, 03:07:21 PM »

Saying that something is a social construct is a way of saying it's not an immutable truth. That doesn't mean it can/should be discarded (lots of stuff that people made up is good and worth hanging onto), but it does mean that if we realize it's made up, we can stop treating it with undue reverence and evaluate it on its merits, rather than as received wisdom.
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anvi
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« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2014, 06:44:02 AM »

I agree with what Figs said and would add that calling something a "social construction" generally means it's not "natural" or have any metaphysical status beyond the social.  It's usually used for things that were considered merely natural for a long time, and because of their supposed naturalness were considered normative or morally binding in some fundamental way.  Race does seem to me a good example.  While their are (quite minor) biological distinctions between different groups of people that manifest in their respective phenotypes, the valuations placed on those distinctions are social constructions, and it's those valuations that produced "race theories."

But I appreciate the point of the question, Mikado.  One of the things I've always liked about the ancient Chinese philosophical tradition is that, even though many values and ideas are considered always to have been social constructions, this acknowledgment doesn't detract from their potential normativity.  In that tradition, it was the "ancient sages" who invented ritual and morals, so wisdom and morals are for the most part not natural at all.  But they are still considered normative because they enabled society to exist and survive for so long.  That acknowledgment might make such traditions easier to change too, though not necessarily, of course.
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DemPGH
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« Reply #5 on: October 16, 2014, 03:52:59 PM »

It's probably more demystification than dismissal.

There are aspects of race that I think are constructed socially (mores), others (DNA) not.

Sin, however, completely is because I have no idea how it can be said that God prescribed what sin is. If a group of human beings invented a religion that has rules, then it is a societal construct. There's really nothing else that it can be.
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Sol
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« Reply #6 on: October 16, 2014, 09:59:39 PM »

It's probably more demystification than dismissal.

There are aspects of race that I think are constructed socially (mores), others (DNA) not.

Sin, however, completely is because I have no idea how it can be said that God prescribed what sin is. If a group of human beings invented a religion that has rules, then it is a societal construct. There's really nothing else that it can be.

DNA doesn't really naturally divide people into races though. Especially not into the way that race has been socially constructed (most human diversity is in Africa, etc.)
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #7 on: October 16, 2014, 11:37:26 PM »

good post, Mikado.  I believe it points to a latent positivism, or faith in science, that the reality of certain things about the world exist even without being filtered through the human mind.  if there were 'scientific' evidence for racial difference it could be put in the same category as gravity, light, and, dare we say, evolution.  those things bind us whether we like it or not, prisoners as we are to scientific fact.  meanwhile, race and sexuality as social construction puts the human back in charge (at least in theory) of their function.
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