A category or thing made real by collective agreement
For the sociological theory regarding shared understandings, see Social constructionism.
A social construct is any category or thing that is made real by convention or collective agreement.[1][2] Socially constructed realities are contrasted with natural kinds, which exist independently of human behavior or beliefs.[1][2]
Simple examples of social constructs are the meaning of words and the value of paper money.[3] Other examples, such as race, were formerly considered controversial but are now accepted by the consensus of scientists to be socially constructed rather than naturally determined.[4][5][6] Still other possible examples, such as the concepts that make up scientific theories, remain the subject of ongoing philosophical debate.[7][8]
^ ab"Social Constructionism". encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
^ abSearle, John (2010). The Construction of Social Reality. Free Press. pp. 3–8.
^Elder-Vass, Dave (2012). The Reality of Social Construction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 5, 10. ISBN 9781107024373.
^"Race". National Human Genome Research Institute. Race is a social construct used to group people. Race was constructed as a hierarchal human-grouping system, generating racial classifications to identify, distinguish and marginalize some groups across nations, regions and the world. Race divides human populations into groups often based on physical appearance, social factors and cultural backgrounds.
^"AABA Statement on Race & Racism". American Association of Biological Anthropologists. 2019. Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination. It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination. Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences.
^Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field (Consensus Study Report). National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. In humans, race is a socially constructed designation, a misleading and harmful surrogate for population genetic differences, and has a long history of being incorrectly identified as the major genetic reason for phenotypic differences between groups.
^Stephen L., Goldman (2022). Science Wars: The Battle Over Knowledge and Reality. Oxford University Press. pp. 239ff. ISBN 9780197518625.
^Mallon, Ron (11 January 2019). "Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
A socialconstruct is any category or thing that is made real by convention or collective agreement. Sociallyconstructed realities are contrasted with...
influenced by social conventions and structures. Unlike phenomena that are innately determined or biologically predetermined, these socialconstructs are collectively...
"sexes" is a result of the socially shared, taken-for-granted methods that members use to construct reality. As a socialconstruct, gender is considered an...
biological sex and the socialconstruct of gender. The distinction between gender and sex is made by most contemporary social scientists in Western countries...
Look up construct in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Construct, Constructs or constructs may refer to: Construct (information technology), a collection...
"Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal did not practice academic peer review and it did...
The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in...
organizations, the diffusion of the nation-state throughout the Earth as a socialconstruct, and the role of stateless entities in the modern world society. Contemporary...
In the social sciences, a social group is defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively...
Social conflict is the struggle for agency or power in society. Social conflict occurs when two or more people oppose each other in social interaction...
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the...
A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may...
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations...
A taboo, also spelled tabu, is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense...
In sociology, a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions...
Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a socialconstruct) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft...
to the perceived overall validity of the test. Construct validity is particularly important in the social sciences, psychology, psychometrics and language...
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education...
In the social sciences, social groups can be categorized based on the various group dynamics that define social organization. In sociological terms, groups...
Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general...
race, class, gender, and disability. Scholars of CRT view race as a socialconstruct with no biological basis. One tenet of CRT is that racism and disparate...
19, 2017, peer-reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences published "The conceptual penis as a socialconstruct", which argued that penises are not "male";...
a sociallyconstructed explanation to describe behaviors that simply do not meet prescribed social norms. Some proponents of the socialconstruct theory...
Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honor, assumed competence, and...
theoretical construct useful in the social sciences to study relationships between individuals, groups, organizations, or even entire societies (social units...