Proessay.com

Social contructionism

From the late 1970’s onwards in Social Science and from the middle 1980’s in Psychology the trends towards rethinking of the subject, the methods and the meta-theoretical bases of the scientific knowledge began to develop. Today the tends are commonly known as the interpretive or the narrative turning. One of the key features of the emerging trends can be indentified constitutive understanding of the factor of the language relationship, the factor of the communication and the social practices. And one of the radical approaches being developed in the field of the narrative turning is social contructionism.

Social constructionism is the sociological theory of knowledge developed by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann  in their book “The Social Construction of Reality” in 1966. The aim of social constructionism is finding the ways through which the individuals and the groups are involved in the creation of their perceived reality. According to Berger and Luckmann all knowledge as the perception of  the reality  is based on common sense and it is supported by the social relation. Moreover, people began to communicate considering their beliefs about the similarities in the perception of the reality. Their activity  is based on this belief. In fact, their visualization and knowledge of the reality of everyday life are fixed according to this principle because everyday knowledge is the product of the agreement between people. So we can say that the reality is constructed by the society.

One of the aims of  social contructionism is the research of those processes by which man creates, learns and integrates the social phenomena into the tradition.

The social construction of the reality is the continuous, dynamic process that is reproduced by people in their  interpretations and knowledge. The social constructs as the interpretations of the reality and the objects of knowledge should  be constantly supported and confirmed to exist.

Exit mobile version