what the hell is the social contructionist perspective?

[radish]

Peter Bergmann and Thomas Luckmann wrote the key text using this term to explain how people came to believe that religions were the 'truthful' way to interpret human nature and how to live in the world.

http://www.sociosite.net/topics/texts/be...uckman.php
this is an extract from their text introducing their argument

In summary they say all societies
a) 'habitualise'the way they do things whether its a form of hunting/cooking/choosing sexual partners/buying computers/ Then when this way becomes part of our culture...
b) it becomes 'institutionalised' ie the culture around our habitualised way of preparing meat/acquiring consumer goods becomes 'the only way' and to do it any other way is defined as evil and against the religious law -( or in western societies against the secular law..)

The concept of 'the social construction of reality' has been used since then to argue that anything that we regard as 'normal' or 'natural' and therefore an 'eternal truth' about human nature eg
-that men are rational and women are emotional
-that whites have greater intellectual ability than non whites
-that the poor are poor because they do not have a 'work ethic '
- that the 'free market' is the best economic system

...are a useful way to support the current form of the social structure So the social constructionist argument often fits well with the Conflict Theory concept of 'ideology 'and' hegemony'.

However there is a danger in taking this argument too far. This is the danger of 'cultural determinism' ie that people are nothing more than puppets of their culture. In contrast theorists like Gramsci always argue that people can oppose the 'taken for granted ' ways of seeing their world.

It's still possible to see that much of our 'normal' way of living and understanding our lives is socially constructed' . Indeed to the 'normal' and 'natural' arguments we now have the 'now' arguments ie that because this is what we 'now know' it must be a truth that replaces what the older generation believed in, because they are obviously out of date.

So any time we uncritically use the 'normal' the 'natural' or the 'now' argument to support our views about how humans behave ,or how the social world works , then we are being determined by our culture instead of using our own agency to think and research those supposed 'truths' for ourselves..

In terms of 'global warming' you could show how both
a) 'global warming sceptics' and
b) those who accept the arguments that the current dangers of 'climate change' are mainly caused by humans

..could both be influenced too much by their 'taken for granted' views. You could also trace other uncritical terms to add to the 'normal' the 'natural' and the 'now' arguments- for example there is the :
'ad hominem' argument -'he is only saying that because he can make a profit from it therefore what he is saying must be wrong'

...then follow this with a discussion of how people could address the issue in a more critical way.
for example:
Because the ways to deal with climate change are challenging many of the ways that we've come to take our economic system for granted, and to 'idolise' it as the only form of managing our resources, there is a great deal of challenge to the climate change movement.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climat...-i091.html

On the other hand science has now replace religion as our dominant powerful discourse so we are inclined to believe uncritically what the majority of scientists tell us.

either way we are conforming to our socially constructed world and not using our own critical faculties to analyse the issue.