UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

Document: Module 6/ Week 7 (M3)

Level: College IT/ HRS 1 -1
Teacher: Mr. Michael AS. Enaje

Module 6 Contents/ Lessons

2 The Self in Western and Oriental/ Eastern Thought

 The Social Construction of the Self in the Western Thought

LESSON: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE SELF IN THE WESTERN THOUGHT

Social Constructionism
is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines
the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form
the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The theory centers on the notion
that meanings are developed in coordination with others rather than separately
within each individual. It has often been characterised as neo-Marxian or also as
a neo-Kantian theory, in that social constructionism replaces the transcendental
subject with a concept of society that is at the same time descriptive and
normative.
While some social constructs are obvious, for instance money or the concept
of currency, in that people have agreed to give it importance/value, others are
controversial and hotly debated, such as the concept of self/self-identity. This
articulates the view that people in society construct ideas or concepts that may
not exist without the existence of people or language to validate those
concepts.
There are weak and strong social constructs. Weak social constructs rely
on brute facts (which are fundamental facts that are difficult to explain or

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understand, such as quarks) or institutional facts (which are formed from social
conventions).
Despite applications in some scientific fields, such as psychology, strong social
constructionism has met with opposition in the scientific community, for it
undermines the foundation of science as the pursuit of objectivity and, as a
theory, defies any attempt at falsifying it.

Criticisms
The stronger criticism that can be levelled at social constructionism is that it
generally ignores the contribution made by physical and biological sciences or
misuses them in social sciences. Most notably, social constructionists assume
society as both a descriptive and normative term, thereby failing to provide
adequate explanation as to what they mean by society, whether it be an
ideological concept or a description of any historically located community.
As a theory, social constructionism rejects the influences of biology on behaviour
and culture, or suggests that they are unimportant to achieve an understanding
of human behaviour, while the scientific consensus is that behaviour is a
complex outcome of both biological and cultural influences. Social
constructionism has been criticized for having an overly narrow focus on society
and culture as a causal factor in human behavior, excluding the influence of
innate biological tendencies, by psychologists such as Steven Pinker in The Blank
Slate as well as by Asian Studies scholar Edward Slingerland in What Science
Offers the Humanities. John Tooby and Leda Cosmides used the term "standard
social science model" to refer to social-science philosophies that they argue fail
to take into account the evolved properties of the brain.
Social constructionism equally denies or downplays to a significant extent the
role that meaning and language have for each individual, seeking to configure
language as an overall structure rather than a historical instrument used by
individuals to communicate their personal experiences of the world. This is
particularly the case with cultural studies, where personal and pre-linguistic
experiences are disregarded as irrelevant or seen as completely situated and
constructed by the socio-economical superstructure.
In 1996, to illustrate what he believed to be the intellectual weaknesses of social
constructionism and postmodernism, physics professor Alan Sokal submitted an
article to the academic journal Social Text deliberately written to be
incomprehensible but including phrases and jargon typical of the articles
published by the journal. The submission, which was published, was an
experiment to see if the journal would "publish an article liberally salted with
nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological
preconceptions. In 1999, Sokal, with coauthor Jean Bricmont published the
book Fashionable Nonsense, which criticized postmodernism and social
constructionism.
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Philosopher Paul Boghossian has also written against social constructionism. He
follows Ian Hacking's argument that many adopt social constructionism
because of its potentially liberating stance: if things are the way that they are
only because of our social conventions, as opposed to being so naturally, then it
should be possible to change them into how we would rather have them be. He
then states that social constructionists argue that we should refrain from making
absolute judgements about what is true and instead state that something is true
in the light of this or that theory. Countering this, he states:
“But it is hard to see how we might coherently follow this advice. Given that the
propositions which make up epistemic systems are just very general propositions
about what absolutely justifies what, it makes no sense to insist that we abandon
making absolute particular judgements about what justifies what while allowing
us to accept absolute general judgements about what justifies what. But in
effect this is what the epistemic relativist is recommending.”

Activities:
PART 1: What is social constructionism? How philosophers deal with it?

PART 2: How you are going to define social constructionism?

PART 3: What are the criticisms pertain to constructionism? Explain your views.

Part 4: Learning Bank: (Summary of learning) Please write down about what you
have learned in this topic/ lesson.

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