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Social Constructivism
In its original version, social constructivism is a view
about the social nature of science. It rests on the
methodological assumption that a sociological analy-
sis of science and scientific knowledge can be empiri-
cally fruitful and epistemologically illuminating. This
approach has generated detailed empirical studies of
scientific practices (for instance, of what is going on in
laboratories on a day-to-day basis). According to
social constructivism, these studies show that it does
not depend exclusively on the objective external world
which scientific beliefs are held to be true or false, and
thus, what are the scientific facts, but rather also (or
even mainly or exclusively) on social arrangements
resulting from negotiations between scientists taking
place in the course of scientific practices. It is in this
sense that scientific knowledge and scientific facts are
supposed to be socially constructed. Social construc-
tivism is not a unique specified doctrine, however, but
rather a bunch of related studies representing different
versions of the general approach.
1. Historical Background
One of the guiding ideas of social constructivism is
that science, scientific knowledge, and scientific prac-
tices are socially determined. Historically, this idea is
rooted in the historical materialism developed by
Marx. Historical materialism is best understood as a
research program, roughly in the sense of the meth-
odology of research programs proposed by Lakatos;
the core of historical materialism consists of the claim
that the economic base of a society determines its
superstructure. This core is supposed to generate
testable historical theories or hypotheses about what
are, in various societies, the base and the super-
14264
structure, and about the specific ways in which they
are related. The strongest, but not the only possible,
interpretation is that the superstructure is causally
determined by the base. This approach was taken up
by sociologies of science worked out during the
twentieth century. Thus, for instance, Karl Mannheim
wanted to show how humanities and theories of society
are socially determined; and one of the leading
American sociologists of science, Robert Merton,
suggested that it is primarily the rise and success of
science that is determined by social forces (Merton
1973).
Another important intellectual source of social
constructivism is the historical turn of twentieth
century philosophy of science (Kuhn 1962, Bachelard
1937, Canguilhem 1966, Foucault 1969, Hacking
1990). This movement is vigorously opposed to scien-
tific realism and rejects the claim, so crucial for the
traditional philosophy of science, that there are uni-
versal rational scientific methods and rules such that
the history of science can be rationally reconstructed
as an continuous intellectual enterprise constantly
improving our scientific knowledge by applying these
methods. Instead, proponents of the movement see the
history of science and scientific beliefs shattered by
contingent breaks and dependent on normative atti-
tudes and hidden non-scientific assumptions that an
adequate philosophy of science must aspire to reveal.
A third theoretical background of social construc-
tivism is the program of naturalizing epistemology
initiated by Quine (Quine 1969). The crucial idea of
this programme is that traditional epistemology,
centering around the question of the justification of
claims to (scientific) knowledge, should be replaced by
a scientific study of causal processes of belief forma-
tion and information. In this way, epistemology is
supposed to be transformed into a natural science.
In sum, social constructivism puts together three
ideas, borrowed from a broadly Marxist sociology of
science, from the historical turn of twentieth century
philosophy of science, and from the program of
naturalizing epistemology, that the development of
scientific knowledge is (a) determined by social forces,
(b) essentially contingent and independent of rational
methods, and should (c) be analyzed in terms of causal
processes of belief formation.
2. The Edinburgh School of the Sociology of
Science
The first prominent version of social constructivism is
the Edinburgh school of the sociology of science. The
proponents of this school start out by criticizing the
Marxist sociology of science for the exclusion of
mathematics and natural sciences as a proper subject
of the sociology of science. The extended claim is that
mathematics and natural sciences are socially de-
termined too, and it is this extension that is fun-

damental to the further claim of many social construc-
tivists that, in a sense, the world as such is socially
constructed (Bloor 1991; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Latour
and Woolgar 1986). Specifically, it is, according to the
Edinburgh sociologists of science, not only the his-
torical development of science, its rise and success,
that is influenced by social forces; rather, it is the
content of accepted scientific beliefs that is determined
by social factors or by the social interests involved in
scientific practices.
Edinburgh sociologists of science conclude that
there is no definite unique set of rational methods that
guide scientific practices which can be referred to in
order to explain how scientific results and beliefs are
established. Another result is that it is not helpful to
make a sharp distinction between the context of
discovery and the context of justification in socio-
logical investigations of scientific practices. In this way
the Edinburgh school rejects fundamental assump-
tions held by the traditional philosophy of science.
If scientific practices and the development of science
cannot be rationally reconstructed, then the socio-
logical analysis of scientific practice must basically be
a causal explanation of belief formation and belief

alidation; it is supposed to show in detail how specific
scientific beliefs are established as a result of a causal
process proceeding from social conditions, social
interests, and negotiations between scientists guiding
the specific scientific practice under consideration.
Therefore, social constructivism is, in the view of the
Edinburgh school, itself a kind of natural science. The
domain of this sort of science is the set of all scientific
beliefs that get accepted for the time being, inde-
pendently of whether they are true or false and whether
they ultimately prove to be successful or not.
Some constructivists focus not on belief formation,
but rather on scientific facts: they want to know in
which way such facts are hardened, i.e., get accepted as
facts by all researchers in the field (Latour and
Woolgar 1986). However, focusing in this way on
scientific facts instead of scientific beliefs does not
make much difference if scientific facts are supposed to
be what accepted scientific beliefs are about—roughly
the content of statements showing up in established
scientific textbooks on the field (Quine 1969). Never-
theless, it is precisely by shifting the focus from beliefs
to facts that some social constructivists are inclined to
entertain an ontological version of social construc-
tivism that sees scientists as essentially contributing to
the existence of scientific facts. Obviously, this claim
has idealistic implications only if scientific facts are
understood in a strictly realistic fashion—roughly as
the way things are independently of the way we take
them to be.
Social constructivism, as proposed by the Edin-
burgh sociologists, can also be formulated as a
methodological claim mandating a naturalistic ap-
proach to scientific practices; as such, social con-
structivism is best understood as being part of a
Social Constructi
ism
naturalized epistemology concentrating on the investi-
gation of the social causes of belief formation. In the
methodological version, social constructivism does
not seem to be committed to ontological claims;
however, it remains committed at least to the epis-
temological claim that scientific knowledge cannot
simply be seen as a good representation of the external
objective world, but must rather be taken as a result of
an extremely complex process involving mainly, and
most importantly, social causes. In this way, social
constructivism is not only a form of anti-rationalism,
but also a form of anti-realism and in this twofold
sense, a form of relativism.
3. The Actor-network Theory
The actor-network theory (Latour and Woolgar 1986,
Latour 1987) is a form of constructivism that rejects
the idea of a social determination of scientific knowl-
edge, prominent in the Edinburgh school, mainly for
the reason that the social is barely better understood
than the natural. The leading thought is that scientific
knowledge is an effect of established relations between
objects, animals, and humans engaged in scientific
practices. An actor is, according to this theory,
everything that in some causal way affects the pro-
duction of scientific statements and theories: not only
scientists, but also, for instance, background assump-
tions, methodologies, techniques, social rules and
institutions, routines, experiments, measurements and
the appropriate instruments, scientific texts and, last
but not least, external objects. For an entity to be an
actor in this sense it is obviously not required to have
contentful mental states, but to be able to perform
actions as a kind of behavior describable under some
intention. Thus, there can be many sorts of relations
and interactions between actors; in particular, some
actors can transform other actors (these trans-
formations are sometimes called translations). A
network is a set of actors such that there are relations
and translations between the actors that are stable, in
this way determining the place and functions of the
actors within the network. Once a network has been
established it implies a sort of closure that prevents
other actors or relations from entering the network,
thereby opening the possibility of the accumulation of
scientific knowledge that is taken to be the result of
translations within the network. Establishing a sci-
entific belief, theory, or facts comes down, from the
point of view of the actor-network theory, to placing
these actors in a stable network. In this sense, scientific
beliefs, knowledge, theories, and facts are taken to be
constructed by translations taking place in established
networks.
The actor-network theory shares a number of basic
assumptions with social constructivism as conceived
in the Edinburgh school. Thus, both approaches
entertain a naturalistic account of scientific practices,
14265
Social Constructi
ism
do not presuppose a distinction between true or
successful and false or unsuccessful scientific beliefs,
and reject the possibility of a rational reconstruction
of scientific practices and their outcomes. But con-
structivism in the sense of the actor-network theory is
social not in the strong sense that social forces that are
presupposed to exist largely independently of scientific
practices have a causal impact on these practices; but
rather in the extremely weak sense that as a result of
processes taking place in networks, a scientific claim
can eventually be developed about a distinction
between the natural and the social, and consequently
also about the function of the social for scientific
practices (Pickering 1992).
Social constructivism usually does not hold that,
in the course of scientific practices, scientific facts
of the external world are literally constructed of some
other entities. The crucial idea of a (social) con-
struction of scientific knowledge and scientific facts is,
rather that an analysis of the process and history of
scientific belief formation will not be able to show that
the methods of science continuously increase the
probability that scientific beliefs will be good repre-
sentations of an independent external world, and
should not even try. Instead, scientific belief formation
should be modeled in terms of very different factors,
mainly social ones like rules, techniques, institutions,
power relations, and negotiations, which affect
scientific belief formation in a causal way that can
be studied empirically and sociologically
One of the most debated applications of social
constructivism is the claim held by many feminists that
gender is socially constructed (see Comparable Worth
in Gender Studies, Feminist Political Theory and
Political Science). Originally, the most prominent
feminist theories introduced a distinction between a
naturalistic notion of sex and a social notion of gender
to denounce all attempts of deriving properties of
gender from properties of sex as mere constructions of
gender that do not refer to reality. More recently, in
some postmodern feminist accounts of sex and gender,
it is also the very distinction between sex and gender,
and thus, sex itself, that are supposed to be socially
constructed.
4. Social Constructi
ism About the Social
In one of the most recent developments of social
constructivism, leading proponents of the Edinburgh
school try to exploit the thought that scientific knowl-
edge is, after all, something like an institution and that
institutions are constructed by humans (Bloor 1996).
It seems to follow that scientific knowledge is, because
constructed by humans, socially constructed. This
idea is part of what is often called the intentionalist
program of social ontology, the aim of which is to
clarify the ontological status of social entities, i.e.,
groups and of institutions. The fundamental claim is
14266
that it is on the basis of intentional mental states and
associated actions that social entities come into exist-
ence. That is to say that human beings construct social
entities by having specific contentful thoughts and by
performing intentional actions.
It is obvious that this approach is a sort of social
constructivism in the sense that it is a theory about the
construction of the social; this is held to be so insofar
as it consists largely of normative interactions between
humans. It must be emphasized that this sort of
constructivism is restricted to the realm of the social,
that it presupposes a sharp distinction between the
natural and the social, and that it has nothing to say
about the construction of natural facts or physical
entities. Most importantly, though, the intentionalist
program relies on an intentional vocabulary. In all
these respects the program differs fundamentally from
traditional versions of social constructivism.
Basically the intentionalist program of social on-
tology is an individualistic account of the social; at the
same time, however, one of the crucial theoretical
moves is to introduce notions of collective intention-
ality and of collective actions. The first step is to assume
that for some persons to be socially related in a specific
way is to be treated by most of the other members of
their society as being related in this way. Social
relations are taken to imply rules as well as certain
rights. In general, therefore, to treat some persons as
socially related in way S is to treat them as being
entitled or committed to perform actions according to
the rules and rights derivable from S.
One of the next important moves is to introduce the
notion of a collective attitude (or, as it is sometimes
called, a we-attitude and, in particular, the notion of a
collective intention to perform a specific action.
Roughly speaking a person P as member of a set S of
persons has a contentful collective attitude of the sort
A iff (a) P has the A-attitude herself, (b) P believes
that every other member has the A-attitude, and (c) P
believes that every other member M of S believes that
every member of S other than M has the A-attitude. In
particular, if a number of persons Pi intend to perform
action A together or collectively, then it must be the
case, in addition to (a)–(c), that every Pi intends to
perform A by performing a specific action Ai as her
specific contribution to the performance of A such that
Pi thinks that Ai is necessary for A and results, together
with the other specific actions Aj intended to be
performed by the other Pj, in performing A, and that
Pi believes that the other Pj intend to do the same thing
and believe themselves that every other person intends
to do the same thing.
On the basis of these notions it can be asserted that
a number of persons Pi have the collective intention
to perform action A iff each Pi has the collective
intention to do A by performing a specific Ai, in the
sense just explained; and Pi perform a collective action
A iff A can be described under some collective intention
of the Pi. It might be suggested that a number of

persons Pi represent a social group iff they share a
collective attitude. Finally, let MR be a set of semati-
cally consistent rules Ri such that a number of persons
collectively treat an X as a Y by following Ri, then MR
is, in the most basic sense, an institution. In particular,
if MR is the set of rules according to which scientific
results and scientific knowledge are established, and if
the persons in question are trained scientists, then MR
is an institution of epistemic or scientific practices, and
in this sense, scientific knowledge might be called an
institution that is constructed by intentional acts of
human beings (Searle 1995, Tuomela 1995).
This line of argument is a rough sketch that by no
means exhausts the theoretical complexity of the
intentionalist program. For instance, something has to
be said about the mechanisms of the formation of
collective attitudes which account for the stability of
social groups and institutions; at this point, a theory
of consensus and a theory of power has to be incor-
porated into the general account. In any case, even a
rough sketch of this sort of social ontology shows how,
to put it very generally, the mind can be thought of as
bringing into existence, and keeping in existence (and
thus to construct) social entities in a fairly literal
manner. It also becomes clear how and why traditional
social constructivists might be inclined to render their
position more precise by exploiting the intentionalist
program of social ontology.
This program is a philosophically sound approach;
it makes evident, however, that human beings do not
construct social facts as they construct natural facts.
Traditional versions of social constructivism tend to
downplay this distinction, which might be thought of
as a fundamental flaw. Another problem with these
versions is that they seem to commit themselves to
relying exclusively on a causal, physicalist vocabulary.
While it certainly makes sense to examine whether a
purely naturalistic account of epistemic practices
might be fruitful, it does not follow from this strategy,
even if it proves fruitful, that intentionalist strategies
must be excluded. On the contrary, it is doubtful
whether epistemic practices can be adequately de-
scribed without also using intentionalistic and nor-
mative vocabulary. Finally, it is hard to see how
traditional social constructivists can overcome
Davidson’s point that, according to interpretation
theory a basic form of rationality is constitutive for
mastering a natural language and must therefore be
the same in all epistemic practices (Davidson 1973);
obviously, this insight is inconsistent with the un-
qualified contingency claim about the development
of scientific knowledge which is so central to tradi-
tional social constructivism.
See also: Foucault, Michel (1926–84); History of
Science: Constructivist Perspectives; Interactionism:
Symbolic; Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of; Tech-
nology, Social Construction of
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Social Democracy
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W. Detel
Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Social Democracy
The term ‘social democracy’ can refer either to a form
of societal organization, an ideology, a set of public
policies, a political party or group of parties, or a
broad social and political movement centered on such
parties and their allies within different sectors of
society. The meaning of ‘social democracy’ has varied
enormously since its original adoption by a small,
vaguely-socialist group within the left wing of the
French democratic-republican opposition prior to
the Revolutions of 1848. At various times and places,
the social-democratic label has been adopted by
revolutionary Marxist, democratic-socialist, liberal\
center-left, and even conservative-authoritarian
political parties and tendencies, usually but not always
with closer or more distant ties to blue-collar labor
unions. Most commonly, the term ‘social democracy’
is used either in connection with political parties that
have belonged to the contemporary Socialist Inter-
14267
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7