Talk:Social constructionism/Archive 2
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| Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Proposed merge with Social constructivism
Variation on a theme; merge into stronger of the two articles DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 09:55, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
- There are important salient differences between constructiVISM and constructionISM. I recommend not merging the two, but making the differences more pronounced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.250.26.186 (talk) 00:03, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
- I completely agree that these should NOT be merged. Constructivism is part of cognitivism and sees reality as existing in an individual's mind which develops through social interactions with the world around them. Constructionism sees reality as literally created and existing in the relationships between people through their use of language and shared communion. Nathank2 (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
- I agree that they should NOT be merged. Constructionism is about how concepts are constructed socially. Constructivism is about how children (mostly) construct their view of the world around them and develop cognitively. Graham Jones (talk) 10:34, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
- I also agree: Not to be merged but: constructivism is certainly not about "children (mostly)". Piaget, and later Papert were constructivists that were specifically known for research and practice in pedagogy. But constructivism is a general approach to epistemology that has different branches and representatives, not just the pedagocical direction. 141.163.120.112 (talk) 18:16, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
- I agree also: Not be merged. Dnm (talk) 01:36, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
- I removed the merge proposal template, no consensus to merge. • Arch♦Reader 00:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
The article switches back and forth between the two, without any indication that the subject has changed. The section "Teleology of social construction" (which reads like an embedded essay in need of an editor) uses both, in some places within the same sentence.
Someone with in-depth knowledge should probably go through the article, and make sure it makes sense. My suggestion would be not to mention social constructivism except to point out how it contrasts with the article topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.103.130.132 (talk) 23:05, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Strong teleology
- Entire section below unsourced, moved here to TALK page for later editing. • Arch♦Reader 00:18, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
Strong social constructionism sees everything as a social construction, everything as metaphysical. This is not to say that it sees the outer world as having beings in a non-reality, as unreal. Rather, it proposes that the notions of "real" and "unreal" are themselves social constructs, so that the question of whether anything is "real" is just a matter of social convention.[citation needed] The conservative proponent of institutions the way they are progressing, would, in Rudolf Carnap's words "pretend to teach knowledge which is of a higher level than that of empirical science." Everyone else has their own reality, and take the stance that "if you have to ask, you would not understand."
Strong social constructionists oppose the existence of "brute" facts. That a mountain is a mountain (as opposed to just another undifferentiated clump of earth) is socially engendered, and not a brute fact. That the concept of mountain is universally admitted in all human languages reflects near-universal human consensus, but does not make it an objective reality; similarly for all apparently real objects and events: trees, cars, snow, collisions. It reasons that all reality is thought, all thought is in a language, all language is a convention, and that all convention is socially acceptable, hence, it uses language to socially program.
A Strong social constructionism entity convenes and forms the conventions of consensus reality, a real, human operated set of social programs, whose subjects participate in operating on the "real" to the extent they conform democratically and politely. If its ontology is accused, the pragmatic answer is "read the minutes of the meeting", both because the strong social constructionism is busy creating programs, and because sharing a reality accurately and completely is futile.
Also, in regards to Broadcast History, 'social construction' refers to the way in which the media form has been created. This relates both to its structure and regulation. It's the way that the social media outlet is constructed by our society. [End section] section moved by:• Arch♦Reader 00:18, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
As it stands, Strong social constructs are never explained in the page, only their critique is mentioned. 198.91.199.237 (talk) 19:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment in Spring 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Caboudiwan.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:36, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 25 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): CannonCH. Peer reviewers: Mcontris.
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Expert attention needed banner
According to one editor, there are problems in the article sufficiently serious to place the following maintenance template at the top of the article:
 | This article needs attention from an expert in Sociology. The specific problem is: Clear distinction between Construction-'ism' and 'social constructivism' is urgently lacking. Discourse around 'so-and-so believes that XYZ is a social construct' is usually accusatory. Few people have actually self-identified as social construction-'ist'. This article needs clarification between what is the theses of self-identified constructionists, the theses of people labelled by OTHERS as constructionists, to prevent straw man depictions.. (October 2022) |
This is far too much detail to place at the top of the article, and in addition, it represents the sole view of one editor. In my view, this amounts to an end run around WP:Original research, as clearly none of this would have been permitted in the article itself without secondary sourcing. The tag was placed without any prior discussion here on the talk page, contrary to the spirit of the helpful essay on WP:Responsible tagging which recommends discussion first (and makes other valuable points). Further, the banner was already removed once, and then immediately reinserted by the original editor, contrary to the guidelines on discussion and edit warring. Accordingly, I have removed this template once more, as not having consensus.
Personally, I might be persuaded to go along with a briefer version consisting solely of the first sentence, but I'm opposed to the rest of it as personal opinion which has no place at the top of the article; that is not what that template is for, rather, the talk page is the place to make that kind of statements. Indeed, the hatnote "Not to be confused with Social constructivism", present since it was added in 2016, makes the point sufficiently well, imho, and the banner (and additional unnecessary hatnotes) merely tend to conceal it. As a corollary, all the hatnotes except for the "not to be confused" are just clutter, and do not address the reasons for WP:HATNOTEs; removing them would improve the article; as is, they are just confusing. Pinging @Graham11, FatalSubjectivities, and Neconnaitpoint:. Mathglot (talk) 19:13, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
- As a point on the content of the hat note itself. Some failry well-known qualitative researchers identify as social constructivist, e.g. Kathy Charmaz, social construction of knowledge is a thing, e.g. in Medical Sociology and Sociology of knowledge, and you have whole fields like. I agree that in the current iteration of the culture wars any form of "social critique of knowledge" has become something to be attacked, with exaggerations about precisely what it means for something to be a social construct... but given the history of this sort of analysis this feels like a bit of internet wave that will wash over us and be replaced by something else in a years time. Talpedia (talk)
James Heartfield
Is this really the best source available for the opening paragraph? Heartfield is an obscure figure in academia associated with the rather cranky RCP/spiked online set. 2A00:23C6:8A17:4201:68C0:6CAB:FD1D:7B6B (talk) 05:32, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
Questioning The Redirect to this page. 'social construct' --> constructivism or constructionism?
constructionism because it is an action not just the abstract ideology Why should the term0 "social construct" redirect here rather than, say, Social constructivism? FatalSubjectivities (talk) 12:08, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- And the page social constructs. FatalSubjectivities (talk) 01:28, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
- Might be possible to create a WP:DABPAGE instead of a redirect. Mathglot (talk) 19:17, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
- social constructivism is a theory by Jean Piaget about how we learn; not about the nature of reality and how we come to know it, which is social constructionism. althought this distinction is difficult to determine because most people conflate the terms, which is evidence of the state of the academy. So a social construct is an item we know through engaing as a society with the phenomenon as such it ought to re-direct here. *a cis woman growing a philosopher's beard MichelleGDyason 08:29, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
- Disambiguation is for getting a user to the right place. Conflation and confusion are both supporting arguments for creating a DAB page, and maybe it's time to do that, now. Mathglot (talk) 08:33, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
The lead and the Criticism section
...seem to be talking about two very different things. Would Alan Sokal and Paul Boghossian really argue that money is not a social construct? Of course not. So clearly the idea of social construction is a valid one. The actual, intellectually serious debates are rather about where one draws the line between socially constructed realities and those studied by the "hard sciences". It's therefore unfortunate to see people like Sokal and Boghossian using the term "social constructionism" to refer only to the most extreme positions of those few who would deny the validity of hard science entirely. I'm sure there are some secondary source out there that make this clear, and when I have time to hunt them down I will be conducting a rather thorough overhaul of the article. If anyone has else has knowledge of this literature and would like to help, I would welcome collaboration! Generalrelative (talk) 18:01, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
- Not sure I have deep knowledge of the topic. I'd just point at medical diagnosis as quite an interesting area since you have constructs that move in and out of socially constructed and biomedical over time due to culturally change and more scientific evidence (e.g. gulf war syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome etc). Talpedia 13:27, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
- Yup, there is really so much to say about this topic (and the related topic of Conventionalism, which is another article that is in a sorry state). It is, for instance, one of the central issues that occupied Einstein his entire life. Suffice it to say, the relationship between socially constructed conventions and objective reality is a far, far more intellectually serious question than one might suspect looking at the present state of the article. Generalrelative (talk) 17:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
- Interesting stuff. Do you think some web building might be a good starting point - as it's quite easy to to do, lets readers explore the full topic, and lays the ground work for other editors to see the connections and add material. I did this sort of stuff on questions of self (Template:Self_sidebar) Talpedia 18:00, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
- Hmm, I'll look into it. Meanwhile, I see that the SEP has a completely adequate article on the topic: "Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction". That's just the kind of WP:TERTIARY source we should be referencing when determining what is DUE here. Generalrelative (talk) 05:23, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
- Seems like a good addition :thumbsup: Talpedia 09:04, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
- Rather than attacking this article head-on (which I may yet do at a later date), I went ahead an BOLDly created a stub on the less controversial topic Social construct. Generalrelative (talk) 21:18, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
- Interesting. I guess the Social construct can be quite "interdisciplinary". One thing I'm sort of aware of is that few things are actually "social constructs" it feels more like... everything is constrained physically and socially (sometimes over constrained) and then people pick the theory and the "ontology" that best balances these various constraints... so in a sense I don't think there *are* pure social constructs. Talpedia 10:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- I would suggest checking out Searle's book. It's about as middle-of-the-road mainstream as one can get and it deals squarely with what you're thinking about. Or if you're unconvinced that even my "simple" examples are in fact social constructs, see the first 10 pages of Elder-Vass's book. Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 14:41, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- Will have a look. I guess my take is that *everything* is a social construct and there are no natural kinds Talpedia 15:03, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, look at Searle. Rereading for this has reminded me why he was the dominant voice of his generation in American philosophy. Doesn't mean I always agree either, but he's a masterful writer. Generalrelative (talk) 15:10, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- Will have a look. I guess my take is that *everything* is a social construct and there are no natural kinds Talpedia 15:03, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- I would suggest checking out Searle's book. It's about as middle-of-the-road mainstream as one can get and it deals squarely with what you're thinking about. Or if you're unconvinced that even my "simple" examples are in fact social constructs, see the first 10 pages of Elder-Vass's book. Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 14:41, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- Interesting. I guess the Social construct can be quite "interdisciplinary". One thing I'm sort of aware of is that few things are actually "social constructs" it feels more like... everything is constrained physically and socially (sometimes over constrained) and then people pick the theory and the "ontology" that best balances these various constraints... so in a sense I don't think there *are* pure social constructs. Talpedia 10:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- Rather than attacking this article head-on (which I may yet do at a later date), I went ahead an BOLDly created a stub on the less controversial topic Social construct. Generalrelative (talk) 21:18, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
- Seems like a good addition :thumbsup: Talpedia 09:04, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
- Hmm, I'll look into it. Meanwhile, I see that the SEP has a completely adequate article on the topic: "Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction". That's just the kind of WP:TERTIARY source we should be referencing when determining what is DUE here. Generalrelative (talk) 05:23, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
- Interesting stuff. Do you think some web building might be a good starting point - as it's quite easy to to do, lets readers explore the full topic, and lays the ground work for other editors to see the connections and add material. I did this sort of stuff on questions of self (Template:Self_sidebar) Talpedia 18:00, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
- Yup, there is really so much to say about this topic (and the related topic of Conventionalism, which is another article that is in a sorry state). It is, for instance, one of the central issues that occupied Einstein his entire life. Suffice it to say, the relationship between socially constructed conventions and objective reality is a far, far more intellectually serious question than one might suspect looking at the present state of the article. Generalrelative (talk) 17:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)