Social constructionism

Social constructionism

Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge that involves how social phenomena are developed and understood by the people. The social constructs in a given society include self -identity, gender, family, religion and government. Social constructs are formed based on the physical features, beliefs and traditions. Humans join up in groups to make social phenomena into traditions according to how they perceive social reality.

In social constructionism, social and natural sciences are applied to study human behavior. Consequently, the two sciences must be distinguished so that their application in social constructionism is rational. According to Burr & Dick (2017), social constructionism is a form of science that can be either natural or physical. The physical context is fixed and straightforward for instance, gender, religion or race. Social context, on the other hand, involves the human behavior within their societies for instance politics, self-identity and values. Therefore, the two phenomena must be distinguished before categorizing an individual in given social constructionism.

Reference

Burr, V., & Dick, P. (2017). Social constructionism. In The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology (pp. 59-80). Palgrave Macmillan, London.