Social ConstructionLet’s Talk

Tuesday, 8 November 2011Patrick Heesen

The Basic Idea of Social construction:

“We Construct the World”

“The basic idea asks us to rethink virtually everything we have been taught about the

world and ourselves. And with this rethinking we are invited into new and

exciting forms of action”

Person BGood looking

womanizer, highly sociable,

multiple college degree's, well

respected leader, one of the wealthiest

persons on earth

Person AComputer nerd, loner, suspended from school, faced court several times for plagiarism, school dropout.

If we add information and rethink....

“Social reality is based upon social mores, traditions, cultures and institutions; knowledge-claims should be understood as historical artifacts rather than timeless truths”

“Social theorists accept the fact that social ideas are variable and subject to reinterpretation as new

information is revealed”

“A social construct is anything that exists as a product of human social interaction instead of by virtue of objective, human-independent existence. Social constructs are said to be the result of social facts, things that are true of our social world or human existence, as opposed to natural facts”

“Nothing is real unless people agree that it is”

Basic Principles of Social Construction;

• A critical stance toward taken-for-granted knowledge

• Reality and Identity are Co-created in dialogue• Words Create Worlds. Reality is constructed through language

• Truth is Local. There is no absolute truth• We See Things as We Are• The truth is historically and culturally relative

• Knowledge is sustained by social processes.

The social construction of reality is an ongoing, dynamic process that is (and must be) reproduced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge of it.

“Social construction makes truth so radically relative that we simply

could never have certain knowledge of anything”

Social Construction, it’s about dialogue

Social Construction, it’s about dialogue

A never ending dialogue