social construction
Culturally created concept
Social construction refers to ideas, categories, or meanings that exist because people collectively agree they exist, rather than being natural or inevitable facts.
Race, gender roles, and money are common examples—they have real effects on people's lives, but their meanings are created and maintained through social practices and shared beliefs rather than biology or physics alone.
Childhood as we understand it today is largely a social construction.
The related adjective is socially constructed.
- normsExpected behavioral standards
- cultural expectationsShared behavioral standards
- languageSystem of symbolic communication
- raceCompetition of speed
- gender rolesExpected behaviors by sex
gender identity · values · institutions · contingent · reality check · hegemony · discourse · intersectionality · reification · historical narratives · class · power structures · legal frameworks · naturalization · ideology · traditions · socialization · ethnicity
- critical theorydeconstruction, Marxism, feminism, simulacrum, postcolonialism
- race studiescritical race theory, systemic racism, institutional racism, white privilege, intersectionality
- social interactiongreeting, hello, goodbye, hi, bye
- feminismfeminism, feminist theory, gender equality, women's rights, feminist novels
- gender rolesgender roles, masculinity, femininity, gender stereotypes, traditional roles
- antirealismnon-cognitivism
social constructionobjective reality
Existence independent of minds
physical reality · natural phenomenon · genetic inheritance · physical law · nature
social constructionobjectivism
Belief in external truths
naturalism · positivism · empiricism · foundationalism · materialism
social, society, structure, sociable, construction, socialize, reconstruct, constructive, sociability