social constructs
Agreed-upon fictions
Social constructs are concepts that exist because people collectively agree they exist, rather than having independent physical reality.
Money, marriage, race, gender roles, and national borders are social constructs—they shape behavior and carry real consequences, but their meanings are created and maintained by human agreement rather than natural law.
Critics argued that beauty standards are social constructs that vary across cultures.
- normsExpected behavioral standards
- unwritten rulesUnstated behavioral expectations
- gender rolesExpected behaviors by sex
- gender binaryStrict two-category sex classification
- intersectionalityInterconnected identity-based discrimination study
values · philosophy · taken-for-granted · made up · race · queer theory · beliefs · common sense · stereotypes · patriarchy · heteronormativity · critical theory · naturalization · identity · reification · cultural narratives · legal system · marriage
- social constructsgender, race, class, marriage, nationality
- psychoanalysisFreud, id, ego, unconscious, Sigmund Freud
- Art & Societycensorship, art critique, artistic expression, art movements, protest art
- law and societylegal institutions, legal systems, rule of law, criminology, criminal justice
- phenomenologyphenomenology, intentionality, bracketing, lived experience, horizon
social constructsnatural laws
Unchanging rules of nature
laws of nature · physical laws · natural phenomena · objective reality · physical reality
social constructsuniversal constants
Fixed values throughout nature
physical constants · eternal truths · invariants · absolutes · essences
social, society, associate, association, sociable, construction, associated, antisocial, associates