SOCY1002 Lecture 2: The Social Construction of Reality
[Lecture Two]
The Social Construction of Reality
Core questions this week:
• How do sociologists conceptualise the social world?
• How do they understand the relationship between self and society?
• Why are the interested in studying the processes through which forms of knowledge
become taken for granted?
FREE WILL OR/AND SOCIAL DETERMINISM?
• A huge tension within sociology is whether individuals are essentially free or socially
determined – how much do we choose our path?
• E.g. adverts, rhetoric, government state policies imply that we are free and have the
responsibility to make our life how we want it to be
• At the nucleus of Sociology lie these philosophical questions:
1. Can we determine the social conditions that are likely to shape the outcome of
person’s life? (Life-chances) e.g. family, friends, education
2. Do we choose our life course or are we like robots controlled by unseen social
forces?
3. To what extent are we responsible for our actions? What impact does the social
environment have on the individual?
• The American Dream – through hard work and dedication everyone can become a success –
yet sociologists disagree e.g. the distribution of wealth in US means that not everyone in
society have the same opportunities
• ‘As individual’s we think we can choose situations but often situations choose us’
The Sociological Imperative
• Questioning the taken-for-granted
- Seeing the strange in the familiar (trying to question your taken for granted
knowledge), and the ordinary in the peculiar
- At the start Roy is alienated in his work there is no meaning but over time he sees
the strange in the familiar he sees the social importance of banana breaks
• The contentious nature of truth – sociologists would never claim that what they discover is
the entire truth, they believe that the truth is a social construct developed over time
• The centrality of modernity – the massive changes in society (globalization, mass
migration) have made huge impacts of how selves understand themselves and present
themselves in social life
• Identifying winners and losers (social justice dimension) – e.g. from policies, work
arrangements
• “Always interrogate and problematize the things we take for granted”
- “When Roy talks about Black Friday, to undermine the social order of that space that
has been constructed the participants in it - he deliberately undermines the person in
the top of the hierarchy by belittling him and his relationship with his son in law who
is a professor”
• “…The most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to
see and talk about” – Writer David Foster Wallace
• C. Wright Mills – “the first rule for understanding the human conditions it that [people] live
in second-hand worlds. They are aware of much more than they have personally experienced
Document Summary
As individual"s we think we can choose situations but often situations choose us". Seeing the strange in the familiar (trying to question your taken for granted knowledge), and the ordinary in the peculiar. Identifying winners and losers (social justice dimension) e. g. from policies, work arrangements. Always interrogate and problematize the things we take for granted . They are aware of much more than they have personally experienced and their own experience is always indirect. The quality of their lives is determined by meanings they have received from others. Everyone live sin a world of such meanings. [person] stands alone directly confronting a world of solid fact. What we see on the surface of reality is only a small glimpse of reality it is the aspect that we have been socialized conditioned into seeing, feeling, understanding . Common sense perceptions of the social world: the social world is framed as objective.
