Social Construction of Reality

One of the most striking features of SC is that it makes a claim for perceptions and understanding of what is real of the kind that sociologists usually made for behavior and institutional processes. At the same time, the authors incorporate highly traditional sociological theory into their text, notably the theories of Emil Durkheim and Max Weber, who were part of the founding generation of modern sociology as a discipline, as well as the symbolic-interactionist theory of George Herbert Mead. From Durkheim they take the idea that a kind of macroconsciousness informs and in part determines the development of individual consciousness and that there is constant interplay between individual perceptions and ideas on one hand and the perceptions and ideas that are shared by members of a society in common on the other. From Weber they take the concept that subjective experience shapes common experience. From Mead's theory of symbolic interactionism they use the idea that the social realities emerge out of the interaction between social actors. What they arrive at by combining these ideas is what they take to be the "central question" fo

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Luckmann, 1967, p. 33). The mechanism for interaction is knowledge-based, which is itself language based. (In the 21st century, where computers have supplanted typewriters, knowledge and language are not infrequently styled as information, but the knowledge designation remains relevant.) On one level, the intersubjectivity of language and knowledge is "reciprocal," a two-way structure of communication. But the power of language and other knowledge-bearing symbols can also be used in one-way communication to "transcend" one-on-one interaction and create new meanings independent of it (p. 39). Individuals experience that meaning to different degrees and on different levels, or as solitary actors or as members of groups; however, the knowledge/information/language message is being delivered in any case, and it is not too much to suggest that it has something of a life of its own. It becomes a familiar, constant object of scrutiny. It is because of that possibility, which has the capacity to facilitate translation or (re)organization of reality that the notion of social constructionism begins to reach meaning. For example, linguistic and social conventions are perceived, absorbed, and shared by people in society. As well, the project
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1847
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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