What Does It Mean for Something to Be Socially Constructed?
There are at least three things that people might mean by ‘socially constructed’: that something is social, rather than natural; contextual, rather than universal; or that its importance has been inflated.
When you type ‘social construction’ into Google Scholar, the drop-down autocomplete suggestions include ‘of gender,’ ‘of technology,’ ‘of race,’ and ‘of crime.’ All claims that something or other is socially constructed have in common that the thing does not exist outside of society. Had Homo sapiens never evolved, there would be no such thing as gender, technology, race, or crime. But this commonality can mask differences in what people are trying to get at when they invoke the idea of social construction, and that can lead to miscommunication and talking past one another. There are at least three distinct things that people might be trying to get at when they say that something is ‘socially constructed’: that it is social, rather than natural; that it is contextual, rather than universal; or that its importance has been artificially inflated.
