Knowledge and many aspects of the world are not real in themselves.

They only
exist coz we give them reality through social agreements. E.g. nations,books and
money dont exist in the absence of human society. Nations are group of ppl who
happen to share nation or history,books are paper with scribbles and money is
just pieces of paper and metal that have no value other than what we have
assigned them.
The concept of SELF can be considered a social construct too. Our identity is
created by social interactions with other people and our reactions to the
expectation of society.
There are two threads of Social constructionism :
Weak and Strong.

Weak social constructionism proposes that social constructs are

dependent on Brute facts the facts which are most basic and
fundamental and dont rely on other facts. It is difficult to think of sth that
are not dependent on sth else for its explanation. e.g. Quarks is the basic
brute fact which cant be xplained by sth else.
Those Brute facts are separate from Institutional facts which are created
by social conventions and rely on other facts. E.g. money depends on
paper that we have given value.
Strong social constructionism states that the whole of reality is dependent
on language and social habits( that all knowledge is product of social
construction and there are no brute facts). It says we only created idea of
quarks and eth we use to explain it

Social world is not simply given,natural rather made by ppl, transmitted by ppl.
95% of what we know is simply what we have accepted from the other ppl. The
question is not what is real,nor how do we know what is real rather how does
anything come to be accepted as real.
There are 3 stages of this process:
Externalization: process where individuals create their social world through their
activities.
Our envt consist of Naturegiven to humans and culturecreated by humans.
Culture can be divided into material(tools & tech) and non material
culture(beliefs,values,norms).
Rivers are nature and roads are material culture. But humans can even turn
nature into material culture by meanings we attach to nature and the uses we
make of nature. E.g. We can turn rivers into playgrounds,transportation
roads,political boundaries,sacred spaces.
So our total envt = nature+ culture. Nature consist of natural facts like
mountains,earth .

Culture consist of Technological facts,Institutional facts and Normative facts.

Some facts are dependent on humans and others are not. E,g, Nountains are not
dependent on human at all as mountains would exist even if humans did not
exist, but hammers would not exist if humans did not(hammers are entirely
dependent)
Some facts are less physical and more abstract.
Hammer has more physicality than money. Some forms of money do not have
any physicality at all. Normative facts have no physicality at all.
There is also increasing level of meaningfulness.
As things become more depenedent on us for their existence,they become more
meaningful to us.Freedom is more meaningful to us than a hammer and money.
Finally, There is an imposed order.
AS things become more dependent,abstract and meaningful we impose more
order on them.
e.g. Marriage is more ordered than hammers are. We impose order of race and
create racism.
Because meaning is functionally dependent,abstract and ordered it is
contingent,precarious and can be changed as its not attached to anything. Why
are ppl willing to die for meanings like religion?
Because it does not come to us contingent,precarious and presented to us as
hard reality.

EXTERNALIZATION is process where ppl in order to make sense of the given

world impose meanings and classifications on it which gives rise to a social
reality.
OR process of Individuals creating social reality i.e. creating a new friendship.
The products of reality become external to those who produced them.
OBJECTIVATION(Reification): This social world is objectified and reified
through language and discourse and institutions.
OR perception of an ordered, prearranged reality as in viewing the products of
action as being objectively real..i.e. friendship becomes a social reality to
actors and others.
INTERNALIZATION:This objectified world then acts back on human
consciousness through the process of socialization.
OR constructed reality is then internalized(institutionalized) and constraints
individuals.i.e. the friendshipplaces demands on each individual. Simply put,
we learnt he supposedly objective facts about the cultural products that have
been created.This occurs primarily through socialization.
In this book they argue society is created by humans and human
interactions,which they called as habitualization.
Habitualization describes how any action that is repeated frequently becomes
cast into a pattern.

Not only do we construct our society,but we accept it as it is because others

have created it before us.Society is,in fact,habit.
A school exists as a school and not just as a building becoz all of us agree that it
is a school.
THOMAS THEOREM states that if we define sth as real,it is real in its
consequences.e.g.if you perceive AC as a necessity, it becomes a necessity to
you. Your behaviour wont depend on objective interpretation of a situation,rather
on subjective interpretation of reality.

Our behavior depends not on the objective reality of a situation but on our subjective
interpretation of reality.
This theory is also used in modern juvenile justice system. The JJ system focuses
on rehabilitating offenders and returning them to society as a productive
citizens.The system is careful not to label young offender as criminal bcoz
sociological research shows that ppl often live up to their labels. Those
labelledcriminalsare more likely to display future criminal behaviours than
those labelled rehabilitated.
IF we label smone as criminal, he would live up to that terms and starts acting
like criminals though it wasnt part of his character to be one.
This concept is quite similar to RK mertons Self-fulfilling prophecy which states
that even a false idea can become reality if acted upon.e.g. Bank run. For some
reason ppl falsely fear that their bank is going to be bankrupt.Now bcoz of this
false notion,ppl run to their bank and demand all their cash at once coz of which
banks indeed run out of money.Hence here the reality got constructed by a false
idea.