The Internalization of Autonomous Nature into Society

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Murphy

There is presently much theoretical discourse claiming that nature is being socially constructed or even abolished. Some authors celebrate this development and others lament it. Still others bracket nature's dynamics out of the analysis. The present paper critically assesses these theories and methodologies concerning relations between social practices and processes of nature. It then develops an alternative argument. The expansion of society into wilderness areas has brought new disturbances of nature into society. Pristine nature has been replaced by socially encompassed primal nature, which retains its capacity for independent dynamics that affect social constructions. Moreover, nature remains embedded in technology and so does its potential to escape control. These hybrids constructed by humans and nonhumans recombine processes and materials of nature. Now that this recombi-nant nature has been integrated into society and new primal dynamics of nature have been internalised, there is increasing reason to incorporate the forces of nature into sociological analysis.

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-136
Author(s):  
Kristopher D. Copeland ◽  
Ketevan Mamiseishvili

State lottery policies have been created to generate additional funds to support public initiatives, such as higher education scholarships. Through 18 participant interviews and document analysis, this study examined how decision makers in Arkansas socially constructed citizens while forming lottery policy. The social construction of target populations theory provides a framework for better understanding how social constructions became embedded into the policy design process. Participants noted that beneficiaries included higher education students and the retail and vendor community. In addition, discussion centered on burdens being placed on people who derive from low income and people who have gambling addiction.


Hypatia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 716-732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir

Social construction theorists face a certain challenge to the effect that they confuse the epistemic and the metaphysical: surely our conceptions of something are influenced by social practices, but that doesn't show that the nature of the thing in question is so influenced. In this paper I take up this challenge and offer a general framework to support the claim that a human kind is socially constructed, when this is understood as a metaphysical claim and as a part of a social constructionist debunking project. I give reasons for thinking that a conferralist framework is better equipped to capture the social constructionist intuition than rival accounts of social properties, such as a constitution account and a response‐dependence account, and that this framework helps to diagnose what is at stake in the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents. The conferralist framework offered here should be welcomed by social constructionists looking for firm foundations for their claims, and for anyone else interested in the debate over the social construction of human kinds.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Coulter

Abstract This study centers on equestrian show culture in Ontario, Canada, and examines how horses are entangled symbolically and materially in socially constructed hierarchies of value. After examining horse-show social relations and practices, the paper traces the connections among equestrian culture, class, and the social constructions of horses. Equestrian relations expose multiple hierarchical intersections of nature and culture within which both human-horse relations and horses are affected by class structures and identities. In equestrian culture, class affects relations within and across species, and how horses are conceptualized and used, as symbols and as living animal bodies.


2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Townsley

This article describes an exercise that explores how race categories and classifications are socially constructed scientifically. In an introductory sociology setting, students compare their perceptions of the size of minority populations with counts from the U.S. Census. In a series of debriefing sessions, students analyze both their perceptions and Census counts as social constructions of the moral phenomena we call race. In the process, students are introduced to Census data and the Census web site as well as to historical and theoretical literature on the social construction of race. Students are then asked to reflect critically about the scientific practices in which race is constructed as a social fact, and in particular, to consider their own roles in these practices as users and subjects of race categories. The larger goal is to help students to develop a critical sociological imagination that productively engages the analysis of race in contemporary society.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieunedort Wandji ◽  
Jeremy Allouche ◽  
Gauthier Marchais

This working paper aims to situate our research project within the various debates around resilience. It advocates a historical, cultural and plural approach to understanding how communities develop and share resilient practices in contexts of multiple and protracted crises. A focus on ‘vernacular’ resilience, as embedded in social practices and cultural repertoires, is important since conventional approaches to resilience seem to have overlooked how locally embedded forms of resilience are socially constructed historically. Our approach results from a combination of two observations. Firstly, conventional approaches to resilience in development, humanitarian and peace studies carry the limitations of their own epistemic assumptions – notably the fact that they have generic conceptions of what constitutes resilience. Secondly, these approaches are often ahistorical and neglect the temporal and intergenerational dimensions of repertoires of resilience. In addition to observable social practices, culture and history are crucial in understanding the ways in which vernacular and networked knowledge operates.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 365
Author(s):  
Fawaizul Umam

<p class="Iabstrak"><em>Based on the urgency of the involvement of the groups’ views on the others in any peace initiation, this study attempted (1) to investigate how the leaders of religious groups in Mataram socially constructed the others and (2) to determine the typology of their social constructions by relying on three main paradigms of religiosity (exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism). The leaders of religious groups were chosen as a major subject because they had contributed significantly to the social dynamics of the Muslims in this city; as religious elites (ulama), they were not only cultural brokers, but also active creators of social change. To analyze their social constructions on the others, this research used the Berger’s social constructionism theory. Their social constructions excavated from purposively selected informants, namely the formal or informal elites of religious groups like the Ahmadiyya, Salafists, Tablighi Jamaat, Shiite, and the traditionalist (Nahdlatul Wathan) and modernist (Muhammadiyah) Islamic groups. It was concluded that their social constructions actually emerged through three moments of dialectic which formed the subjective and objective realities on the others. Through those social constructions, they defined the others. All of their social constructions typologically tended to be exclusive, in certain limits also inclusive, and pluralistic tendencies tended to be absent.<strong> </strong>Based on the typefication, this study proposed a number of ideal solutions for creating the coexistence of Islamic religious groups in Mataram..</em></p>Bertolak dari urgensi pelibatan pandangan masing-masing kelompok tentang <em>the others</em> dalam setiap inisiasi perdamaian, studi ini mengkaji (1) konstruksi sosial para elit kelompok-kelompok keagamaan di Kota Mataram tentang <em>the others</em> sekaligus menentukan (2) tipologinya berdasar tiga model utama keberagamaan, yakni eksklusivisme, inklusivisme, dan pluralisme. Para elit dipilih sebagai subjek karena mereka berperan signifikan dalam kelompok masing-masing. Dalam dinamika sosial masyarakat Muslim Kota Mataram, mereka kurang-lebih adalah ulama yang berperan sebagai “makelar budaya” sekaligus kreator aktif perubahan sosial. Untuk memahami konstruksi sosial para elit tentang <em>the others</em>, studi ini menerapkan teori konstruksi sosial Berger. Data utama digali dari para informan yang dipilih secara purposif, yakni mereka yang secara formal maupun informal memimpin kelompok-kelompok keagamaan Islam seperti Ahmadiyah, Salafi, Jama’ah Tabligh, Syi’ah, dan juga kelompok tradisionalis (Nahdlatul Wathan) dan modernis (Muhammadiyah). Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahwa konstruksi sosial mereka muncul lewat tiga momen dialektik yang membentuk realitas subjektif sekaligus objektif tentang <em>the</em> <em>others</em>. Hal itu menentukan cara mereka selaku elit kelompok dalam memaknai dan menyikapi <em>the</em> <em>others</em>. Tipefikasinya menunjukkan, penyikapan mereka tentang <em>the others</em> cenderung eksklusif, dalam batas-batas tertentu inklusif, sementara tendensi pluralistik cenderung absen. Berdasar itu solusi berupa format ideal pengelolaan keragaman bagi penciptaan koeksistensi antarkelompok keagamaan di Kota Mataram diajukan.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 100-112
Author(s):  
Dominika Byczkowska

The article presents researcher’s attempts, methodological problems and queries in embodiment research during a Grounded Theory Methodology based study on social world of ballroom dancers. The research has been conducted among ballroom dancers, flamenco dancers, belly dancers, dance instructors, choreographers and judges. One of the aspects of the research is social construction of embodiment. In the article I will present techniques and methods of research such as autoetnography, interview, observation, photo and video analysis as well as kind of results they may give and what is really studied when using these methods. I will also present how one experiences his/her body in this group. I will try to answer a question: what is the real result of researcher’s attempts in embodiment study in sociology; do we really study body, or its social practices, socially constructed individual experience; how deeply can we make the research when our object (somebody else’s body) is not entirely intersubjectively available for our recognition.


Author(s):  
Steve Bruce

Sociology could be described as the study of social structures and social institutions, and sociological work is often divided into topics such as class structure, the family, crime and deviance, and religion. But how is sociology distinctive? ‘Social constructions’ examines what constitutes sociology. Biology provides a useful starting point because if we can understand the extent to which the biology of most animals determines their lives, and then appreciate the extent to which it fails to do so for humans, we can see the importance of culture. It concludes that reality is socially constructed, our behaviour has hidden social causes, and much of social life is profoundly ironic.


2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-72
Author(s):  
Andy Crabtree ◽  
John A. Hughes ◽  
Jon O’Brien ◽  
Tom Rodden ◽  

This paper reports on-going work in the eSCAPE Project (Esprit Long Term Research Project 25377) directed to the research and development of electronic landscapes for public use. Our concern here is to elucidate a sociologically informed approach towards the design of electronic landscapes or virtual worlds. We suggest — and demonstrate through ethnographic studies of virtual technologies at a multimedia art museum and information technology trade show — that members sense of space is produced through social practices tied to the accomplishment of activities occurring within the locations their actions are situated. Space, in other words, is socially constructed and shaped through members’ practices for accomplishing situated activities. We explicate, by practical examples, an approach to discovering social practices in and through which a sense of space is constructed and outline how such understandings may be used to formulate requirements for the design of electronic landscapes. In explicating our ethnographically informed approach, we outline how future technologies may bedeveloped through the situated evaluation of experimental prototypes in public use.


2017 ◽  
pp. 8-17
Author(s):  
Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen

Quantitative methodology has a contested role in feminist scholarship which remains almost exclusively qualitative. Considering Irigaray’s notion of mimicry, Spivak’s strategic essentialism, and Butler’s contingent foundations, the essentialising implications of quantitative methodology may prove less problematic if research projects assert strategic or political feminist aims. Still, a feminist deconstructive argument can be formed against quantitative studies in which socially constructed categories are considered independently determined. However, by application of Williams’ ideas of treating the categories in question as dependently rather than independently determined, social categories can be deconstructed quantitatively,  enriching both the theoretical and empirical understandings of population-level social constructions of genders, ethnicities etc. Quantitative deconstruction has the potential to reconcile anti-essentialism and quantitative methodology, and thus, to make peace in the quantitative/qualitative Paradigm Wars. 


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