Herds and Hierarchies: Class, Nature, and the Social Construction of Horses in Equestrian Culture

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Coulter
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Living Animal ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Nature

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.

The Social Construction of Social Facts

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Townsley
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Minority Populations ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Introductory Sociology ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
The Social

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.

Socially Constructing Pacific Salmon

1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rik Scarce
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Pacific Salmon ◽  
General Question ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Construction Of Nature ◽  
Historical Comparative

AbstractWhat does "nature" mean? This general question, central to the social construction of nature, is addressed here by examining one of nature's particulars, Pacific salmon, and by looking at how one group of people, salmon biologists, imbue the fish with meaning. Based upon historical, comparative, and qualitative data, it appears that nature is socially constructed through both cognitive and physical processes. "Salmon"- and indirectly nature - emerges not as a monolithic, timeless, certain entity, but rather as one that is manipulable, fleeting, and the product of a variety of social relations. In particular, public policy and economics appear to have profoundly influenced salmon biologists' cognitive and physical constructions of salmon.

The critique of Sociology of Childhood: Human capital as the concrete ‘social construction of childhood’

2021 ◽  
pp. 175774382110116
Author(s):  
Stefano Ba’
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociology Of Childhood

The ‘New Paradigm’ of Sociology of Childhood famously maintains that childhood is socially constructed and supposedly places a much greater emphasis on the agency of children: children should not simply be framed as the passive receivers of socialisation. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that such a ‘social construction’ of childhood is not concretely articulated and that the theoretical understanding of the ‘social construction’ of childhood is simply delegated to historiographical or ethnographic accounts. In doing so, it advances a new criticism of the New Paradigm and radicalises previous ones. Here, key is the theoretical engagement with the concept of ‘human capital’: foregrounding its critique, this article proposes the link between ‘human capital’ as a neoliberal version of labour power and the concept of socialisation. The aim is to show that the ‘social construction’ of childhood is central, but the New Paradigm uses categories that are at the same time founded on neo-liberal views and abstracted from concrete social relations. This article maintains that a concrete critique of processes of socialisation (which is here understood as the socialisation of childhood as human capital) is needed instead of abstract critique of reified childhood. Two alternative pedagogical practices are used to provide an example of such a concrete critique.

Race and the Epigenetics of Memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Soto Laveaga
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Dna Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Neural Function ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Race Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
Lasting Change

In my brief response to Terence Keel’s essay “Race on Both Sides of the Razor,” I focus on something as pertinent as alleles and social construction: how we write history and how we memorialize the past. Current DNA analysis promises to remap our past and interrogate certainties that we have taken for granted. For the purposes of this commentary I call this displacing of known histories the epigenetics of memory. Just as environmental stimuli rouse epigenetic mechanisms to produce lasting change in behavior and neural function, the unearthing of forgotten bodies, forgotten lives, has a measurable effect on how we act and think and what we believe. The act of writing history, memorializing the lives of others, is a stimulus that reshapes who and what we are. We cannot disentangle the discussion about the social construction of race and biological determinism from the ways in which we have written—and must write going forward—about race. To the debate about social construction and biological variation we must add the heft of historical context, which allows us to place these two ideas in dialogue with each other. Consequently, before addressing the themes in Keel’s provocative opening essay and John Hartigan’s response, I speak about dead bodies—specifically, cemeteries for Black bodies. Three examples—one each from Atlanta, Georgia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Mexico—illustrate how dead bodies must enter our current debates about race, science, and social constructions. 

Service innovation as a social construction: The role of boundary objects

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Mele ◽  
Roberta Sebastiani ◽  
Daniela Corsaro
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Service Innovation ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Boundary Objects ◽  
Resource Integration ◽  
Shared Meanings ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Outcome Perspective

This article advances a conceptualization of service innovation as socially constructed through resource integration and sensemaking. By developing this view, the current study goes beyond an outcome perspective, to include the collective nature of service innovation and the role of the social context in affecting the service innovation process. Actors enact and perform service innovation through two approaches, one that is more concerted and another that emerges in some way. Each approach is characterized by distinct resource integration processes, in which the boundary objects (artifacts, discourses, and places) play specific roles. They act as bridge-makers that connect actors, thereby fostering resource integration and shared meanings.

scholarly journals Avatar Creation: The Social Construction of “Beauty” in Second Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 607-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hailey L. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Community Research ◽  
Social Construction Of Reality ◽  
Still Images ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Ideal Body

Rooted in the theory of Social Construction of Reality and informed by media portrayal of female beauty and virtual community research, this study examined how beauty is socially constructed by gatekeepers in Second Life. A content analysis of 360 still images of female avatars was conducted to understand the extent to the beauty types that appear in the virtual world. Findings suggest trendy and sex kitten/sensual beauty types were the most-portrayed beauty types. Most female avatars had the ideal body size and light colored skin. In addition, this study found a significant difference in beauty type among different types of products.

Race and/or Ethnicity in Hawai‘i

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Y. Okamura
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Ethnic Inequality ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Structural Principle ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Transition

This chapter argues that ethnicity is the dominant organizing principle of social relations in Hawai‘i since the 1970s when it superseded race. This contention is based on the social construction of Hawaii’s constituent groups as ethnic groups rather than races, on the consequent lesser construction and assertion of racial categories and identities commonly invoked in the continental United States, and on the ongoing regulation of differential access to socioeconomic status by ethnicity and not race (or class). The chapter first discusses the conceptual difference between race and ethnicity, outlines the historical transition from race to ethnicity as the foremost structural principle of island society, reviews persisting ethnic inequality evident from 2010 U.S. Census data, and analyzes the racial dimensions of the shooting death in 2011 of a young Native Hawaiian by a U.S. State Department agent in Waikīkī. The argument that ethnicity is more significant than race as the primary principle of social organization in contemporary Hawai‘i is consistent with multiculturalism being the dominant ideology related to race and ethnicity in the islands rather than colorblindness as in the continental United States.

The History of Unreason

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Samuel Teague ◽  
Peter Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
History Of

This chapter reflects on the importance of the historical narrative of mental illness, arguing that Western countries have sought new ways to confine the mentally ill in the post-asylum era, namely through the effects of stigma and medicalization. The walls are invisible, when once they were physical. The chapter outlines how health and illness can be understood as socially constructed illustrating how mental health has been constructed uniquely across cultures and over time. To understand this process more fully, it is necessary to consider the history of madness, a story of numerous social flashpoints. The trajectories of two primary mental health narratives are charted in this chapter. The authors argue that these narratives have played, and continue to play, an important role in the social construction of mental illness. These narratives are “confinement” and “individual responsibility.” Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Roy Porter, the authors describe how Western culture has come to consider the mentally ill as a distinct, abnormal other.

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