Introduction
Social constructionist inquiry is concerned with explaining the processes by which people come to describe, explain, or account for the world in which they inhabit. Social constructionist attempts to articulate common forms of understanding as they currently exist, as they have existed in prior historical periods and generally, as they might exist should creative attention be so directed (Gergen and Gergen, 2003, p.15).
In essence, what humans’ regards and take to be experience of the world does not in itself dictate the terms by which the world is understood neither does what is regarded to be knowledge of the world constitute a product of induction or of the building and testing of general hypotheses.
The construction position suggests that the process of understanding is not automatically driven by the forces of nature but is the result of an active, cooperative enterprise of people in relationship. Social constructionism has evolved to become a theoretical orientation to socio-cultural processes that affect humans’ basic understandings of the world.
In addition, the concept of social construction as evidenced in many literatures is fundamental to a social science approach to the analysis of social problems. Therefore, the goal of this essay will largely be to unpack the complexity of social life by employing techniques of observation and analysis using sociological perspectives.
Understanding the concept of social construction
A lot of literature has addressed the issue of social construction especially concerning social problems whereby different explanations have been forwarded. To this level, the dividing line in social construction specifically of problems has occurred in terms of definition, interpretation and explanation of a range of social issues (Saraga, 1998).
As a result, the basic dividing line between different social constructions is the distinction between the natural and the social whereby ideas and concepts about the natural basis of social arrangements or social problems are widespread.
An example is given by Yen Le Espiritu (in Foner and Fredrickson, p. 219) on how various social groups have tried to define themselves through their racial identity, for instance, the Asian Americans including the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Filipinos joined hands to resist American imperialism and racism despite them having different political and economic ideologies.
This notion is echoed by Tehranian (2009, p. 67) while narrating on how historical grouping contributed to the creation of races, more so the creation of white-black American conflicts based on skin color. Many thoughts about the natural basis of society or of social problems within the society refer to a set of claims about the universal laws of biology or evolution that determine how people might behave.
The ideas, in most instances, place an emphasis on competition, conflict, and struggles for the evolutionary success where they identify a range of attributes as the biological basis of human society, and usually insist that these are unchanging and unchangeable. The claim of this understanding is that natural, which are biological attributes emerge as explanations of social patterns hence biological differences between men and women are drawn upon to explain differences in social behavior or patterns of social inequality.
The above analysis of natural in relation to social widens our understanding of distinctive type of social construction where the claim has been that, humans’ social world is formed and constrained by a variety of natural causes and conditions (Saraga, 1998). Emphasis on natural in this form of social construction provides a strong claim to authority and truth by referring to a world of natural laws that appear as universal and immutable.
As a result, many of the social constructions that refer to natural conditions or causes tend to warn against attempts to change or tamper with these natural laws. On the other hand, social interference is likely to have undesirable and unnatural impacts.
Despite the existence of this distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘social’, both types of approach to social issues provide excellent examples of social construction and each provides a way into defining, interpreting and acting in the social world that humans inhabit (Saraga, 1998). Moreover, the two types provide a framework within which events, actions, and types of people become meaningful, which in turn gives people the opportunity to position themselves in relation to them.
Social constructionism
Social constructionism posits that anything in the world that possesses a meaning in people’s lives originates within “the matrix of relationships in which we are engaged” (Gergen and Gergen, 2000 cited in May and Mumby, 2005, p.35). The theory claims that meaning arises from social systems, and humans have no role of assigning such meaning.
The conviction of the theory is that “humans derive knowledge of the world from the larger social discourses” which generally vary across time and place, which in turn represent and reinforce dominant belief systems (May and Mumby, 2005, p.35). At the same time, the theory “stress the significance of language to construction processes, including its ramifications for identify development” (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1995 cited in May and Mumby, 2005, p.35).
According to Hruby, social constructionism strives to understand how humans create knowledge (cited in May and Mumby, 2005, p.36). Accordingly, the theory postulates that knowledge is an effect of social processes and humans construct the world through social practices. Social constructionism rejects the essentialist explanations that “certain phenomena are natural, inevitable, universal, and biologically determined” (DeLamater and Hyde, 2001 cited in May and Mumby, 2005, p.36).
Social constructionism holds some assumptions that have guided how social world has been understood. The assumptions include: 1) there should be critical stance towards taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world, where the theory encourages people to be suspicious of how they understand the world and themselves. In this regard, the theory advises people to challenge categories of social identity such as gender and race because the categories do not reflect the real and necessary divisions (May and Mumby, 2005).
In this case, questions need to be asked as to why people highlight and classify some aspects of personhood and not others. 2) All knowledge is historically and culturally specific where labels, classifications, denotations, and connotations of social identity in many cases constitute products of their times and that the outlined processes of constructing social identities depend greatly on social, political, and historical factors.
In addition, humans depend on current ideologies to establish social identity categories and their meanings. 3) Social constructionism sustains knowledge, and uses language for purposes of reproducing knowledge as humans enact numerous roles within the various contexts.
Further, language become essential in helping people to make sense of the world as it allows the people to share experiences and meaning with one another; lastly 4) social constructionism indicate that knowledge and social action are largely interconnected (May and Mumby, 2005).
Essentialist perspective
In 1970s, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam ignited a renaissance of essentialist thinking which rested on the understanding of meaning that relied heavily on the concepts of modality and possible worlds.
For instance, this perspective by the two founders made many people to be convinced that water is basically H2O, tigers are generally animals, heat is solely molecular motion, material objects could not have been originally constituted differently from how they were originally constituted. In addition, an animal could not have originated from a different sperm and egg to the ones it actually originated from, and perhaps mind is not identical with the brain (Oderberg, 2007).
Many writers have argued that essentialist group beliefs are central to racism. The different forms of racism presented such as racial and ethnic are natural, inevitable, and hence unchangeable. These categories in many instances are adopted to represent human types indicating that an individual is fundamentally a certain kind of person. In its nature, racism attempts to fix social groups in terms of essential, quasi-natural properties of belonging within particular political and social contexts (Verkuyten, 2005).
Certain traits of mind, character, and temperament are usually considered to be an intrinsic part of an ethnic or racial group’s nature (Davis, 2001) and therefore give definition to ethnic or racial fate. More research done indicates that there are still traces of biological forms of essentialism, and contemporary discourses focus on culture (Verkuyten, 2005).
For instance, Blum (2002) describes the belief in cultural inherentism among different groups as follows: “these people (Jews, whites, Asians) just are that way (stringy, racist, and studious): it is part of their culture” (Verkuyten, 2005, p.124). Other researches done on new or cultural racism show that the idea of fundamental and inherent cultural differences is used to exclude and abnormalize ethnic minority groups.
Racism and Ethnicity
Before exploring the concepts of race and ethnicity first, social construction is viewed as the way people make ‘reality’ of everyday happenings in their environment. People and groups interact together in a sort of social system form where over time the people provides definitions to “concepts or establish mental representations of each other’s actions, and these concepts after some time become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other” (Davis, 2001, p.1).
James Davis, narrating an interview that was conducted by a blind, black anthropologist, he writes quoting the words of the black anthropologist as, “I am not black and you are not black either, if you go by the evidence of your eyes” (Davis, 2001, p.1). From this statement, it becomes clear that construction of race is ambiguous.
For instance, all white people do not look the same, there are situations it is becomes difficult to tell who is a black and who is a white, since many people who have been labeled black could as well qualify to be white due to their physical characteristics. However, Lee and bean (2004) reflect on the differences in identity that existed in American, whereby one was viewed as either black or white in respect that, if one was not a pure white, they were viewed as black regardless of their ethnicity.
According to Gwaltney, (1980), “looks do not mean much the things that make us different is how we think, what we believe is important and the ways we look at life” (cited in Davis, 2001, p.1). According to Haney-Lopez (2006), ‘white’ as a category of human identity and differences is an extremely intricate phenomenon since races are not biologically differentiated groupings but rather social constructions.
Race is seen to exists alongside a multitude of social identies that shape and are themselves shaped by the way in which race is given meaning. Accordingly, people live race through class, religion, nationality, gender, sexual identity and so on. Like just other social categories race is highly contingent, specific to times, places and situations and as such being white or black turns to be where one is. The essence here is that, how is a person defined as a black, both socially and legally in countries such as United States of America.
As a nation, the adoption of definition of who is black or white has been contentious in USA, for example, some individuals defined as blacks in essence could pass as white and vice versa. Who therefore has assumed the role of defining the race? In USA, the state and federal courts have determined and in partial capacity tried to define ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’.
Haney-Lopez (2006) asserts that courts for a time in deciding racial prerequisite cases have generally relied on both rationales to justify their decisions. However, from 1909, the trend changed, and subsequently the Supreme Court decisions favored common knowledge a situation that demonstrated the court regarded the issue of race categorization to originate in social practices.
On his part Richard Alba, observes that the racist caste system was sanctioned by the U.S.A Supreme Court in 1896 during the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, in which the court found out that, “separate but equal facilities met constitutional tests” (Alba, 2009). In December 1985, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reinforced a district’s court decision noting that no one could change the racial designation of his or her parents or anyone else’s (Davis, 2001).
During the same period, the appellate court also affirmed the necessity of designating race o birth certificates for public health, affirmative action and other important public programs. Concluding about the role of law in race construction, Haney- Lopez observed that, “the operation of law does far more than merely legalize race; it defines as well the spectrum of domination and subordination that constitutes race relations” (Haney- Lopez, 2006, p.xxi).
Apart from the courts other key institutions of social, political and economic have in their actions defined race. For instance, U.S.A Bureau of the Census enumerates blacks and I doing so does not provide any scientific definition but relies on one accepted by the public and by the courts (Davis, 2001). The Census Bureau in actual sense counts what the larger nation wants counted and although various operational instructions have been tried, the definition of black being used by the census reflects the nation’s cultural and legal definition.
As such, racism has operated at the macro level of the society and in its operation ha shifted away from a conscious personalized conviction of the inferiority of ‘another’ race.
Such conviction has expressed itself in attitudes of prejudice and acted out in discriminatory behavior and thereafter follows social practices that become depersonalized through institutionalization. Over time, prejudice may decrease but patterns of discrimination may persist supported by the inertia of custom, bureaucratic procedure, impersonal routine and also the law.
Obama as a Black president
The issue of race and how it is perceived in society differently came to the forefront during Barrack Obama’s quest for president. There are those who saw him as ‘white’ since he belongs to the educated elite, others postulated he was a black due to his originality to a black father, while others were convinced that Barrack was a multiracial.
According to Lee and Bean (2004), the impression that people are racially defined by their color may not hold water as it may propel some people to classify the Blacks as a racial group, while others recognizing Latinos and Asian Americans as white. Writing such as, “is Barrack Black/White enough” filled newspapers and other media sources.
People question and investigated his identity; but to Barrack, the issue of race identity as he narrates in his book, “Dreams of my father” has preoccupied his minds, he candidly says that questions such as, who am I, confronted him a lot. Obama was born to an American mother and an African father before spending his childhood in Hawaii not forgetting that he was in Indonesia for about four years. However, how is Barrack race issue constructed?
In 2009, the National Association of Black Journalist, in their article titled, ‘Acting White: Is Obama Black Enough?’ asked whether Obama was an African America. To them Obama did not portray the physical and intellectual experiences of black people, Obama’s ‘degree of blackness’ was questionable, Obama’s characteristics and behaviors were totally different of those Africans, and that Obama was highly-educated, self-responsible and overachieving a rare element in most Africans.
Therefore, their conclusion was that Obama was not an ‘African enough’. On the other hand, there are those who saw Obama as neither black nor white but multiracial (mulatto). Further, there are those who say Obama as totally An African, and articles such as, ‘Is America ready for a black president? ‘Between gender and race: which is more acceptable? Is America at crossroads: black or woman? All this statements represented one thing, that Obama was an African America.
But narrating in his book, ‘Dreams from My Father, Obama writes that, “I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, it is an interior journal focused on a boy’s search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American” (cited in Harris, 2010, p.132).
As later, Obama would be asked, in which category he belongs to, Obama candidly answered, “both” (Harris, 2010, p.132). What is evident is that before Obama wrote this book, he did not see his life as a representative of either the black experience or the American experience, but towards elections in 2008, this perception changed and Obama felt that his identity was representative of both.
Obama’s case shows how the issue of race/identity is fluid where he is able to accept his identity as an African American, American and multiracial. This circumstance shows how the issue of race changes with time, political expediency and even cultural orientation. As it was evident, Obama would fit in both categories comfortably depending on time, circumstance, or political situation. Therefore, the way race is able to change and modify indicates that as a social constructed phenomenon it disqualifies to be biological.
Haney Lopez, writing in ‘The Social Construction of Race’ says that the concept of race categorization is a social construct whereby it occurs because of human interaction and not as a natural differentiation.
Analyzing Lopez’s position, it can be deduced that, race is a social construction since people as social beings participate in interaction and through it; they are able to construct its abstract significance (cited in Howard, n.d, p.1). Lopez therefore advices that due to the volatility in the definition of race, the same should not form the basis of trying to provide the classes into which human beings fall.
Conclusion
Today, different theories and approaches exist used to address the modern world social problems, patterns of social differentiation and organization of social welfare. Of note is the fact that all these approaches have to operate in a social world in which meaning of things shape how people act.
What is evident is that, people and not nature create and conform to the different identities created, such as racial and ethnicity, and as created categories in society, they have a cultural and historical origin. They are in essence social and not biological in nature. This assumption does not mean that they do not exist but they are live and health in modern society and in understanding them it is wise to investigate them from the perspective of cultural and social interaction than from the biological perspective.
References
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