The Construction of Social Reality

Author: John R. Searle
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439108366
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
This short treatise looks at how we construct a social reality from our sense impressions; at how, for example, we construct a ‘five-pound note’ with all that implies in terms of value and social meaning, from the printed piece of paper we see and touch. In The Construction of Social Reality, eminent philosopher John Searle examines the structure of social reality (or those portions of the world that are facts only by human agreement, such as money, marriage, property, and government), and contrasts it to a brute reality that is independent of human agreement. Searle shows that brute reality provides the indisputable foundation for all social reality, and that social reality, while very real, is maintained by nothing more than custom and habit.

The Social Construction of Reality

Author: Peter L. Berger
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453215468
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced “a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally” (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.

Resisting Reality

Author: Sally Anne Haslanger
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199892628
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 503

Book Description
In this collection of previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory and on the resources of contemporary analytic philosophy to develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. Explicating the workings of these interlocking structures provides tools for understanding and combatting social injustice.

The Reality of Social Construction

Author: Dave Elder-Vass
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107024374
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
Argues that versions of realist and social constructionist ways of thinking about the social world are compatible with each other.

The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality

Author: Barry Smith
Publisher: Open Court
ISBN: 0812699335
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality and Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital shifted the focus of current thought on capital and economic development to the cultural and conceptual ideas that underpin market economies and that are taken for granted in developed nations. This collection of essays assembles 21 philosophers, economists, and political scientists to help readers understand these exciting new theories.

Representing Reality

Author: Jonathan Potter
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780803984110
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
`This is an admirable book which can be recommended to students with confidence, and is likely also to become an indispensable source of reference for those researching fact construction' - Discourse & Society How is reality manufactured? The idea of social construction has become a commonplace of much social research, yet precisely what is constructed, and how, and even what constructionism means, is often unclear or taken for granted. In this major work, Jonathan Potter offers a fascinating tour of the central themes raised by these questions. Representing Reality overviews the different traditions in constructionist thought. Points are illustrated throughout with

The Mediated Construction of Reality

Author: Nick Couldry
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745686516
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Social theory needs to be completely rethought in a world of digital media and social media platforms driven by data processes. Fifty years after Berger and Luckmann published their classic text The Social Construction of Reality, two leading sociologists of media, Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, revisit the question of how social theory can understand the processes through which an everyday world is constructed in and through media. Drawing on Schütz, Elias and many other social and media theorists, they ask: what are the implications of digital medias profound involvement in those processes? Is the result a social world that is stable and liveable, or one that is increasingly unstable and unliveable?

The Social Construction of What?

Author: Ian Hacking
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674812000
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
Lost in the raging debate over the validity of social construction is the question of what, precisely, is being constructed. Facts, gender, quarks, reality? Ian Hacking’s book explores an array of examples to reveal the deep issues underlying contentious accounts of reality—especially regarding the status of the natural sciences.

The Construction of Reality

Author: Michael A. Arbib
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521326893
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
This book presents an integrated account of how humans 'construct' reality through interaction with the social and physical world around them.

The Social Influence Processes

Author: James T. Tedeschi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351473980
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Book Description
Social psychologists have always been concerned with two-person interactions and the factors enabling one person to gain dominance. Although social psychology has devised a revolutionary set of techniques to investigate the phenomenon of power, hypotheses are too often ambiguously stated, research programs end in cul-de-sacs, and experiments take on the character of one-shot studies. In an attempt to stimulate new directions in research and to provide cumulative emphasis on the development of scientific theory in the area of power relations, Tedeschi has assembled original and path breaking essays from a dozen outstanding scholars and researchers in the behavioral sciences. More tightly integrated than leading books in the field of power relations, The Social Influence Processes focuses on two-person interactions. A full explanation of the terms "power" and "influence" is followed by an analysis of the major variables in connections between two persons that must be taken into account in a scientific theory of social influence. The subsequent chapters respond to the categories established, attempting a comprehensive construction of social reality and offering suggestions and techniques for measuring and ordering its complexity. Particular areas of research and theory are isolated for consideration in depth--such topics as personality as a power construct (Power and Personality by Henry L. Minton), influence in exchange theory (The Tactical Use of Social Power by Andrew Michener and Robert W. Suchner), and leadership through charisma (Interpersonal Attraction and Social Influence by Elaine Walster and Darcy Abrahams). In the final chapter, Tedeschi, Thomas Bonoma, and Barry R. Schlenker attempt to provide a general theory of social influence processes as they affect the target individual by reviewing the research literature in their own theoretical terms. This remarkable volume will be of interest to students as well