In sociology, social constructionism is basically rooted in the interactionist (also called interpretivist) paradigm. Some of the Wikipedia articles on the subject, however, confuse social constructionism, a sociological perspective, with constructivism, a cognitive psychological perspective. In practice, there are only superficial similarities between them.

Social constructionism is rooted in the social phenomenology of Peter Berger and in the poststructuralism of Michel Foucault. The emphasis is on how people, in interaction, socially construct reality (including knowledge and power). If what we call reality is constructed, it can also be deconstructed (and reconstructed). For instance, in my own research, I tend to be a postempiricist (or postpositivist). In other words, I recognize that different methodologies may produce (i.e., construct) different, even contradictory, results.

Psychological constructivism focuses on how individuals construct belief systems to make sense out of their experiences. The emphasis is on the individual, not on processes of social construction.

I can't emphasize enough that statistical data does not refer to individuals, and cannot be used to make individual predictions. It only refers to categories.

For instance, American automobile insurance companies know that males under 25 have a high rate of accidents. Therefore, all things being equal, they charge them more insurance than females under 25 or people over 25. Does that mean that "Joe," an 18-year-old male, is more likely to have an auto accident than "Susan," an 18-year-old female? No. Statistics cannot be used that way.

IQ tests are, even controlling for expectation effects (like Robert Merton's concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy), competent predictive instruments. For instance, in the U.S., there is a high correlation between IQ and aptitude tests, like the SAT and ACT. No test is 100% valid (measuring what it is intended to measure).

Your own life history is interesting. It points out problems with both the testing process and with the tracking system. Psychological testing is obviously not simply a matter of filling out a questionaire (which is a potential problem with all the self-diagnosing which takes place on the Internet). Even the most seemingly obvious score needs to be interpreted and, hopefully, placed into context. The more rounded the information of the test interpreter on the client, the fewer blatant errors will probably enter into the analysis.

In terms of tracking: Well, it may be a necessary evil. Short of homeschooling or having very tiny classrooms, it is the only educational alternative (right now) to discouraging both very bright students (who will get bored) and more mediocre students (who will get frustrated). Both types of students will be more likely to drop out before graduating.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were both influenced by right-wing fundamentalist groups when they collaborated in bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City.
The main difference, IMO, is that extreme fundamentalist Christians generally live within stable, democratic Western republics which have benefited from the Enlightenment. (The countries in which Christian fundamentalism is most common are the U.S. and Australia.) On the other hand, fundamentalist Muslims generally come from theocratic or authoritarian societies.
To add to what I wrote, in the American South, up through the 1970s, lynchings of Blacks were often carried out with the support, even involvement, of law enforcement officers. From the standpoint of many African Americans living in the South at that time, the Southern states were terrorist states. All KKK groups, at least at the time, defined themselves as Christian - usually Southern Baptist.

I said McVeigh was influenced by extreme fundamentalist Christian groups (Christian Identity, to be specific). I don't have the time right now for a more thorough search, but here is what I am talking about:
"The man convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing reportedly was in contact with an Oklahoma [Christian] Identity compound just days before the disaster. Telephone records reveal that Timothy McVeigh placed two calls to Elohim City, a 22-year-old armed Identity enclave headed by Robert Millar. Millar admitted these calls were made, but denied speaking to McVeigh personally."
http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/identity_history.htm

The theonomy movement is quite small - even among postmillennialists. That is because it is difficult to establish religious extremism in democratic republics.

I would say that Christian Identity is an ideology which was involved in Timothy McVeigh's actions. However, as a sociologist, I don't equate any two situations. All contexts need to be examined on their own, but personally speaking, I also would not rank Mohammed Atta as worse than McVeigh either.

The British Muslim community has never been as well integrated into UK society as, for instance, the American Muslim community is integrated into U.S. society. In the U.S., American-born Islamic extremists tend to be socially marginalized individuals (bullied, imprisoned, etc.).

IMO, almost countless, mutually contradictory ideas can be supported from the Bible. (I interact everyday with biblical literalists on Paltalk.) That is because there is no such thing as the Bible. What people call the Bible is a compilation or, more precisely, about half a dozen different compilations (if one takes into account the various biblical canons). A person will emphasize a particular book or text, by a certain author, and then use that hermeneutic as the basis for interpreting texts written by other people ("word studies" and "proof texting").
That is not the best way to read texts. However, the doctrine of "verbal inerrancy," treating the Bible as a single inspired book, is a constant culprit in horrible exegeses.

Focusing so much energy of victimization being a mindset is just a round-about way of blaming the victim. Now, I am not advocating that people harbor resentments. However, overcoming hard feelings is, IMO, a separate issue from victimization. Unfortunately, much of modern pop psychology tries to conflate them.

The Christian creationists do not agree among themselves on creationism. There are numerous versions. There are young-earth, old-earth, gap, intelligent design, progressive, and day-age creationists. There are even creationists who believe that the earth is flat (seriously) and creationists who believe in geocentrism (in this case, that the earth is the center of the entire universe).

With respect to that last version, there was a guy on Paltalk who used to post this website all the time which tried to scientifically demonstrate that the earth was the center of the universe. It was quite entertaining. Here it is:

http://www.geocentricity.com/

And these are also weird:

http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/geocentr.htm

http://catholicintl.com/products/books/gwwprint.htm

The scientific method operates through induction (the process of elimination). Using induction, it is logically impossible to prove anything. Instead, the researcher disproves various possibilities in order to see if the alternative hypothesis holds up.

"Social studies" is the name for a high school subject. There is no academic field called "social studies." Religion is, in common sociological language, a name for constructions of belief and practice centered on the sacred. Again, it is not an academic field. However, religious studies is an interdisciplinary field of study. With psychology, it depends on whether one is speaking of clinicians or researchers. Are clinical psychologists researchers? Usually not, but they are in some cases.

"Science" is a construction. Just because the same word, science, is used to refer to the biological, physical, and social sciences does not mean that the methodology is the same. There is no such thing as "science." There are only different fields which developed various methods which are, more or less, all modified from physics.
Academic disciplines are moving in the direction of interdisciplinary cooperation. For instance, there is a good bet that psychiatry and neurology will eventually merge into a single field.
On the other hand, specialization cannot be avoided. The rate at which human knowledge is developing would make it impossible for any one person to be a complete generalist.

Yugoslavia, under Tito, came close in some respects to my vision of socialism. However, there was still too much statism and not enough localism. The country rapidy disintegrated after his passing. The collectivization under Mao was also, IMO, good in some ways. Again, though, there was too much statism.

I would like to see communities establish elected labor boards. Members of these boards could not hold management positions in any company (collectivized or not). They would make sure that businesses are worker owned and operated, or community owned and operated, or user owned and operated. Examples would include credit unions, some power utilities, and some small companies in which all workers are equal owners.

If three people say the same thing, at least two of them are cheating. (another of my pithy sayings)

The one thing we can count on is that tomorrow won't be today.

(I made that up, as far as I know ;-))

I label capitalism and fascism to be instances of false consciousness.

Local capitalism has been dying since the 1960s and 1970s. Entire downtown areas have shut down because of their inability to compete with the new Walmart, Target, or Kmart.

The concept of bureaucratic red tape comes out of Max Weber and his followers, and Weber was describing capitalist societies. I never said that socialism, as I conceive it, would have no bureaucratic red tape. I suggested that the elimination of large corporations would mean less of it.

I remember when Johnson proposed his Great Society model, which largely created the Welfare State in the U.S. He meant well, and he, like many in government, genuinely feared a race war. It had some positive impact, but it was basically just a band-aid on a system of economic contradiction, i.e., oppression.

IMO, whether most people want capitalism is irrelevant. As I see it, the majority of people are influenced by a false consciousness (capitalism as ideology). If people are asleep in a time of crisis, they need to be woken up. If people are victimized by a false consciousness, they need to have their consciousnesses raised.
My view of socialism is not more rules but fewer of them. To me, socialism implies localism, where people in cities, towns, and neighborhoods get to decide what they want and are free of the dominance of large corporations. The idea that socialism has more bureaucratic red tape do not reflect the views of myself or of most other socialists I know.
Capitalists construct socialism as a giant welfare state. I construct it as providing what people need and taking from people what they can offer. The welfare state is not socialism. It is protecting people from the consequences of capitalism.

The notion of "false consciousness" is Marxist populism, the opposite of elitism.

Economic contradiction is simply a term for oppression. The fact that they terms you do not wish to use does not mean they are "BS terms."

I really have no interest in debating you. When I have done so before, you have ended up attacking me personally. I am now intentionally being vague and matter of fact because of our previous discussion.

I think I know what he had in mind. I have been discussing this subject for many years and have run into people with all sorts of perspectives on Marxism. I reject false consciousness as elitist, since Marx presented it as a means of populist (proletarian) consciousness raising. If a person sees it as the stuff of the elitist intelligentsia, hardly an original objection, all I can do is explain what I think Marx was communicating.

IMO, it all depends on which collective delusion (read: language game) we want to buy into. I am using the word delusion to refer to a social construction. I care deeply about delusions (social constructions), especially those which conform to my vision of social justice.

Social justice, to me, is inclusion, including economic inclusion (socialism).

Same-sex relationships are ancient. It is the modern linguistic and social construction of homosexuality which is recent. I make little distinction between linguistic and social construction. Therefore, when I referred to linguistic reconstruction, I also assumed social reconstruction. I am a Foucaultian.

As a sociologist of religion, I am fascinated by deductive, or first-principles, religious systems, but I do not find triumphalism or exclusivism to be personally appealing. All deductive systems make sense out of experience (assuming one accepts the premises). However, they are also circular.

At least some researchers are moving toward classifying conditions, syndromes, etc. based on the brain centers where the neurotransmission is localized. From that standpoint, the fact that ASDs, OCD, semantic-pragmatic disorder, nonverbal learning disability, and others have high comorbidity rates may be significant.

I disagree with idea that, in taking a word and nuancing it, a person is demonstrating the power of the word in her or his life. I suggested the opposite: That taking words and redefining them can be an expression of personal and collective power.
For instance, many people involved in gay liberation call themselves "queer." The term "fat liberation movement" was coined by activists, not by opponents. The idea is taking a word, once used as an insult, and "owning" or reclaiming it. That way, it no longer has the original sting. The Society of Friends did something similar in adopting the term, Quakers (originally an insult).

Empirically, it cannot, in most cases, be a choice - unless one attributes advanced cognitive abilities to toddlers.As a nominalist, I distinguish between the tropes (or observable attributes of an entity) and the narratives by which those tropes can be linguistically constructed. The behavior which we today call homosexuality is ancient, but it was constructed differently. Likewise, when I was a child, the autism spectrum was constructed as childhood schizophrenia. In the early 20th century, alcoholism, or drunkenness, was constructed mostly as sin (prior to the incorporation of the medical model).
It is extraordinarily difficult, as a practical or empirical matter, to differentiate nature from nurture in many cases.
Homosexuals and lesbians exist, but homosexuality and lesbianism are social constructions. Since I limit existence to beings, my view is that social constructions of reality do not exist.

Copyright © 2002- Mark A. Foster, Ph.D. All rights reserved.