ABSTRACT
Social reality is currently a hotly debated topic not only in social science, but also in philosophy and the other humanities. Finn Collin, in this concise guide, asks if social reality is created by the way social agents conceive of it? Is there a difference between the kind of existence attributed to social and to physical facts - do physical facts enjoy a more independent existence? To what extent is social reality a matter of social convention.
Finn Collin considers a number of traditional doctrines which support the constructivist position that social reality is generated by our 'interpretation' of it. He also examines the way social facts are contingent upon the meaning invested in them by social agents; the nature of social convention; the status of social facts as symbolic; the ways in which socially shared language is claimed to generate the reality described, as well as the limitations of some of the over-ambitious popular arguments for social constructivism.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |22 pages
Introduction
part |78 pages
The Broad Arguments
chapter |22 pages
Ethnomethodology
chapter |17 pages
The Cultural Relativity Argument
chapter |17 pages
The Linguistic Relativity Argument
part |4 pages
Summary of Part One
part |120 pages
The Narrow Arguments
chapter |22 pages
The Argument from the Symbolic Nature of Social Facts
chapter |32 pages
The Argument from Convention
part |4 pages
Summary of Part Two
part |16 pages
Methodological Implications of Constructivism