Social Construction and Grounding

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been (or could be) leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes (2014), Mari Mikkola (2015), and Jessica Wilson (2014).     

Double Reference Points: the Effects of Social and Financial Reference Points on Decisions Under Risk

The existing literature is inconsistent about how social comparison affects risk attitudes. We propose a framework where the total utility is composed of the social and financial utilities. The financial utility is consistent with prospect theory (i.e., an S‐shaped utility function with a financial reference point), whereas the social utility is affected by both social and financial reference points. Therefore, social risk attitudes are determined by interaction between gains/losses in both social and financial contexts. On the basis of safety‐first principle, we propose that when experiencing financial gains, individuals tend to seek upside potential and take social risks (i.e., a convex social utility function). In contrast, when facing financial losses, people would be more risk seeking in social gains but more risk averse in social losses to maximize security (i.e., an inverse S‐shaped utility function). We also propose that the relative importance of financial and social utilities depends on the saliency of the reference points and size of stakes. Studies 1 and 2 showed that individuals were risk seeking in both social gains and losses with social reference points alone. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that when both financial and social reference points were salient, participants were risk averse in both social gains and losses when facing financial gains, but risk seeking in social gains and risk averse in social losses when facing financial losses. The hypotheses derived from the theoretical framework were in general supported by our experiments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moral Realism,Social Construction,and Realism,Social Construction,and Communal Ontology

The paper examines two forms of naturalistic moral realism, “Microstructure realism” (MSR) and “Reason realism” (RR). The latter, as we defend it, locates the objectivity of moral facts in socially constructed reality, but the former, as exemplified by David Brink’s model of naturalistic moral realism, secures the objectivity of moral facts in their micro-structure and a nomic supervenience relationship. We find MSR’s parity argument for this account of moral facts implausible; it yields a relationship between moral facts and their natural-scientific constitution that has a queer, slapped-together quality. We argue that the relationship needs to be spelled out by a process of social construction, involving collective intentionality and constitutive rules. We explain how our constructivist model of RR differs from a form of it defended by Michael Smith (1994), which analyzes moral facts by reference not to construction but rather to a hypothetical situation of full rationality. We agree with Smith, as against Bernard Williams, that a rational agent may have reasons for acting that go beyond the agent’s “subjective motivational set,” but we locate such reasons by reference to the agent’s membership in an actual community, and we explore the prospects for moral objectivity given this constraint on moral reasons.     

美与和谐及其社会建构

从某种意义上说,美是一种和谐,和谐则是一种美的形态,或者说和谐亦是一种美。因此,和谐社会的建构离不开美与审美。如果说美学曾在20世纪80年代中国的现代性启蒙中扮演过先锋的角色,那么,在21世纪建设和谐社会的目标下,它将愈益发挥不可或缺的重要作用。然而,用审美(学)的观点去审视和谐社会的建构,应从何入手呢?本文拟从以下几个方面做一探讨:①人与自然的和谐;②人与社会的和谐;③人与人的和谐;④人自身身心的和谐。前三者是人与某种具体存在的和谐关系,后者则为人自身内在的心理和谐。因此,这四者又可归结为:外在关系的和谐及内在关系的…     

Labeling,Social Learning,and Positive Deviance: A Look at High Achieving Students

High achievers are an intriguing case in that they are often stigmatized by peers as rate-busters and concurrently adulated as positive deviants by their parents and teachers. Theories developed to explain negative deviants have potential to also illuminate positive deviance. High achievers were interviewed and both labeling theory and social learning theory were applied to explain aspects of their experiences.     

Social Construction of Illness

Abstract

There is no question that a diagnosis of cancer has a significant impact on anyone, however, certain aspects of American culture and particularly the medical culture exacerbate the impact. This article supports the notion that a woman's experience of cancer is, at least in part, socially constructed, political in nature, and therefore, uniquely disempowering to women. Those cultural forces affecting women with cancer include the stigma, the socially-embedded self-definitions, and the practices that dominate the medical-industrial complex. This article demonstrates how the use of social constructivist therapy can assist women in disengaging from these cultural forces while engaging in new ways of thinking and behaving that, in empirical studies, have resulted in decreased progression of disease, longer survival rates, and more effective coping with cancer.     

关于社会建设的内涵和外延——兼论当前中国社会建设的时代内容

在转变社会与自然、社会与个人付出双重代价的旧式现代性的发展方式,推进以人为本,把自然代价和社会代价减少到最低限度的新型现代性实践的过程中,社会建设发挥着不可替代的作用.社会建设的基本内涵可以理解为,在社会领域建立和完善对各种社会资源和社会机会进行合理配置的社会结构和社会机制,以及处理社会矛盾、社会问题和社会风险的创新机制.社会建设的外延从广义上说,是指包括政治、经济和思想文化各子系统在内的整个社会大系统的建设;从狭义上说,着重是指与政治、经济、思想文化各子系统并列的社会子系统的发展、建设和管理.社会建设对于弥补政府失灵和市场失灵、增进社会公平正义、奠定社会和谐的坚实基础,有着至关重要的意义.     

The PMS Illusion: Social Cognition Maintains Social Construction

This article reports the results of a preliminary study of ways that self-serving biases contribute to the maintenance of the cultural stereotype of the premenstrual woman. Self-serving biases such as illusory optimism and the false uniqueness effect lead individuals to believe that they are better than average and less likely to have negative experiences. Thus, even though individual women’s premenstrual symptoms are mild to moderate, they accept the stereotype because they believe that other women’s symptoms are worse than their own. Participants were 92 undergraduate women from two small colleges in southern New England. They completed measures of optimism, locus of control, and premenstrual symptoms and answered a series of questions about the incidence of PMS. Participants showed a significant tendency to believe that other women’s premenstrual symptoms are worse than their own. In addition, women who were high in optimism were significantly less likely to believe that they could be diagnosed with PMS, and they had significantly lower scores on the pain and behavior change subscales of the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire than did those low in optimism.     

The Self as Social Construction

The paper begins with the articulation of key assumptions central to contemporary constructionist scholarship. This is followed by an analysis of the issues in the social construction of the self. To this end several major lines of inquiry along with their socio-political implications are brought into focus. Finally, an alternative to traditional conceptions of self, one that emerges distinctly from social constructionist theory is presented.     

规则与自发秩序:哈耶克社会理论的构建

本文力图勾勒出哈耶克自发社会理论的建构过程。文章认为 ,哈耶克的社会理论由市场秩序到自发秩序观念的确立 ,再进展至自发秩序理论的完善 ,在这两大关键性步骤中 ,规则起了核心的作用。我们在梳理其自发秩序建构过程的同时 ,也力图使社会自发秩序的丰富内涵和构成要素得以展现出来。     

Attribution and Social Influence1

This article utilizes an attributional approach to explore genotypic similarities among Raven's (1965) 6 bases of power. Two scenarios describing a successful influence attempt leading to a good or a bad outcome were created. Following a randomized blocks design, 60 subjects in each condition read 6 explanations given by the target of influence that reflected the bases of power of Raven's taxonomy (reward, coercion, legitimate, referent, expert, and informational). Rating scales following each power basis explanation assessed the perceived causal dimensions of locus and controllability attributed to the target of influence's behavior and how much the behavior led, in the good and bad outcome conditions, respectively, to pride (guilt), self-esteem enhancement (decrement), responsibility (as perceived by self and by others), and gratitude (anger). The results revealed that reward, referent, and informational influence are genotypically similar and perceived as more internal and more controllable than expert, legitimate, and coercive influence. These perceptions, in turn, led to higher degrees of affective reactions, confirming the predictions of Weiner's theory (1986). The results are related to Milgram's (1963) obedience studies and Kelman and Hamilton's (1989) crimes of obedience. Comments on why reward and coercive influence were found to be genotypically distinct in this study are also presented. Implications of the actor/observer bias in studies of this nature are indicated.     

Contentious Freedom: Sex Work and Social Construction

In this article, Brison extends the analysis of freedom developed in Nancy J Hirschmann's book, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, to an area of controversy among feminist theorists: that of sex work, including prostitution and participation in the production of pornography. This topic raises some of the same issues concerning choice and consent as the three topics Hirschmann discusses in her book—domestic violence, the current welfare system in the United States, and Islamic veiling—but it also raises some distinct ones concerning the social construction of sexuality and possible conflicts between the freedom of some women (who may choose to engage in sex work) and the freedom of others (who may be harmed by the contribution of such work to the social construction of categories such as “women” and “sex”).     

A Personal Synthesis of Social Construction and Phenomenology

In this essay, I narrate five short stories about how I have encountered and struggled with social construction and phenomenology, as well as my ongoing synthesis of the two perspectives.     

论现代社会工作在和谐社会中的建构功能

社会工作不仅是一种“助人自助”的科学门类 ,更是现代社会制度安排的重要组成部分。在市场经济体制基本成型和社会急剧转型的条件下 ,社会体制的改革与和谐社会的构建无疑将成为我国现代化建设的重点课题。重视社会制度的安排 ,重视社会管理体制与社会服务体制的改革和创新 ,是和谐社会建构的应有之义。这里 ,现代社会工作的社会体制建构功能与社会服务建构功能则是不可或缺的。作为现代社会制度组成部分的社会工作现代社会工作是世界工业化和现代化的必然产物 ,是现代社会解决社会问题、维护社会稳定的科学方法与社会制度。作为一门关于“…     

The Social Construction of Copyright Ethics and Values

This study is based on analysis of copyright policies and 26 interviews with science and engineering faculty at three research universities on the topic of copyright beliefs, values, and practices, with emphasis on copyright of instructional materials, courseware, tools, and texts. Given that research universities now emphasize increasing external revenue flows through marketing of intellectual property, we expected copyright to follow the path of patents and lead to institutional emphasis of policies and practices that enhanced universities’ intellectual property portfolios, accompanied by an increase in copyrighting by professors. Although this pattern occurred with regard to institutions, professors offered a more varied pattern, with some fully participating in commercialization of copyright and embracing entrepreneurial values, while others resisted or subverted commercial activity in favor of traditional science and engineering values.     

The Social Construction of Human Kinds

Social construction theorists face a certain challenge to the effect that they confuse the epistemic and the metaphysical: surely our conceptions of something are influenced by social practices, but that doesn't show that the nature of the thing in question is so influenced. In this paper I take up this challenge and offer a general framework to support the claim that a human kind is socially constructed, when this is understood as a metaphysical claim and as a part of a social constructionist debunking project. I give reasons for thinking that a conferralist framework is better equipped to capture the social constructionist intuition than rival accounts of social properties, such as a constitution account and a response‐dependence account, and that this framework helps to diagnose what is at stake in the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents. The conferralist framework offered here should be welcomed by social constructionists looking for firm foundations for their claims, and for anyone else interested in the debate over the social construction of human kinds.     

Material Aid and Social Attraction1

Aid programs can be used as an antidote to social conflict. Under certain conditions, however, they may create hostility. In this experiment subjects representing six hypothetical countries (1) either received or did not receive material aid from a seventh nation and (2) had a high or low level of material need. Attraction for the aid-giver decreased markedly when aid was denied, but increased very little when it was granted. When subjects were high in material needs, the denial of aid produced maximal antagonism. However, when aid was received, high need did not enhance attraction to the donor. The implications of these findings for an exchange theory of attraction and for aid giving are discussed.