The Social Construction Of Difference Pdf

[Aimon Jardine]

Theabove Social Identity Wheel includes some common categories for social characteristics in the middle oval. When it comes to social identity, each of us gets to determine our own. That means we determine which of our social characteristics, roles, and group memberships are most important to our own identities. While each of us gets to determine our own social identity, it is important to note that others may identify us differently than we identify ourselves. Our most notable physical aspects may signal something different than our personal lived experience.

For example, in this video about cultural humility (which will be defined and discussed in the next chapter), Dr. Melanie Tervalon describes her identity as an African American woman, the difference between how she sees herself and how others see her, and the right that each of us has to our own social identity.

The reasons for doubting the biological basis for racial categories suggest that race is more of a social category than a biological one. Another way to say this is that race is a social construction, a concept that has no objective reality but rather is what people decide it is. In this view, race has no real existence other than what and how people think of it.

This understanding of race is reflected in the problems of placing people with multiracial backgrounds into any one racial category. Would you consider former President Obama, White, Black, or multiracial? He had one Black parent and one White parent. As another example, the well-known golfer Tiger Woods was typically called an African American by the news media when he burst onto the golfing scene in the late 1990s, but in fact his ancestry is one-half Asian (divided evenly between Chinese and Thai), one-quarter White, one-eighth Native American, and only one-eighth African American.[5]

It is important to note that the social construction of gender is another widely accepted concept. In other words, the differences that we attribute to the biological designation of female, male, or intersex are actually predominantly constructed by our societal beliefs, and not by biology. The recent broadening of gender identity and expression clearly demonstrates this concept.

Other identities are also constructed via societal agreement. Sexuality, ability, religion, ethnicity, age, and other identities may contain some physical parameters, and certainly contain meaning to the individuals that possess them. Critical to our study of families, however, is the understanding that society creates and reinforces social construction of these characteristics and those constructions favor some groups, discriminate against others, and generally impact the lives of families.

Hierarchical value is assigned to perceived differences between one socially constructed idea and another. Class, race, and other hierarchies based on social identity are social constructions of difference.

An approach originally advanced by women of color that finds it critical to look at how identities and characteristics (such as ethnicity, race, gender, etc.) overlap and influence each other to create complex hierarchies of power and oppression.

The Social Construction of Difference Copyright 2020 by Elizabeth B. Pearce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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IES 102 - Social Construction of Difference Exploring the social construction of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability, students will examine how systems of stratification are formed, perpetuated, and interconnected through language and social institutions, such as schools, public policy, and media. Students will also consider how individuals might, within institutional contexts, play a transformative role in the social construction of difference. Some sections may be restricted to IES majors and IES and SEED minors only. (Offered every semester.) 3 credits

I would say the main thing to emphasize about norms is that they are a type of rule. Norms are a set of shared, informal expectations about how and in what ways individuals are meant to behave in society. They regulate our behaviour by creating standards for how we should be. Some are more setting specific, like using utensils to eat. Some are more general, like saying please and thank you. They are socially constructed because they are a product of the ideas and values that people hold and share as a group. They also only exist insofar as some group of people believes that a certain behavioural norm is useful or valuable in some way. However, not all social constructs are norms, because not all social constructs are rules, or can be summarized in terms of the rules they might utilize. Social constructs can also be abstract ideas/concepts, categories, and identities. There are norms that reflect and govern our understanding of gender, but gender is also an identity and a category of person, not just simply a set of behavioural expectations, although it includes such expectations. Less complicately, the idea of money is a social construct, but the use or non-use of money is a norm. Likewise, a religion is defined by the ideas and spiritual narrative it expresses and advocates, while adherence to a particular religion might be a norm.

A while ago a friend asked me to explain the difference between a social construct and a social norm. Since many people on social media seemed to find my answer helpful, I\u2019m sharing it here as well.

It is clear that the social construction of differences is used to divide people between privileged and oppressed. Differences between people is easy to identify. The conflict is when we choose to use these differences to perpetuate power dynamics that benefit some and hinder others.

Examples of the social construction of reality can be seen in many social institutions. A courthouse is just a building until a community agrees that it is a place for the practice of law, and laws are meaningless unless groups of people agree that they exist, and also agree to abide by and enforce them.

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A wealth of research has established clear gender differences in exposure to potentially traumatic events and in subsequent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One perspective that is missing from most conversations about gender differences in PTSD is a systematic discussion of gender role socialization, and relatedly, the social construction of gender within our society. The purpose of the present review is to provide exposure to these theories as they relate to gender differences in PTSD, including differences in trauma exposure, risk for the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms, and PTSD treatment outcome. In this review we focus on characteristics and behaviors that arise from a way of being in the world that is largely influenced by assigned gender. These include gender differences in patterns of trauma exposure, chronic environmental strain, behavioral responses to distress, cognitive factors, and the experience and expression of emotion. We posit that these different sets of factors reciprocally influence each other and combine synergistically to influence observed gender differences. The research reviewed here indicates that societal definitions of masculinity and femininity have psychological consequences in that they produce gender differences in major risk factors relevant to PTSD.

The social construction of gender is a theory in the humanities and social sciences about the manifestation of cultural origins, mechanisms, and corollaries of gender perception and expression in the context of interpersonal and group social interaction. Specifically, the social construction of gender theory stipulates that gender roles are an achieved "status" in a social environment, which implicitly and explicitly categorize people and therefore motivate social behaviors.[1][2]

Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge that explores the interplay between reality and human perception, asserting that reality is shaped by social interactions and perceptions. This theory contrasts with objectivism, particularly in rejecting the notion that empirical facts alone define reality. Social constructionism emphasizes the role of social perceptions in creating reality, often relating to power structures and hierarchies.

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