The Social Construction of What? by Veronica Mancheno

Instructions

veronicamancheno1 — 2023-10-14 13:10:30 UTC

Include:
1. Key terms & definitions
2. Key ideas.
3. Salient quotes
4. Questions

Ch. 1

2023-10-14 15:48:29 UTC

Hacking calls for a more complex understanding of constructivism and explores the dangers of it and the excessive reliance on relativism. He claims it makes it difficult to critique anything when everything is considered a social construct. When this happens, real things become reduced. While some find social constructivism liberating, Hacking states it can lead to historical revisionism in cases like the Holocaust. He contemplates ideas, theories, and objects with issues of gender, anorexia, women refugees, emotions, and even subatomic particles like quarks. "Constructivists tend to maintain that classifications are not determined by how the world is, but are convenient ways in which to represent it. They maintain that the world does not come quietly wrapped up in facts....It is a species of nominalism" p.33. He does not all together argue against constructivism as he sees the value in raising consciousness.

Chapter 6: Weapons Research

carolinerobbins7_ — 2023-10-14 15:50:42 UTC

Key terms and definitions:

Weapons = the whole gamut of military technology (the system of a weapon)

Weapons: a product of human knowledge; making our world

Key ideas:

We live a different world than in the past, because of our knowledge

Claim: weapons = major area of knowledge production; development and research in US since WWII

IQ testing in the US emerged through military research

Links this research and development to IQ test -- how the form of science is altered

Distinctions between nominalism (we organize what we call a fact; IQ test is social construction) and realism (the world is made up of facts; IQ test is objective)

Weapons research / military funding have led to great spinoffs unrelated to war

Humans learn more in times of war and conflict than other times

Knowledge can be used for good or evil

Salient quotes:

"our conceptions of possibilities are themselves determined by new knowledge" (p. 167)

"I am thus concerned not with the use of knowledge but with its creation" (p. 167)

Questions:

How do we know a concept or system to be good or bad? (Good news / bad news -- who knows?)

Have good things come out of weapons research / military funding?

How does this relate to the many wars and conflicts happening right now? (Devastation and heartbreak)

Chapter 8: The End of Captain Cook

2023-10-14 15:51:12 UTC

Key terms & definitions: culture wars=conflicts between cultures, multiculturalism=multiple cultures within a system/society
Key ideas: Digging deeper into the history and stories from both the Europeans and the Hawaiians. Looking at evolution of practices in social settings with the arrival of a different form of power.
Salient quotes: ‘‘One of the most enduring ideas in Western culture is that of the redoubtable person coming from Europe to a savage land, a harbinger of civilization who remains immune to sav- age ways, maintaining his integrity and identity’’ (Obeyeskere 1992a, 11)pg. 209.
This impassioned debate about ‘‘what actually happened’’ appears de- ceptively simple. Either (1) Hawaiians recognized Cook as a god, almost on arrival (Sahlins), or (2) they were not plain stupid and, after killing Cook, found it politically convenient, given local power struggles, to deify him (Obeyesekere) pg. 210.
Questions: If doing research on a topic similar to this, would you follow more of a content analysis path?

Chapter 5

2023-10-14 15:51:22 UTC

The author discusses child abuse based on different constructional frames, such as cruelty, sex, liberation, counting, and export, based on the historical period.
The author criticized the statement child abuse is a real evil in a different chapter, and he analyzed child abuse by using the frame of kind-making to view the case of child abuse.

Quote: There is a certain ambiguity in the idea of selecting and organizing kinds. We can think about kinds using simple and stylized examples or using ones that are complex and lively. Timeless abstract illustrations have a central place in philosophy, whose proper study is the right and the good.

I don't know why the author viewed child abuse as an example through historical periods.

Ch 7 Rocks

2023-10-14 15:53:49 UTC

Terms: Dolomite, limestone. Substantive uniformitarianism = the idea that the Earth has remained the same since it was formed.
Dolomite provides a counter example - it is a rock with debated origins from 1791. It is produced by magnesium replacement in calcium carbonate in limestone producing pores.
Through time geologists have sought to find how, when and where it is produced. More recently dolomite has become useful in finding petroleum deposits, but geologists are still perplexed.
"Does dolomite provide a window through which to look back on our past?"
"Maybe what is particular to dolomite is not only mineralogical but also biological: it just grows in regions in which nearly all modern life forms are severely stressed." It is being formed in places where people don't want to be.
How much of what we see in science is skewed by the social context of the importance of the subject over time?

Chapter 4: Madness: Biological or Constructed?

2023-10-14 15:54:03 UTC

1. Key Terms
a) transient mental illness: mental illness that only shows up in some times and places
b) interactive kinds: people acting under classification
c) indifferent kinds: things that don't change no matter their classification
d) biolooping: mind/body effect

2. Key Ideas: The idea that something can be both "real" and "socially constructed." Hacking's examples of mental retardation, schizophrenia, and autism--he poses that these have always existed and are "real," but our social construction of them has changed over time--including how we classify people who share characteristics of these disorders, how they are viewed/treated, and how that may affect how individuals change their behavior (looping effect of human kinds).

3. Salient Quotes:
"What difficult terrain we enter! One of the reasons that I dislike talk of social construction is that it is like a miasma, a curling mist within which hover will-o' wisps luring us to destruction. Yet such talk will no more go away than will our penchant for talking about reality. There are deep-seated needs for both ideas" (p. 101).

"How does the making and molding of an interactive kind, be it child abuse or autism, help to make up people? How do people make themselves up, as they act in ways that conform to, or stay away from, powerful classifications?" (p. 123).

4) Questions:
Thoughts on transient vs. mental illness that shows up in all times and places

What makes knowledge absolute vs. socially constructed?

Chapter 3: What about the Natural Sciences?

2023-10-14 15:54:52 UTC

Natural science: chemistry, physics, molecular biology
Social constructionism: sociology of of scientific knowledge; social studies of science, etc.

Sticking points: "Separating out some fundamental disagreements about natural science that are made contemporary by using the phrase 'social construct'." (Hacking, p. 63)
Science Wars about?: Aristotle and Plato
Sticking point #1: Contingency
Sticking point #2: Nominalism
Sticking point #3: Explanation of stability
Anti-Authority by Unmasking
Kuhn and Feyerabend

"Kuhn did a great deal to undermine the ideology of science." (p. 97)
Feyerabend did not unmask the ideology of science, he just opposed it. (p. 98)
"The very set of questions that led us to the Second Law or the Equations were formed by certain directions set by religion, empire, and industry." (p. 87)

This knowledge is accumulated mainly by men (I assume). I would like to see paradigms of knowledge that represent women's views on such questions.

Chapter 4 - Madness: Biological or Constructed?

2023-10-14 15:56:13 UTC

Key Terms:
Natural Kind- Something indifferent, something that is acted upon.
Indifferent Kind- Something that does not alter its actions or thoughts after being classified.
Interactive Kind- Something that does alter its actions and thoughts to match or distance itself from the classification it has been given.
Biolooping- Changes in mental state altering physical state.

Salient Quotes:
“What grade of social constructionism do we reach? Irony and reformism, certainly, but also unmasking: the idea of mental retardation (and all those other names just listed [ill-balanced, idiots, imbeciles, morons, feeble minded, mental deficients, moral imbeciles, subnormal, retardates] being part of an ideology whose extra theoretical function (Mannheim) was to control difficult children, divert them away from schools or school buses into institutions or regiments of treatment. And the retarded have fought back.” (Hacking p. 111)

“California’s programs provide a wonderful illustration of how interactive kinds work. First, the classification has become embedded in a complex matrix of institutions and practices wherein a certain number of children, designated in a certain way, must be assigned to every class, although they are removed from the class for more individualized tuition. The regular teachers complain bitterly that the result is class disruption; the specially educated know how they are classified; they develop not only individual but collective new patterns of behavior. One can make a strong prediction that not only will the procedures be modified, but also the ways in which these children are classified will be modified because of new kinds of behavior that has emerged” (Hacking, pps. 111-112).

Questions:
I am very interested in how different labels interact with each other and the child. Does a child who is labeled Autistic and Gifted interact with both labels? What kind of identity is constructed? Will other children with similar interlacing labels react the same way? Will there be a “kind” of gifted autistic children?

Ch. 3: Natural Science as a Social Construct?

2023-10-14 15:56:13 UTC

Key Terms:
-Contingency theory: scientific theories are contingent on historical, cultural and social factors
-Nominalism: denies the existence of universals for explaining the nature of reality.
-natural science: chemistry, physics, molecular biology

Key ideas:
-the way we frame and categorize scientific knowledge can be influenced by social factors.
-deductiblity, translatability and equivalence are not transparent ideas/they don't always come to the same conclusion
-Kuhn was a constructionist

Quotes:
-a counter to natural science as a social construct: "any intelligent alien anywhere would have come upon the same logical system as we have to explain the structure of protons and the nature of supernovae" (pg 75).

-The constructionist holds that explanations for the stability of scientific research belief involve elements that are external to the professed content of the science. These elements typically include social factors, interests networks, or however they be described" (pg 92).

This made me think of numbers. Is there the same number of trees in a forest if a person is not there to count them?

Chapter 2: Too Many Metaphors Bridgette & Natalie

2023-10-14 15:56:58 UTC

Key terms & definitions:
Unmasking: undermining a thesis by displaying its extra-theoretical function (p. 56)

Key ideas:
Sites Danzinger for how the construction of a metaphor can be used/applied to social science four kinds of entity: a concept or idea, a practice, a body of knowledge; and individuals themselves (pp. 50-51)

metaphor of unmasking vs exposing vs refuting (p. 56)

Salient quotes:

Question:
Clarify the diffference logical positivism vs constructionists?

Insight into a statement: "Constuctivists, constructionists and constructionalists live in different intellectual millieus" (p. 48)

Ch 5 – kind Making: The Case of Child Abuse

2023-10-14 15:58:51 UTC

Nelson Goodman - Kind-Making- Has to do with how we qualify, classify, sort and categorizes types of socially constructed concepts as they arise

Key ideas

Cruelty to Children Vs. Child Abuse – what was believed only happed to impoverished children was happening in the homes of all social classes- comes to light as a social epidemic
-Kinds of abuse continue to be defined and categorized – battery, sexual, emotional, fetal, people

Prevention and prosecution - New "kinds" of problems arise due to lack of foresight of a plan to support victims and rehabilitate perpetrators in a respectful way
-Pediatricians become the experts- what can be "proved"

Labels become part of identity of victims and perpetrators

Quote p 162
"Child abuse is a new kind that has changed the past of many people, and so changed their very sense of who they are and how they have come to be"

Questions –

Ways we continue to define “kinds” of abuse today?
How might more kind-making lead to people concealing behaviors?
Instead of people just being deviant by lack of knowledge, their own history of abuse or curiosity, do we have an increase in not just cruelty but a conscious desire to be so, to abuse? This is the question that scares me and made me want to avoid the topic yet also drew me to seek understanding of the implications of kind-making

Reflection...

2023-10-28 15:56:24 UTC

How do I know my bias is not clouding my judgment or lens to look at things objectively? Self-knowledge section on page 161 from Hacking.