What is socially constructed? | Class vs. Identity, The Big Other and Second-Order Cybernetics
The “social construct” is a common buzz-word nowadays. We often times hear that various identity groups or concepts are socially constructed, sometimes with the implied notion that this makes them less important for our attention. But to simply separate all of our experience in a strictly binary way between “real” and “socially constructed” is an extreme oversimplification. For example, money is a social construct, but fiat money (with flexible exchange rates, post-1971) is, for lack of a better word, “more” of a social construct than money that is tied to a gold standard. In other words, there are layers to this. The aim of this essay is not to provide a complete system, theory or guide on how to separate what is real from what is socially constructed in a way that could explain everything. Rather, we will look at various specific themes of interest for our analysis and how they relate to the topic of social construction: Marxism and ideology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, the relatio
