The Social Construction of What?
A Sociology, Reference, Anthropology book. Hacking gets a 4 for his choice of subject, 2 for his thinking, and 1...
Lost in the raging debate over the validity of social construction is the question of what, precisely, is being constructed. Facts, gender, quarks, reality? Is it a person? An object? An idea? A theory? Each entails a different notion of social construction, Ian Hacking reminds us. His book explores an array of examples to reveal the deep issues underlying contentious accounts of reality.Especially troublesome in this dispute is the status of the natural sciences, and this is where Hacking finds some of his most telling cases, from the conflict between biological and social approaches to mental illness to vying accounts of current research in sedimentary geology. He looks at the issue of child abuse--very much a reality, though the idea of child abuse is a social product. He also cautiously examines the ways in which advanced research on new weapons influences not the content but the form of science. In conclusion, Hacking comments on the "culture wars" in anthropology,...
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 272 pages
- ISBN: 9780674004122 / 674004124
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More About The Social Construction of What?
Hacking gets a 4 for his choice of subject, 2 for his thinking, and 1 for his dog-shit writing. This is only for the skeptics of "social construction". Not worth the time otherwise. Hacking is remarkable for taking very seriously, with fascinating examples, a topic that many scientists would blow off. He distills much of the social construction literature to three simply put, but not so simple, questions about the nature of scientific facts: What is the role of nominalism? ----->(To what extent are scientific facts...
