Citation

Mallon R. Philosophy Compass 2007; 2(1): 93-108.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00051.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A wide range of discussions throughout the humanities and social sciences include claims that various phenomena are “socially constructed.” Many academics associate “social constructionism” with the so-called “science wars” in which social constructionism is identified with some sort of radical anti-realism about reality in general, or the findings of science in particular. But the move to radical anti-realism is only one way to develop the central idea of constructionism – that human decision and human culture exert profound and often unnoticed influence – and much of this work remains interesting and provocative within a broadly naturalist and realist framework. Here the author reviews and explores a variety of constructionist claims, including the plausible suggestion that social constructionist hypotheses have special purchase in discussions of human kinds.