Objectivation Social reality acting back on us
This is the second and most critical stage of reality construction. Objectivation takes place when the facts that were initially someone's ideas or theories take on an objective reality of their own, independent of the people who first created (externalized) them. (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). It is a clear fact in the minds of most people these days that alcoholism is, and always has been, an illness. As this fact develops in to part of the public consciousness and is identified and reinforced in everyday conversation, we as a group fail to remember that somebody or some group originally thought it up. The idea turns into a reality that has existed for all time. It becomes what "everyone knows" to be true. (Berger & Luckmann 1966)
The trouble though, is that ideas are often communicated, externalized, and believed as truth by the general public with no association involving the objectified knowledge and hard facts.
Internalization Learning about social reality
This is the course through which people learn the objectified facts of a way of life and make it a part of their own internal consciousness. (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
Berger and Luckman (1967) see language as being the most important aspect of social constructionism as it is the means by which every individual interprets new experiences. Internally, language gives us the categories we use to make sense of certain phenomena.
Relating this to sexuality, social constructionism suggests that it is created by culture. That the defining of some behaviours as ‘sexual’ are learned by definitions or scripts (language) by members of the society (Gagnon, 1990). Foucault (1978) applied social constructionsim to sexuality. He suggested that sexuality is not an ‘essence’ or a ‘biological quality’ whose traits are the same across space and time. He suggests that sexuality is a construct. It is derived from language or discourse. Gagnon (1990) also argued that institutions in society have an ‘instructional system’ about sexuality.
This point of view rules out the basic biological nature of human sexuality. Heterosexuality is significantly the most widespread form of sexual activity in every known society. This therefore suggests that a persons sexual orientation is embedded in their biological nature. (Harris, 1981)
From a Darwinian perspective, anatomical structures occur and this is because they are adaptive. The males have penises and women have vaginas. These structures surely must have evolved together as they fit so smoothly together. This suggests that the human brain must have evolved along with these creations to give both the male and female the necessary drives to want to have sexual intercourse. If not, surely the species would be extinct. This suggests that our species is biologically familiar with its sexuality or it would not have existed for this long. (Stein 1992)
In conclusion then, the social constructionist thesis suggests that the only means of accurately understanding people is to study them as part of the fabric of social life (Burr, 1997). Kuhn’s idea of social constructionism is much the same, as he states “knowledge is intrinsically the common property of a group or else nothing at all" (1970, p. 210). These ideas do not mean that people do not have their own ideas. It means that people's ideas are ultimately recognised to have meaning by their social context. Social constructionism seems to claim to be able to describe the social world without alternative to any concept of the individual person or psyche (Burr, 1997). All we are as individuals seems explainable by means of the action of language and dialogue.
Ultimately, if truth is socially constructed, then social constructionism is socially constructed, and therefore only true to the culture that constructs it.
References
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The Social construction of Reality: A
Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin
Burr, V. (1997). Social Constructionism and Psychology, The New
Psychologist. OUPS: Milton Keynes
Conrad, P., & Schneider, J. W. (1980). Deviance and medicalization: From
badness to sickness. St. Louis: C. V. Mosby.
Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. (R. Hurley
trans). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Gagnon, J. H. (1990). The explicit and implicit use of the scripting perspective
in sex research. Annual Review of Sex Research, 1, 1-43.
Harris, M. (1981). America Now: The Anthropology of a Changing Culture.
New York: Simon & Schuster
Jackson, P., and Penrose, J. (eds.) (1993) Constructions of Race, Place and
Nation. London: University College Press
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago
Pocock, D. (1995). Searching for a better story: Harnessing modern and
postmodern positions in family therapy. Journal of Family Therapy,
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Stein, E. (Eds.) (1990). Forms of desire: Sexual orientation and the
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