The Dictionary of Human Geography

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stock of accumulated obligations that can yield

economic returns to the individual holder,

either on an everyday basis or as investment in

social relations with expected returns in the

marketplace – hence, rendering the cultural into

a form that is fungible with the economic.

While Bourdieu also emphasizes the fungi-

bility of different forms ofcapital(academic,

cultural, social, symbolic) and the reduction of

all forms ultimately to economic capital,

defined as accumulated human labour, his

writing also reveals that ‘social capital’ –

relations ofabstracttrust and reciprocity (dis-

playing qualities of a quasi-public good) that

inhere in society and facilitate economic trans-

actions – as a social resource is: (a) a positive

externalitygenerated by a large number of

individuals able to pursue conduct that they

believe, given their semiotic universe, will earn

them social distinction; (b) an unintended

normative outcome that congeals through a

long history of repeated interaction, rather

than something that can be purposively manu-

factured in a relatively short time span (as

some policy-oriented social theorists and their

institutional backers are prone to claim); and

(c) always anchored to aplaceand acommu-

nity, and as such, containing the potentially

coercive elements of socialsurveillanceand

pressure to conform, backed by the threats of

social exclusion and excommunication

(Gidwani, 2002). vg

Suggested reading

Bebbington, Guggenheim, Olson and Woolcock

(2004); Portes (1998).

social construction The idea that the social

context of individuals and groups constructs

the reality that they know, rather than an inde-

pendent material world. Knowledge is always

relative to the social setting of the inquirers

(cf.relativism), the outcome of an ongoing,

dynamic process of fabrication (anti-realism).

Further, social construction applies as much

to forms of specialized understanding (e.g.

high-energy physics) as it does to everyday,

taken-for-granted knowledge.

Antecedents of social constructionism are

found in Plato, but it was Karl Marx (1818–

83) who established an intellectual agenda

with his claim that the interests of the domin-

ant socialclass(the bourgeoisie) shaped indi-

vidual beliefs (seeideology). Marx (1904,

preface) wrote: ‘It is not the consciousness of

men [sic] that determines their social being,

but, on the contrary, their social being that

determines their consciousness.’ Antonio

Gramsci’s (1891–1937) theory ofhegemony

developed Marx’s idea by arguing that even

seemingly humdrum commonsense thinking

was socially produced and, because they could

not think otherwise, resulted in the working

class consenting to their own domination.

But the most direct statement of social con-

struction was provided in 1966 by two

American sociologists, Peter Berger and

Thomas Luckman. This was significant in

two ways. First, it provided a simple and

remarkably popular sketch of what they called

‘the social construction of reality’(there were

more complicated versions: Luckmann was

keenly interested in Alfred Schu ̈tz’s constitu-

tivephenomenologyand the production of

thelifeworld). Second, it located social con-

struction within the sociology of knowledge.

‘Insofar as all human ‘‘knowledge’’ is devel-

oped, transmitted and maintained in social

situations,’ Berger and Luckmann (1966,

p. 3) wrote, ‘the sociology of knowledge is

concerned with the analysis of the social con-

struction of reality’.

Using the example of religion, Berger and

Luckmann argued that social interaction,

bolstered by associated institutions such as

the church, constructs knowledge, taking on

causal powers and entering everyday life rou-

tines. This insight was later applied byscience

studiesto the physical world, nature, rocks

and quarks (Pickering, 1984). On the surface,

nature appears fixed and constant, to be ‘out

there’, and not dependent upon social beliefs.

But science studies contend that scientific

knowledge is no different from any other kind

of knowledge. Social context operates by shap-

ing the scientific techniques, equipment and

forms of reasoning used by scientists to erect

particular constructions ofnature(and link-

ing with situated knowledge that also

emphasizes the world-making constructions

of scientists and their technology). That scien-

tific knowledge is socially constructed does not

make it wrong, however. What iswrong is

belief in a science that escapes the influence

of its social setting. Rocks and quarks do not

express themselves in their own terms, but

only in the terms of the scientists who speak

for them, and thus thesocial worlds that those

scientists inhabit.

Social construction has had a diffuse but, in

some respects, a widespread influence in

human geography. The first engagements

with Berger and Luckmann’s theses remained

close to their origins in sociology and were

confined to their implications for social

geography, particularly by those sailing under

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SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION