Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique

by Sally Haslanger

Contemporary theorists use the term "social construction" with the aim of exposing how what's purportedly "natural" is often at least partly social and, more specifically, how this masking of the social is politically significant. In these previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory to explore and develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. On this interpretation, the point of saying that gender and race are socially constructed is not to make a causal claim about the origins of our concepts of gender and race, or to take a stand in the nature/nurture debate, but to locate these categories within a realist social ontology. This is politically important, for by theorizing how gender and race fit within different structures of social relations we are better able to identify and combat forms of systematic injustice.

Although the central essays of the book focus on a critical social realism about gender and race, these accounts function as case studies for a broader critical social realism. To develop this broader approach, several essays offer reworked notions of ideology, practice, and social structure, drawing on recent research in sociology and social psychology. Ideology, on the proposed view, is a relatively stable set of shared dispositions to respond to the world, often in ways that also shape the world to evoke those very dispositions. This looping of our dispositions through the material world enables the social to appear natural.

Additional essays in the book situate this approach to social phenomena in relation to philosophical methodology, and to specific debates in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language. The book as a whole explores the interface between analytic philosophy and critical theory.

Genres: Philosophy, Feminism, Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Gender, Politics

512 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2012

About the author

Sally Haslanger is Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

[saml · Rating 3 out of 5]

finally finished this. it's too long by half. very repetitive: the papers should be read individually, the book should not be read as a book. the length allows haslanger to cover over every subject it possesses in billowy good sense, persistently and unobtrusively. this makes it hard to endorse or critique. i was mainly interested because it contains some of the loci classici of conceptual engineering, so this material was my favourite. it is less revisionary as some of the lore about it has suggested: it treats ameliorative definitions as basically for the most part descriptively accurate. this renders the amelioration far more plausible, though it leaves the social constructionist proposals open to empirical critique, as for instance about folk race concepts (or conceptions, or whatever). i also quite liked the supremely personal section on interracial adoption, somehow. there's a persisting tone of sobriety and openness combined with a slightly embarrassing, sort of teacherly wokeness which i associate with analytic feminist philosophy. this has it in buckets; it's quite comforting after a while, really

[Emily Jayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book thoroughly unpacks an overused concept, social construction, especially as it pertains to gender and race. I would say it is a necessary read if you want to be confident in your use of the term in an academic context. It is, however, a collection of separately published papers on similar themes. So if you read it front to back like I did, you might find it repetitive at times.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

manchmal scheint es so zu sein, als hätten sie in der analytischen Philosophie gestern Abend fix angefangen, ein bisschen zu lesen

[FluffyNyctea]

Please stop please analytic philosophers I beg you, stop yapping!!! Y’all can turn the most interesting issues into the most horrifying arguments…

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really really enjoyed reading someone who takes critical theory seriously and writes with analytic rigor, Haslanger is truly one of the goats.

[Daniel O. Oni]

Incredibly hard to not see analytic social philosophy as inherently hamstrung.