Abstract
The idea of the constructed character of social reality implies human contribution to institutional arrangements and cultural patterns that determine the shape of collective existence. The article examines the specific features of social construction seen and studied in phenomenological approach by A. Schutz, P. Berger, Th. Luckmann. The concept reveals significance of daily cognitive style which enables people to structure and understand the world they share with others, escaping situations fraught with gaps of meanings and anomy. The author of the article analyzes the process of social construction, distinguishing it from imaginary building of reality that goes beyond the existed order. Reality of daily life is compared with fictional society represented in J.L. Borges’ “Lottery in Babylon”. Telling about the social construction as it may be, the story demonstrates the similarities between the mental procedures that underlie real and antiutopian (inhuman) routines. The article also centers on peculiarities of phenomenological beholder’s attitude towards sociality. On the one hand, it tends to be free from any theoretical abstractions, imaginary constructions or critical destruction of reality, on the other - inclines to transcend the reified forms of social being and engenders a certain critical message.
Highlights
Construction and social imaginationConstructing means elaborating artifacts well adapted to certain physical and social environment
As social phenomenologists describe it, people usually trust the ontological structure of the world, which is open for their projects under certain circumstances, lets them explain everything on the ground of constant links between events
The concept of social constructionism illustrates an idea that social reality is not a mechanically compiled assembly where one can change or dismiss structural parts as one likes, but primarily a continuum of interactions supported by interlinked mental processes, responsible for human identification and sense of belonging
Summary
Constructing means elaborating artifacts well adapted to certain physical and social environment. Utopian space is constructed in fictional conversation either between utopians and their guests, or between the travelers to utopian world and their supposed audience In both cases an imaginary society exists in a narrative within a point of view of benevolent beholder who cares about human needs as well as about perfect order that guarantees human welfare and freedom from oppression. Construction of social reality does not amount to only purposeful projects directed to the future of different scope and content. Social phenomenologists find it in a sphere which apparently lacks both social imagination and innovative intellectual activities. That is in the sphere of daily routine where everybody turns out to be contributors to creation of social reality in its familiar and unproblematic form
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