Process Of Social Construction Research Articles

SME’s, energy efficiency, innovation: a reflection on materials and energy transition emerging from a research on SMEs and the practice of Energy Audit

The paper presents some results emerging from the EC funded INNOVEAS project, particularly from a study on the non-economic factors that prevent (or facilitate) the adoption of energy efficiency measures and energy audits by SMEs. This study and its results are relevant for a reflection on the role of SMEs for the adoption of new business practices and technologies (including materials) that are conducive to a green transition. Attention will be paid also to those obstacles and facilitating factors that are relevant for the promotion of the circular economy – which is also, in fact, a strategy for achieving energy efficiency. The paper is based on the view that materials are a special type of technology and, as such, are the result of a social construction process. From this angle, materials can be thought of also by considering the actors involved in the process of their development and use. The life cycle of materials, in particular, must be analyzed also considering the role that different actors play in it; not only the technical characteristics of the materials have to be considered, but also the social context of development and application of materials. Such assumptions can be used also for interpreting the role of the actors in the challenges that contemporary societies are facing, particularly the promotion of energy saving and of the circular economy and more generally the transition towards decarbonization and dematerialization. In this paper, the focus is on a particular type of actors, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). They constitute a plethora of economic actors operating in numerous production sectors and at different levels of the value chains. SMEs orientations are important for achieving a better knowledge of the cycle of materials, especially in relation to the possibility of directing it towards the pursuit of environmental objectives such as energy saving and the circular economy. The paper stresses that considering the role of SMEs in such wide social and economic innovation process should illustrate peculiar aspects of the “internal” life of SMEs (culture, organizational skills, etc.) as well as the interaction with other actors within the context of operation of SMEs.

Construction of Social Reality in Fiction and Phenomenology of Everyday Life

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.

Las teorías del conflicto y fenomenológica En el análisis sociojurídico del derecho

Se realiza, a partir del análisis e investigación de un caso judicial, mediático y político, un ejercicio teórico para demostrar la trascendencia de las teorías sociológicas del conflicto y fenomenológica en el análisis sociojurídico del Derecho. Estas teorías son incorporadas en un modelo de sociología integral, de las dimensiones macrosociológica y microsociológica de la vida social, que potencian un marco teórico más idóneo y completo para ser utilizado por la sociología jurídica. El análisis del caso estudiado demostrará que el Derecho penal es utilizado por un grupo social de un modo selectivo/discriminatorio, como un instrumento de poder en un contexto de conflicto social y político, por medio de un proceso de construcción social de la realidad que recurre a imaginarios, definiciones, interpretaciones e imágenes, con el propósito de neutralizar y excluir a otro grupo social competidor en el escenario político electoral.

The Social Origins of ESG: An Analysis of Innovest and KLD

This article uses the study of two environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data vendors—KLD and Innovest—to exemplify the “social origins of ESG issues” argument made by Eccles and Stroehle in their 2018 working paper “Exploring Social Origins in the Construction of ESG Measures.” Based on in-depth interviews with the organizations’ founders and historical document analysis, we recap the history of the cases and show how different origins, philosophies, and “purposes” of ESG issues shaped the methods and data characteristics of two of the most important data vendors of their time. We discuss why MSCI chose to continue with the financial value–oriented methodology of Innovest while discontinuing the values-driven KLD methodology. Through an in-depth literature analysis, we further show that not only the creation but also the use of “nonfinancial performance” concepts rely on processes of social construction. We also show that investors use different ESG data from those used by academics, potentially leading to misaligned narratives. Finally, with this article we join the call for more explicit contextualization of ESG data, highlighting that both practitioners and academics need to better understand the social construction that underlies analyses that use different concepts of ESG.

Who is the student athlete? Focusing on positioning in the campus unrest period in Japan

This study aims to clarify the process by which student athletes in Japan were socially classified during the period of campus unrest. To this end, a constructionist discourse analysis was conducted using newspaper and magazine articles, as well as materials published by the Japanese Ministry of Education. This analysis revealed two key factors in this social construction process: first, there was public concern regarding the thuggery exhibited by student athletes during the campus unrest period; second, there was public concern regarding the semi-professionalisation of student athletes during the subsequent university reforms. These factors engendered the perception of student athletes as thuggish and disinterested in their studies, which in turn negatively affected the activities and organisational structures of varsity teams. Eventually, this perception prompted student athletes to be dubbed ‘sport council types’ (taiikukai-kei), solidifying their social classification as a special category distinct from regular students.

Social and cultural construction processes involved in HPV vaccine hesitancy among Chinese women: a qualitative study

BackgroundHPV vaccine is a prophylactic vaccine to prevent HPV infections. Recommended by the World Health Organization, this vaccine is clinically proven to be one of the most effective preventive measures against the prevalence of cervical cancer and other HPV-associated cancers and chronic genital conditions. However, its uptake rate among women in Hong Kong is insignificant—only approximately 2.9% adolescent girls and 9.7% female university students received HPV vaccination in 2014. With the notion of Critical Medical Anthropology, we aimed to identify if different influential factors, ranging from individual, societal, and cultural, are involved in the decision-making process of whether to receive HPV vaccination.MethodsWe adopted a qualitative approach and conducted in-depth individual semistructured interviews with 40 women in Hong Kong between May and August 2017.ResultsWe noted that the following factors intertwined to influence the decision-making process: perceptions of HPV and HPV vaccine; perceived worthiness of HPV vaccines, which was in turn influenced by vaccine cost, marriage plans, and experiences of sexual activities; history of experiencing gynecological conditions, stigma associated with HPV vaccination, acquisition of information on HPV vaccines, distrust on HPV vaccines, and absence of preventive care in the healthcare practice.ConclusionsHPV vaccination is promoted in a manner that is “feminized” and “moralized” under the patriarchal value system, further imposing the burden of disease on women, and leading to health inequality of women in pursuing the vaccination as a preventive health behaviour as a result. We believe that this ultimately results in an incomplete understanding of HPV, consequently influencing the decision-making process. The “mixed-economy” medical system adopting capitalist logic also molds a weak doctor–patient relationship, leading to distrust in private practice medical system, which affects the accessibility of information regarding HPV vaccination for participants to make the decision.

Religião, memória e cultura: perspectivas teóricas a partir de Maurice Halbwachs

Os grupos humanos desenvolveram toda a espécie de recursos mnemotécnicos e sistemas de registo para facilitar o acesso posterior a algo que foi descoberto, produzido e adquirido. A religião, na medida em que condensa uma parte das experiências humanas de construção da coletividade, é um laboratório relevante no que à construção social da memória diz respeito. A conservação da memória implica sempre estratégias de inovação. Assim, as tradições religiosas da humanidade dão testemunho de um longo trabalho de (re)construção de uma certa perspetiva sobre o mundo (cósmico e social), sobre os modos de nele e sobre ele agir, projetando as pontes para outros «mundos». Este ensaio parte da noção de memória, nas suas aceções socioantropológicas, para compreender a religião como fenómeno cultural em várias das suas dimensões estruturantes: propagação, distribuição, durabilidade, transmissão. Esta via de teorização alicerça um percurso que, tendo como ponto de partida a obra de Maurice Halbwachs, visa estabelecer um quadro interpretativo para um duplo problema: o lugar da religião enquanto memória das culturas; os processos de memoração como cerne da atividade religiosa.

Contested and interdependent appropriation of space in a multicultural commercial neighbourhood of Santiago, Chile

ABSTRACT This article examines experiences of making, inhabiting and appropriating space, in relation to the transformations of the political economy in an increasingly multicultural urban setting. Through processes of social production and construction of space, it explores the material, societal and symbolic processes at play. The entry points are memories, images, uses and material connection to Patronato neighbourhood (Santiago, Chile) by people of Korean and Palestinian ancestry. It analyses how claims of space authenticity, processes of ethnicisation and material appropriation of space – commonly understood as given by ‘cultural differences’ – respond to historical, economic and political shifts happening at a global and local level. Moreover, challenging the prism of socioeconomic conflict and separation, it shows emerging dynamics of social interdependence and adjustment, taking place alongside the reorganisation of ethnic boundaries. Such reorganisation allows settled migrants to develop a sense of belonging and control over space in a rapidly changing neoliberal city.

Accounting for crime in the neoliberal world

This paper examines the recent European public sector accounting reform which introduces controversial calculative practices for the recognition of criminal activities in national accounts. Namely, accounting for unlawful drug production and drug trafficking, and accounting for prostitution. Challenging the presumption of accounting neutrality, this study analyses this “accounting for crime” policy from a semantic and an epistemological view point as a cognitive system of creation of meaning and formation of knowledge. The analysis reveals the polyhedrality of neoliberalism, and the way it exerts its influence on society through its circuitous discursive process of social construction and transfiguration of reality which flows crosswise its multiple dimensions. At the macro level this policy operates as a ‘hegemonic project’: It bonds together the economic and political interests of different ‘historical blocs’, making the implementation of these practices a matter of ‘common sense’. At the micro level this policy functions as an ‘apparatus of governmentality’: It encapsulates the cognition of crime within a panoptic logic of economic rationality, transforming its outcome into a contributory value of a country's prosperity. In this context, this study outlines the centrality of accounting practice as a pivotal tool of the neoliberal ideology: It permits extending the realm of calculative methodologies to the commodification of human weaknesses, addictions, and sexuality, in a rational process of accounting to balance the supply and demand of sex and drugs, between prostitutes and clients, pushers and addicts.

Centro Histórico de Puerto Limón, transformaciones sociales que han contribuido a su patrimonización

Este artículo se enfoca en un análisis de las transformaciones sociales y culturales que ha tenido el territorio del Centro Histórico de Puerto Limón, explorando los valores patrimoniales y simbólicos del mismo y reflexionando sobre el proceso de patrimonialización que ha tenido. Se analizan las razones por las cuales esta ciudad podría considerarse patrimonial, así como los procesos de su construcción social y discursiva. Además, se investiga sobre su valor histórico, social y simbólico, estético y paisajístico, y científico.
 El área de estudio comprende treinta cuadras que presentan veinte de los veintiocho patrimonios declarados en toda la provincia. Sin embargo, en este caso es toda la ciudad la que se analiza como “objeto patrimonial”, entendiendo patrimonio como un fenómeno, pues representa la significación simbólica que le da un grupo social a un objeto en diferentes temporalidades y no el objeto mismo.
 Se utiliza el enfoque hermenéutico, es decir, una metodología de análisis basada en el arte de la interpretación a través de las épocas históricas con base en documentos como mapas, planos y fotografías. Se delimitan cuatro diferentes periodos de construcción social que se dividen de la siguiente manera: resistencias y autonomía frente al poder hegemónico español (1502-1852); la construcción formal de Puerto Limón y consolidación de una nueva cultura multiétnica que reprodujo prácticas que marginaron a la provincia de Limón del resto de “Costa Rica” (1852-1938); la “apertura” de Puerto Limón y las luchas sociales (1938-1970) y; por último, se define un periodo de contradicciones, retos y de exaltación y distorsión de la multiculturalidad (1970-2019).

Latour, foucault, and post-truth : the role and function of critique in the era of the truth crisis.

This paper, first published in German in Le Foucaldien 4(1) 2018 and in English in Le Foucaldien 6(1) 2020, explores Bruno Latour’s critique of contemporary critical theory. According to Latour, poststructuralist conceptions of critical inquiry are becoming increasingly outdated. In our “post-factual” era, attempting to expose facts as results of power-laden processes of social construction plays into the hands of anti-scientific obscurantists. This is not to say, however, that one ought to opt for some reductionist notion of objectivity. Instead, Latour proposes a new form of critical realism. While we agree with Latour about the necessity of widening our epistemological paradigm, we deem his critique of poststructuralism unfair and exaggerated. Moreover, we argue that he fails to account for the relationship between epistemology, power, and subjectivity. Since Foucault, on the other hand, succeeds where Latour falls short and probes into this very relationship, his is a form of critique that remains crucial to tackling the current crisis of truth.

Configuring the low performing user: PISA, TIMSS and the United Arab Emirates

ABSTRACT Scholars of the global phenomenon of international student assessments (e.g., PISA, TIMSS) have paid little attention to the ways in which student users of these material objects are configured in nations that are located at the periphery of knowledge production. Our analysis takes the United Arab Emirates as its case study to capture the social construction processes and relations of PISA and TIMSS users, agents and test objects within global educational accountability infrastructures. Drawing on evidence collected from interviews with principals, vice principals and teachers in nine schools as well as with government officials, we reveal how the state plays a role in the re/configuration of the user in this process. We also trace the discursive and emotional narratives that delineate usage and the institutional practices deployed to solidify user re/configurations. We argue that user configurations induce institutional reforms, cognitive remappings, and affective reactions which reflect adaptations being made by ‘real’ users to misconfigured material objects. We suggest that rather than blaming students for their poor performance on global tests, it is more appropriate to point to a failure in the material object’s obdurate design and monocultural user configuration.

“Cada um no seu canto!”: Olhares de jovens do ensino profissional sobre homossexualidade e masculinidade

In this article, we study processes of social construction of homosexuality in an educational context, employing both quantitative and qualitative methods. Our research attempts to fill a gap in the existing literature on homophobia and homosexuality by focusing on the neglected area of professional training. We employ the concepts of sexuality, heteronormativity and homophobia to analyse the perspectives of young boys and young girls regarding homosexuality at school and society at large, prejudice, stereotypes and the role of sexual education.

Gender and Feminist Geography in Colombia

The article explains how gender and feminist geography as a transversal analytical category to geography have been introduced recently in Colombia. At the beginning of the XXI century, in the geography department of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the first undergraduate thesis to focus on the relationship between gender and processes of social construction of space was presented. Since then, the contributions of geographers and researchers from a feminist geographic perspective have contributed to the feminist geographical debates from their own trajectories. The contemporary geographical landscape in Colombia is linked with the transversal debates on feminisms and gender in social sciences, social movements and Latin-American feminisms. This networks and connections allows today a diversity of themes from the deconstruction of hegemonic spatial representations in different contexts, gender and conflicts related to territory and body, to some new approaches to technologies and virtual social interactions and their connotation in the construction of non-normative spatialities.

Spiritism as a target of ‘annihilation’ – conceptual clarification and exemplification of a rhetorical strategy

The rhetorical strategy of annihilation appears in situations of conflict between different world-views. It is the attempt of one of the parties involved to attribute an inferior status to the adversary. The technique requires the capacity of a social actor of influencing the public image of the phenomenon in question in a way that a public interest in the campaign becomes obvious. The success of this process of social construction depends on a twofold rhetorical talent of the ‘constructor’. The first faculty is to reduce the complexity of the challenging phenomenon to alleged ‘core elements’. The second one is to associate these ‘core elements’ to pre-established negative definitions so that the ‘enemy’ appears as a mere variant of a well-known unacceptable social phenomenon. In order to illustrate how and why the strategy of annihilation works, the article refers to the campaign against Spiritism driven by Brazilian authorities between 1890 and 1940.

Social construction of tourism attractiveness of the Russian cities

The subject of this research is the Russian experience of social construction of tourism attractiveness of the territories. The object of this research is the practices of participation of the local residents in designing tourist destinations; advantages and consequences of the conversion of social capital of the local society into job opportunities, urban infrastructure, new social relations and symbolic goods. The author meticulously examines the multiplicative effect of involvement of the local population in creating formation of tourism attractiveness of the territory; reveals the advantages and risks of initiating the process of social construction. Particular attention is given to the analysis of interdependent relations of the local citizens that ensure holistic positioning of the territory as attractive for tourists. The empirical foundation for this research includes the following cities: Moscow, Veliky Ustyug, Myshkin, and Dzhubga. The leading research method is the traditional document analysis. For verification of research results, the author applies the methods of observation and questionnaire-based online survey on the Google platform. The main conclusions consist in the theses on multiplicative effect of the involvement of local population in social construction (formation and content of the professional-structural network, development of entrepreneurship, creative clusters, etc.). The author’s main contribution into this study lies in determining the need for structuring the conceptual row (symbolic status of the city), around which would develop social interactions between the local residents. Such approach allows creating the range of interrelated tourist products or services functioning in conceptual connection with each other.

The Social Origins of ESG?: An Analysis of Innovest and KLD

This paper uses the study of two ESG data vendors – KLD and Innovest – to exemplify the “social origins of ESG” argument made by Eccles and Stroehle (2018). Based on in-depth interviews with the organizations’ founders and historical document analysis, we recap the history of the cases and show how different origins, philosophies, and “purposes” of ESG shaped the methods and data characteristics of two of the most important data vendors of their time. We discuss why MSCI chose to continue with the financial value-oriented methodology of Innovest, while discontinuing the values-driven KLD. We show that not only the creation, but also the use of “non-financial performance” concepts rely on processes of social construction. Finally, with this paper we join the call for more explicit contextualization of ESG data, highlighting that both practitioners and academics need to better understand the social construction that underlies analyses which use different concepts of ESG.

The Social Construction of Probation Counselor: Comparative Qualitative Analysis in Romania and the Republic of Moldova

This paper brings a series of contributions to the understanding of probation practice as a permanent process of social construction, as well as identification of axiological, ideological, normative and institutional frameworks of the process, and how these frameworks are reflected in the speech on practice. The research approach is exploratory, based on the Grounded Theory model, and framed in the social-constructionist paradigm. The research conducted in the N.-E. Area of Romania and the Republic of Moldova confirm our model, according to which the social construction of reality has an axiological and ethical ground, through the existence of constitutive values, and a semiotic-discursive one, guided by operational values. Within this research, there were developed a series of conclusions that could be hypotheses for future research: The Romanian and Moldavian probation model is a multi and transdisciplinary one, with strong assistential and social-therapeutic accents.

Varieties of Social Construction

AbstractThis article presents social construction as a research framework, rather than an explanatory theory in constructivism, to outline different research strategies. Varieties of constructivism thus far conceived in international relations prefer cleavages where scholars are regarded as thin/thick, conventional/critical, or mainstream/radical. In contrast, I introduce a new landscape of social construction to show unique mechanisms for socially constructing international politics. The new landscape varies on two dimensions. The first, source of socialization, asks whether scholars treat social context as fixed in discrete, observable forms or as fluid in indiscrete, shifting arrangements. The second dimension, focus of analysis, asks whether scholars primarily study social structures, social subjects, or some interaction of the two. The dimensions make visible a multitude of research strategies with implications for the stability of social processes and the potential for causal analysis. Moreover, within this landscape, the article focuses on four processes of social construction—aggregating, assembling, internalizing, and performing—as seen inductively through examining prominent constructivist projects. Disaggregating the many processes avoids the misuse of social construction as a catchall mechanism. Finally, the article applies the select processes to the social construction of international norms to better grasp the relative payoffs of constructivist IR scholarship for research and teaching.

A construção simbólica da imagem dos territórios: a Serra da Estrela entre as imagens tradicionais e a imagem turística

Tourist destinations depend, more and more, from the image, because attractive images seduce potential visitors and unattractive images repel them. In order to reflect the perceived image of Serra da Estrela, a research model was drawn up which, based on a research strategy theoretically based on the sociology of tourism, sought to analyze the process of social construction of the image of this region, in three moments. In a first phase, we tried to reflect the image that has been constructed socially, throughout the times, in the narratives of literature and the cinema. In a second phase, we tried to analyze how the media has portrayed these territories in the written press, in a recent past, confronting it with the image projected in support of the organizational communication, the responsibility of the organisms that oversee the tourism promotion of this region. At a later stage, from a questionnaire applied on-line, assess the role played by different suppliers of information in the social construction of the image perceived by respondents. The idea that prevailed was that, despite the investment by the agencies responsible for promoting the tourism image of the Serra da Estrela, in the diffusion of images that go beyond traditional ones, its effects are delayed. This is because the valorization of Serra da Estrela's image attributes reflected in the data collected by the questionnaire came closer to the functionalities attributed to these territories over time by the more traditional sources of information (literature, media and collective memories) than those in which organizational communication has been engaged.