Social Construction as a Complex Attractor

This book examines the dominance of social construction within sociology while shedding light on what social construction looks like in practice beyond the realm of sociological thought.

The idea that reality is socially constructed has dominated sociological thinking since Berger and Luckmann’s seminal work in the 1960s, but it has also been widely accepted across society and the media as the explanation of a wide range of phenomena, including conceptions of beauty, the value of money, moral standards, religion, nationality and race. By analysing a selection of key 20th- and 21st-century movements, Smith and Wilson show that the space of possible outcomes is always materially as well as socially constrained and identify path-dependent patterns of conservation and innovation.

Exploring questions of power, stratification, solidarity and freedom, it is an essential read for those who want to go beyond description and critique, and instead actively seek to understand why these are recurring patterns in human society, what kinds of alternatives might be possible, and what futures are open to us. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students interested in complex approaches across a wide range of fields, in particular to those working within sociology, social theory, philosophy, anthropology and geography.

John A. Smith has taught at Goldsmiths College, University of London; Lancaster University; and Greenwich University. He is a sociologist and a painter trained at the Royal College of Art. He is interested in sociological theory, philosophy and visual culture, and has published in all of these areas. His most recent work was Radical Ecology in the Face of the Anthropocene Extinction (2024), also with Anna Wilson.

Anna Wilson is a transdisciplinary academic who has researched and taught in physics and education in universities in the UK and Australia. She is currently based in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow, where her research explores learning in the context of complex predicaments including technologization, climate change and (un)sustainability.