Social Construction – A Study in Concept

Abstract

The concept of social construction is considered a key concept in the field of sociology, rarely absent from any sociological work. It represents a meeting point between researchers in sociology and those in anthropology, who have produced successive studies on the subject. These studies have served as a tributary to all other social sciences with respect to this concept, thereby increasing its value, particularly at the level of sociological theory, as is made clear by the analytical view of this concept. This research paper seeks to carry out a sociological investigation into the concept of social construction by presenting the most important perspectives and approaches to its definition. It reviews numerous definitions put forward by French, British, German, and American scholars and pioneers, considering them as key stages in the development of the concept, with distinctions from one stage to another. All of this is aimed at identifying the epistemological connotations of a concept that is subject to a range of factors relating to different countries around the world.
A set of differences has been identified between definitions of social construction according to the adopted classification, which generally show that social construction is a central concept in socio-anthropological studies.