Name A Human Activity that Is Not a "Social Construction?"

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One term that I don't like is "social construct" or "social construction." Isn't pretty much every damn thing in the world constructed socially?

― Polo Pony, Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:25 (twenty-two years ago)

death by natural causes

― gygax!, Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:29 (twenty-two years ago)

We all eat food, but which foods we like could be a social construct.
We all like sex, but who we like to have sex with could be a social construct.
We all like music, but which music we like could be a social construct.
Etc, etc.

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Death by natural causes... good one.

― Polo Pony, Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Isn't pretty much every damn thing in the world constructed socially?

Well, sure, but many people aren't aware of this, or disagree.

― Chris P (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:37 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't follow the reasoning here. Surely 'music' 'sex' and 'food' are also socially constructed (don't like the phrase either): but that may be your point!

― alext (alext), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Wanking

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:42 (twenty-two years ago)

No, I don't think the enjoyment that comes from music sex or food is socially constructed, as evidenced by the fact that all societies enjoy them.

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:43 (twenty-two years ago)

But surely what constitutes 'food' or 'sex' or 'music' is not only sociall-constructed but entirely variable historically and culturally. ie in France frogs legs = food, to me frogs legs = side effect of lawnmower incident.

― alext (alext), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:48 (twenty-two years ago)

If we're talking specefic varieties of music, sex, food, then yes, they vary by place and time. But all cultures and eras have enjoyed them as a general concept.

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Wouldn't instinctual activities be nonsocially constructed? Ie, walking, talking, f*cking, etc.?

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but then you could say HOW one walks, talks, fucks, etc. is socially constructed

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes yes, "food" as a concept isn't a social construction, but what actually constitutes "food" is. Sexual pleasure as a concept is not entirely socially constructed, but our framing it as rigidly distinct from other kinds of pleasure is, as is just about everything else ever having to do with sex (we have severely overconstructed that one in the west). "Music" is a social construction entirely, though it's based on what appears to be a universal human quality of enjoying organized sounds.

Chris is spot-on about the import of this as a reminder. Loads and loads of people like to imagine that social constructions exist on concrete levels such as biology or genetics. Or they imagine that things which are social constructions are actually very rigid objective states in a concrete moral heirarchy.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think you can assume that the concept of 'food' isn't a social construction. This is clearly more important when we get to a concept like 'justice', obviously. For example in Alasdair Macintyre's (sp.?) work justice functions as a limit concept to what it means to be a society -- without a concept of justice, you ain't a society! Which is nice and all but poses questions of both eurocentrism (this concept has a determinate history located in one part of the world and not another) and translatability (how like 'justice' is the your concept we agree is also 'justice': and what oversteps the mark). Obv. this is not the only problem with _After Virtue_ etc.

― alext (alext), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Why has no one mentioned pissing and shitting? If these were social constructs, I would have surely considered sitting down to wipe my arse, as a majority of ILXers claimed was their way on some woebegotten thread, instead of standing unconstructed.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, since language is itself a social construction, everything could be seen as a social construct. The consensus view of reality is a social construction.
Everyone throughout time (even B4 language) knew that there was certain things in the environment which it could injest to continue to live. However, there was possibly no concept of food until language developed. Food existed, but the concept of it and labeling it did not.

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think you can assume that the concept of 'food' isn't a social construction.

It seems to me that newborn infants will consume food and continue to consume food into childhood even without being shown how. They will even put a little bit of effort into distinguishing between things they should try to eat and things they should not. And I imagine at some point they will, even without pointers, figure out that they need to consume foody foodstuffs. On that level -- the level of animals understanding that they need to consume certain types of organic material -- there's nothing social about it.

Oops, you don't need to "name" a concept for it to exist.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:16 (twenty-two years ago)

there was certain things in the environment which it could injest to continue to live

This is the concept of food, surely. The concept of a meal may not have existed.

Also, it is by no means necessary to speak a language to partake in a culture.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:17 (twenty-two years ago)

People who don't make social constructions around food are Satans emissaries on earth.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Meaning Brillat-Savarin was an archangel? I can go for that.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Oops, you don't need to "name" a concept for it to exist

You kind of do. Until it is at least described, how can you have a concept of it? You mave have awareness of certain stimuli, but these stimuli are not a concept, just input waiting to be categorized. Sure, it exists objectively outside of man, but subjectively--which is all we can possibly know--it doesn't exist.
Like elephants existed before humans saw them or labeled them, but the concept of an elephant didn't.

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:25 (twenty-two years ago)

pooping

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:36 (twenty-two years ago)

picking your nose

― jel -- (jel), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Disco dancing.

― slutsky (slutsky), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Throwing the poop, though, is a social construction.

― Dan I., Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Is there something wrong with being a social construct?

― Stuart, Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Lusting.

― No One (SiggyBaby), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Getting jiggy with it.

(that's still what the kids are saying, right?)

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Oops yr just sort of wrong. A bear, for example, as a "concept" of a fish -- a general categorical sense of what is a fish-type thing and what is not. A bear does not, so far as we know, have a name for this concept.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Pardon me: a bear has a concept of a fish. Concept from "conceive," concept meaning "a general idea derived or inferred from specific instances or occurrences." A bear's concept of a fish might be that it is something shiny that lives in water and has a particular fish-type shape and is good eating.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:14 (twenty-two years ago)

But isn't a concept something that exists in the imagination?
I don't think bears have imaginations. Could he hold his picture of a fish in his mind w/o physically seeing one at the moment?

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, seeing as bears appear to decide "I'd like a fish" and then go to a river and fish one out, yes, I think they have a clear sense of fish as an existing category. Better example of this would be big cats, actually, who seem to have really clear categorical senses of their prey (i.e. they don't just wander around and see a gazelle and think "hey whatever that is it looks tasty").

Anyway you were talking about language before, not imagination.

Language doesn't properly "create" concepts: it squares individual concepts with another to make them publicly codified, to make "master" concepts that we can all access and reference. As such it does give us pre-packaged concepts that we likely would not have developed on our own. But it does not "create" them -- some group of individuals needs to create them and to negotiate how they will be represented in language. And of course that negotiation continues forever and ever.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Anyway why wouldn't a bear have an imagination? It wouldn't take much more than a really rudimentary one to be able to imagine a primary food source: one would guess this is the very first thing the animal imagination would be able to concoct.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:40 (twenty-two years ago)

you know, there's gonna be a war on soon, guys

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:41 (twenty-two years ago)

It is sheer mentalism to argue that eating is a social construction. Is breathing a social construction, too? How about blinking? Vomiting?

A more interesting question; is "communicating" a social construction?

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:42 (twenty-two years ago)

That book "The Language Instinct" by Stephen Pinker, (which was recommended to me by ILE and which I am currently reading) argues pretty convincingly that language (communication) is an instinct (and therefore not a social construction). I guess the way we communicate would be a social construction, but not communication itself.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:44 (twenty-two years ago)

As such it does give us pre-packaged concepts that we likely would not have developed on our own
I think this is what I was driving at. As for the rest of what you said, I agree.

But, I don't think bears have imagination, as humans don't get one for quite awhile after birth. You know, the 'out of sight, out of mind' experiments. They only know about the here-and-now.

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah Nick, the concept/means divide was how I was thinking, too.

Jess: War, what it is good for? Good God, say it again. *cue sax*

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:48 (twenty-two years ago)

your meta will not save you, perry

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:50 (twenty-two years ago)

If every human activity were a social construct, then how could we account for the activities of infants?

― Aimless, Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:15 (twenty-two years ago)

they are aliens

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:16 (twenty-two years ago)

smelly, loud aliens

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:19 (twenty-two years ago)

"I am an alien. Please allow me to suckle at your pert life-giving teats."

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:20 (twenty-two years ago)

dan this is not the obvious small-talk thread

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:21 (twenty-two years ago)

It's 'life-sustaining', you moron:)

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:22 (twenty-two years ago)

(haha right after I clicked "Submit" I thought, "SHIT I should have linked to the obvious small-talk thread!")

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:23 (twenty-two years ago)

"As an alien, my command of your English syntax is at best margarine. Now please, place your nipples in my oral orifice."

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Bear as a concept of fish is pata-genius, Nabisco.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:29 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

send me nowe

― non, Wednesday, 26 May 2004 09:03 (twenty-one years ago)

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