Summary
Contents
This book has already proved itself as a course adoption leader in Childhood Studies. All of the strengths of the First Edition have been retained. The book is comprehensive and judged with the needs of students in mind. It is a model of clarity and precision and has been acknowledged as such in reviews and course feedback. The new edition thoroughly revises old entries and adds new ones. The book is the most accessible, relevant student introduction to this expanding, interdisciplinary field. It is an indispensable teaching text and an ideal prompt for researchers.
Social Construction
Social Construction
A theoretical perspective that explores the ways in which ‘reality’ is negotiated in everyday life through people's interactions and through sets of discourses.
The suggestion that ‘reality’ is socially constructed has its roots in the symbolic-interactionist paradigm, which explores the ways in which individuals are involved in the ongoing ‘making’ of everyday life through their actions. However, it was the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman who developed the concept of the social construction of reality in their book of that title, which first appeared in 1967. This argued that the taken-for-granted ‘reality’ of everyday life arises through the interactions people have with one another and with the environments in which they live, including both the cultural and natural, material world. This process accounts ...
