The Social Construction of Nature
The Social Construction of Nature
To show something to be “socially constructed” is to show it not to be natural; in this sense there’s something paradoxical in the thesis that nature is itself socially constructed. The thesis might be understood as meaning that nothing is natural, and that the distinction between the “natural” and the “social” makes no sense. “Construction” has to be understood literally. As natural beings, humans are constantly in the process of transforming their environment: they build it. Our relation to the world is active; we come to know it, as the history of epistemology from empiricism through Kant and Hegel and Marx (and Heidegger) shows, through our social practices. Such practices are prior to any putative distinction between matter and thought, nature and culture, or object and subject.
Keywords: social construction of nature, social constructionism, practice, Kant, Hegel, Marx, activist epistemology, Heidegger, Ian Hacking
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