Social reality

Short description: Distinct from biological reality or individual cognitive reality

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Social reality[1] refers to a socially constructed perspective of the world, consisting of the accepted social tenets of a community involving laws and social representations.[2] It is distinct from the material reality,[3] biological reality or individual cognitive reality, representing as it does on a subjective level created through social interaction and thereby transcending individual motives and actions.[4] Radical constructivism would cautiously describe social reality as the product of uniformities among observers (whether or not including the current observer themselves).[5]

## Contents

* 1 Schütz, Durkheim, and Spencer
* 2 Searle
* 3 Objective/subjective
* 4 Socialisation and the Capital Other
* 5 Measuring trust
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 Further reading
* 9 External links

## Schütz, Durkheim, and Spencer

The problem of social reality has been treated exhaustively by philosophers in the phenomenological tradition, particularly Alfred Schütz, who used the term "social world" to designate this distinct level of reality. Within the social world, Schütz distinguished between social reality that could be experienced directly (umwelt) and a social reality beyond the immediate horizon, which could yet be experienced if sought out.[6] In his wake, ethnomethodology explored further the unarticulated structure of our everyday competence and ability with social reality.[7]

Previously, the subject had been addressed in sociology as well as other disciplines. For example, Émile Durkheim stressed the distinct nature of "the social kingdom. Here more than anywhere else the idea is the reality".[8] Herbert Spencer had coined the term super-organic to distinguish the social level of reality above the biological and psychological.[9]

## Searle

John Searle has used the theory of speech acts to explore the nature of social/institutional reality, so as to describe such aspects of social reality which he instances under the rubrics of "marriage, property, hiring, firing, war, revolutions, cocktail parties, governments, meetings, unions, parliaments, corporations, laws, restaurants, vacations, lawyers, professors, doctors, medieval knights, and taxes, for example".[10]

Searle argued that such institutional realities interact with each other in what he called "systematic relationships (e.g., governments, marriages, corporations, universities, armies, churches)"[11] to create a multi-layered social reality.

For Searle, language was the key to the formation of social reality because "language is precisely designed to be a self-identifying category of institutional facts"; i.e., a system of publicly and widely accepted symbols which "persist through time independently of the urges and inclinations of the participants."[12]

## Objective/subjective

There is a debate in social theory about whether social reality exists independently of people's involvement with it, or whether (as in social constructionism) it is only created by the human process of ongoing interaction.[13]

Peter L. Berger argued for a new concern with the basic process of the social construction of reality.[14] Berger stated that the social construction of reality was a process made up of three steps: externalization, objectivation and internalization. In similar fashion, post-Sartrians like R. D. Laing stress that, "once certain fundamental structures of experience are shared, they come to be experienced as objective entities...they take on the force and character of partial autonomous realities, with their own way of life".[15] Yet at the same time, Laing insisted that such a socially real grouping "can be nothing else than the multiplicity of the points of view and actions of its members...even where, through the interiorization of this multiplicity as synthesized by each, this synthesized multiplicity becomes ubiquitous in space and enduring in time".[16]

The existence of a social reality independent of individuals or the ecology would seem at odds with the views of perceptual psychology, including those of J. J. Gibson, and those of most ecological economics theories.[17]

Scholars such as John Searle argue on the one hand that "a socially constructed reality presupposes a reality independent of all social constructions".[18] At the same time, he accepts that social realities are humanly created, and that "the secret to understanding the continued existence of institutional facts is simply that the individuals directly involved and a sufficient number of members of the relevant communities must continue to recognize and accept the existence of such facts".[19]

## Socialisation and the Capital Other

Freud saw a child's induction into social reality as consolidated with the passing of the Oedipus complex and the internalisation of the parents: "the same figures who continue to operate in the super-ego as the agency we know as conscience...also belong to the real external world. It is from there that they were drawn; their power, behind which lie hidden all the influences of the past and of tradition, was one of the most strongly-felt manifestations of reality".[20]

Lacan clarified the point by stressing that this was "a highly significant moment in the transfer of powers from the subject to the Other, what I call the Capital Other...the field of the Other – which, strictly speaking, is the Oedipus complex".[21] Lacan considered that "the Oedipus complex...superimposes the kingdom of culture on that of nature",[22] bringing the child into the Symbolic Order.

Within that order, Lacanians consider that "institutions, as signifying practices, are much more extensive structures than romantic notions allow and they thus implicate us in ways which narrower definitions cannot recognize...exceed any intersubjective intention or effect".[23] In similar fashion, Searle asserts that "institutional power – massive, pervasive, and typically invisible – permeates every nook and cranny of our social lives...the invisible structure of social reality".[24]

## Measuring trust

This section may stray from the topic of the article. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (July 2022)

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If one accepts the validity of the idea of social reality, scientifically, it must be amenable to measurement, something which has been explored particularly in relation to trust. "Trust is...part of a community's social capital, as Francis Fukuyama argues, and has deep historical and cultural roots".[25]

Theories of the measurement of trust in the sociological community are usually called theories of social capital, to emphasize the connection to economics.

## See also

* Belief
* Ideology
* Consensus Reality, a notion of reality based on consensus view
* Sociology of gender
* Social identity theory
* Social construction of gender
* Social ontology
* Sociology of human consciousness

## References

1. ↑ Berger, Peter (1967). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.. pp. 3–28.
2. ↑ Ireke Bockting, Character and Personality in the Novels of William Faulkner (1995) p. 25
3. ↑ Tomasz Kamusella. 2025. Distinguishing Between the Material Reality and Social Reality (pp. 75-97). 2025. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics. Vol. 19, No. 1.
4. ↑ MacKinnon, N. J; Heise, D. R. (2010). reality and human subjectivity. Palgrave. pp. 219–234.
5. ↑ Niklas Luhmann, Theories of Distinction (2002) p. 136
6. ↑ George Walsh, "Introduction", Alfred Schütz, The Phenomenology of the Social World (1997)p. xxvii
7. ↑ John O'Neill, Sociology as a Skin Trade (London 1972) p. 217
8. ↑ Quoted in T. van der Eyden, Public Management of Society (2003) p. 487
9. ↑ Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1, Part 1. "The Data of Sociology"(1876)
10. ↑ John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (Penguin 1996) p. 79
11. ↑ Searle, p. 97
12. ↑ Searle, p. 73 and p. 78
13. ↑ Antony Giddens, Sociology (2006) p. 152
14. ↑ John O'Neill, Sociology as a Skin Trade (London 1972) p. 168
15. ↑ R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (Penguin 1984) p. 65
16. ↑ Laing, p. 81
17. ↑ Lawson, Tony (March 2012). "Ontology and the study of social reality: emergence, organisation, community, power, social relations, corporations, artefacts and money". Cambridge Journal of Economics 36 (2): 345–385. doi:10.1093/cje/ber050. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24232451. "[Features classified as social are] "those, if any, that could not exist in the absence of human beings and their doings."".
18. ↑ Searle, p. 190
19. ↑ Searle, p. 190 and p. 117
20. ↑ Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11) p. 422
21. ↑ Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (Penguin 1994) p. 129 and p. 205
22. ↑ Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (1997) p. 66
23. ↑ Joan Copjec, in Jacques Lacan, Television (London 1990) p. 51-2
24. ↑ Searle, p. 94 and p. 4
25. ↑ Will Hutton, The State to Come (London 1997) p. 31

## Further reading

* Alfred Schutz, The Problem of Social Reality (1973).
* Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. 1966 . The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Penguin Books.

## External links

* Introduction to Durkheim's Sociology: Social facts

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Gender and sexual identities

Gender
identities|

| Genders|

* Man
* Woman
* Male
* Female
* Androgynos
* Androgyne
* Boi
* Cisgender
* Cross-dresser
* Gender bender
* Gender neutrality
* Non-binary (or genderqueer)
* Postgenderism
* Gender variance
* Transgender
* Trans man
* Trans woman
* Transsexual

|

Third genders
or third sexes|

* Akava'ine
* Bakla
* Bugis genders
* Bissu
* Calabai
* Calalai
* Chibados
* Enaree
* Eunuch
* Fa'afafine
* Fakaleiti
* Femminiello
* Galli
* Hijra
* Kathoey
* Khanith
* Köçek
* Koekchuch
* Māhū
* Mak nyah
* Mukhannathun
* Muxe
* Nullo
* Sworn virgin
* Rae-rae
* Takatāpui
* Travesti
* Tumtum
* Two-spirit
* Lhamana
* Nádleehi

Sexual
orientation
identities|

| Sexual orientations|

* Asexual
* Bisexual
* Heterosexual
* Homosexual

|

Alternative labels|

* Banjee
* Bi-curious
* Ex-gay
* Ex-ex-gay
* Gay
* Gray asexual
* Heteroflexible
* Lesbian
* Non-heterosexual
* Pansexual
* Polysexual
* Queer
* Questioning
* Same gender loving

Social aspects|

* Sociosexual orientation
* Antisexuality
* Monogamy
* Non-monogamy
* Polyamorous
* Asociality
* Homosociality
* Heterosociality

Other|

* Analloeroticism
* Androphilia and gynephilia
* Attraction to transgender people
* Kinsey scale
* Monosexuality
* Romantic orientation

See also|

* Gender roles
* Intersex
* Sex and gender distinction
* Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures
* Social construction of gender

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Conformity

Group pressures|

* Authoritarian personality
* Bandwagon effect
* Collectivism
* Coercive persuasion
* Consensus reality
* Deplatforming
* Contagion
* Behavioral
* Crime
* Hysterical
* Suicide
* FOMO
* Groupthink
* Hazing
* Herd mentality
* Indoctrination
* Invented tradition
* Memory conformity
* Milieu control
* Mobbing
* Nationalism
* Normalization
* Normative social influence
* Ostracism
* Patriotism
* Peer pressure
* Pluralistic ignorance
* Propaganda
* Rally 'round the flag effect
* Right-wing authoritarianism
* Scapegoating
* Shunning
* Social influence
* Socialization
* Spiral of silence
* Teasing
* Tyranny of the majority
* Xeer

Conforming oneself|

* Compliance
* Countersignaling
* Herd behavior
* Internalization
* Social proof
* Obedience

Experiments|

* Asch conformity experiments
* Breaching experiment
* Milgram experiment
* Stanford prison experiment

Counterconformity|

* Alternative media and journalism
* Anti-authoritarianism
* Antisocial tendencies
* Auto-segregation
* Civil disobedience
* Cosmopolitanism
* Counterculture
* Culture jamming
* Deviance
* Devil's advocate
* Eclecticism
* Eccentricity
* Hermit
* Idiosyncrasy
* Individualism
* Rebellion
* Red team
* Ritual clown
* Satire
* Shock value

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