Radio Free Beszel

What Are Social Constructions Made Of?

December 03, 2021 Alphonse Season 1 Episode 17
Radio Free Beszel
What Are Social Constructions Made Of?
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

"When a dancer stops dancing, the dance is finished." - Bruno Latour

What Latour calls "critical sociology" (an intellectual foundation of social justice) does three things. 1) It replaces the activities of real people with abstract forces from a limited set of existing categories, like capitalism, society, racism, etc. 2) It ignores the protests of the actors when they say that's not what they're doing. 3) It takes those protests as proof that the sociologists are correct and that ordinary people cannot bear to face the reality of the forces that motivate them.

The result is a discipline that believes in invisible, intangible - in other words, metaphysical - forces that manipulate us like puppets, and which, because they are not material, we have little hope of influencing. The error is not political, however: it is simply how many sociologists look at the world. Latour offers an alternative explanation of social constructions as existing in the material world, composed of the associations of people and things- a dance, in the metaphor above, that exists only so long as their interactions continue.

His book, Reassembling the Social, is actually an introduction to his confusingly-named Actor Network Theory. This episode can serve as an introduction to some of the core ideas of ANT.

0:01
Good evening. This is
Radio Free Beszel. I

0:04
am Alphonse. Tonight:
social construction.

0:09
When people say that something
is socially

0:11
constructed, like capitalism
or race,

0:14
they're usually implying
that in some

0:17
sense it's not real
- it's artificial,

0:19
made of some kind of
social stuff that is

0:22
in the consciousness of
the minds of people.

0:26
But if social constructions,
like race for

0:29
example, aren't real,
how is it that they

0:31
are so stable, they're
so long-lasting, and

0:34
they have such a large
impact on our lives?

0:38
Social things often seem
to have a bigger impact

0:41
and be more powerful than
physical things.

0:45
I'm going to talk about
the answer of Bruno

0:47
Latour in his book, Reassembling
the Social,

0:51
but I'm going to start by
illustrating that with money.

0:55
I'm hoping that we can
agree that money is

0:58
socially constructed - that
we can't eat bills or

1:01
coins, we can't shelter under
them. The question

1:05
is, why does money have
so much value for us?

1:10
Well, we could say
perhaps that it's

1:12
because there's some
kind of agreement,

1:14
there's some kind of
consciousness that we have

1:17
that we've decided that
money is valuable and

1:20
can be exchanged for
goods and services.

1:22
So it exists, in a sense,
in our minds.

1:24
It's made of that kind
of social stuff that

1:26
other socially constructed
things are made of.

1:30
And a thought experiment
would seem to support

1:32
this. Imagine that we all
went to bed one night,

1:35
and when we woke up the
money was still there,

1:38
but we had no recollection
of what it was for.

1:42
We'd forgotten what money
was. Well, then

1:44
it would lose its value,
wouldn't it.

1:47
So that suggests that
its value really

1:50
does come from inside
our minds.

1:54
But consider a second thought
experiment. Again

1:57
we go to sleep. Again we
all wake up and the

2:00
money is still there. And
we remember what it's

2:04
for - but the banks don't
exist. There are no

2:07
cash registers, the tax
department isn't there

2:09
anymore, and the tax department
demands payment

2:12
in the currency which
is one of the things

2:15
that forces people to
use it. And we can't

2:18
use the websites to buy
things because they're

2:20
gone too. Then the money
would also lose its

2:23
value. That suggests that
part of the value of

2:26
money actually is embedded
in physical things.

2:31
But I'm going to go
one step farther.

2:34
Imagine a third instance
we go to sleep,

2:36
we wake up in the morning:
the money's still

2:39
there, we know what it's
for, the banks are

2:42
still there, the cash registers
and so forth - but

2:45
nobody's exchanging money.
People aren't making

2:49
transactions, or at least
they're not making many

2:51
of them. Maybe it's some
sort of economic crisis.

2:56
Well in that case, the
value of money goes

2:58
down. It goes down because
it's not moving.

3:03
It turns out that much
of the value of money

3:05
comes from its movement
through the economy,

3:07
what economists call the
velocity of money.

3:12
The point I'm trying to
make is that if we

3:14
agree that money is a
social construction,

3:17
much of that construction
actually

3:19
is material. It is
actually anchored

3:21
in real things - but not
only in real things, in

3:25
interactions of people and
technology and things.

3:31
This is my attempt to
outline Latour's idea

3:33
of what actually makes
something social.

3:37
I'll give a second example -
Google and the World Wide Web.

3:41
I think we can agree that
Google is one of the

3:44
most important, if not the
most important site

3:46
on the Web. I'm talking
about the search engine here.

3:51
What makes Google so valuable
or so important? Is

3:55
it the number of pages they
have? I don't think

3:58
so. There's an unlimited
number of pages that

4:00
Google can generate - but
that's true of many

4:02
sites. Is it the value of
the content that Google

4:06
has? Not so much, because
the content is actually

4:09
on the sites that they link
to. It's not in Google

4:13
itself. Is it all the links
to Google or the links

4:17
from Google? Well, in part.
The fact that Google

4:20
is highly connected to the
rest of the Internet

4:23
is surely part of what
makes it important.

4:25
But the thing that
really matters

4:27
is traffic. If people
stopped going to

4:30
Google it would cease
to be important,

4:32
even if it maintained all
those linkages, even

4:35
if it was able to generate
all of those pages.

4:40
This, Latour says, is what makes
something social. This is what

4:43
social means. It has to do
with the associations

4:47
of things and people and
their interactions.

4:52
But sociology, and social
science, he says,

4:55
has made a mistake. Because
sociology - most of

4:59
it - treats the social as
if it's not material.

5:04
What sociologists do, he
says, is they look at

5:07
behavior, activities, phenomena
in the world,

5:10
and then they replaced
them with their set of

5:13
categories that they already
have - things like

5:16
capitalism and power and
oppression and so

5:19
forth. And then they treat
those categories

5:22
as though they're forces
in the world that make

5:26
people do things. The extreme
case he describes

5:29
is what he calls critical
sociology, or critical

5:33
social theory. What critical
social theory does,

5:37
Latour says, is first it
replaces phenomena in

5:40
the world with its set of
categories - things like

5:43
racism and oppression and
power and capitalism

5:46
and so forth. And second,
it ignores the protests

5:50
of the people involved
in those practices

5:52
who say, Hey, that's not
what we're doing!

5:55
And third, it takes that
as proof that it's

5:58
right, saying that those
people are unable to

6:01
face the reality of what they're
really doing, and

6:04
that's why they claim to
be doing something else.

6:08
For example, say someone says
something to someone

6:10
else. And the sociologist
looks at it and says,

6:12
"That's racist. You're
perpetuating racism."

6:16
And the person who said
the thing says,

6:18
"No that's not what i
intended at all." But

6:22
the sociologist says,
"Aha, now yes you are

6:26
you really are racist
and that's why you're

6:28
saying that you're not."
This maps one to one

6:31
to Latour's description
of how critical

6:34
social theory operates
more generally.

6:37
But he's not making an
ideological criticism. He's

6:41
not complaining that their
politics are wrong.

6:44
He's saying that this
is something more

6:46
deep-seated in how the
field operates.

6:49
Latour says that sociology
is a relatively

6:52
young discipline. The
natural sciences

6:55
were already well-established.
They were high

6:58
profile and high status.
So social scientists,

7:01
when they came along, wanted
similar status. And

7:04
to try to achieve that they
carved out a space

7:07
for themselves. Where
natural scientists

7:10
were concerned with
the material world,

7:13
sociologists would be concerned
with something

7:15
they would call "social."
And it wouldn't be

7:18
material, it would be separate.
This would be

7:21
a special domain where
they were the experts.

7:26
And then sociologists
went about the world

7:28
studying phenomena. But
they almost always

7:31
studied down. They would
study what at the time

7:34
would have been considered
as primitive beliefs

7:36
and myths. They would study
religion. And they

7:39
would reveal that what these
people believed was

7:42
false - and in fact the
sociologists themselves

7:45
had special knowledge above
and beyond. They had

7:48
a kind of God's eye view
of the truth, and they

7:51
could inform those people
and others as to why

7:54
those people were mistaken
in their beliefs, and

7:56
the real forces that it were
at work behind them.

8:01
Which isn't to say that
these sociologists were

8:04
entirely wrong. There certainly
are myths there

8:07
certainly are reasons that
people do things that

8:09
don't comport with the
claims that they made.

8:13
But the sociologists became
too confident in

8:16
their method. And Latour
says the moment he

8:19
realized it was when he saw
their encounter with

8:22
science. Because when
sociologists encountered

8:25
the natural sciences and
tried to explain them

8:28
the same way that they'd
explained religion,

8:30
they got it wrong. The
idea that science is

8:33
just a social construction
just a myth like

8:36
religion or other myths,
and that its claims

8:39
to its ability to explain
the natural world

8:42
are not true was a bridge
too far for Latour. And

8:46
when he looked at that failure,
he figured that

8:49
if sociology couldn't explain
science, perhaps it

8:52
had problems explaining a
lot of other things too.

8:56
It had worked when it
was studying down but

8:59
it had failed when it
tried studying up.

9:04
Its idea of social phenomena
is somehow uniquely

9:07
human and existing in
consciousness and thought

9:11
and not actually material
entities in

9:13
the world effectively
meant that it was

9:15
inventing a metaphysics.
Go too far down

9:18
that road and that's not
a science at all.

9:23
And it has real implications
for human free

9:26
will, because if forces like
capitalism or racism

9:31
are operating in the world
and making people

9:33
do things, then people
become like puppets.

9:38
And because these forces
aren't material,

9:40
there's not much we
can do about them.

9:42
Latour says, I quote,
"if you have to

9:45
fight against a force
that is invisible,

9:47
untraceable, ubiquitous
and total, you

9:50
will be powerless and
roundly defeated."

9:55
If we actually want to
change or challenge

9:58
things like racism or capitalism
and so forth,

10:02
we actually have to
understand how

10:03
they exist in the
material world.

10:06
We have to understand
what social

10:08
constructions are constructed
of. And Latur

10:12
says that they are constructed
of real things

10:15
- people, technology, objects,
relationships,

10:19
interactions. To understand
them we need to come

10:22
down from the God's eye view,
down to the ground

10:25
level view where people
operate, and not simply

10:28
ignore what they have to
say about what they do.

10:33
Meanwhile, sociology and
the categories it has

10:36
created, things like racism
and capitalism and

10:40
so forth, although they may
not be abstract forces

10:43
out there in the world like
gods or angels that

10:47
are influencing human behavior,
they do in fact

10:50
influence human behavior
because they themselves

10:53
are social constructions.
And like other social

10:56
constructions they are made
of things. They are

10:59
made of tenure committees.
They're made of

11:01
universities. They operate
in buildings.

11:03
They're in journals. People
make money and careers

11:07
publishing them. They are,
in other words, real:

11:11
but they're real on a
level with the things

11:14
that they describe, not
above them. Brought

11:17
down to that level they're
an obvious target

11:19
for studying using exactly
the same techniques

11:22
that they use on other
phenomena. But Latour

11:26
does caution that the categories
that they use

11:29
are not useless. In fact,
they are very useful

11:33
as descriptions, not as
forces in the world.

11:37
In other words, when
people trade and act

11:40
in markets we call that
capitalism. We use

11:42
capitalism as description
to capture a wide

11:45
variety of behaviors that
have similarities.

11:48
And as a description it's
a very useful term.

11:51
But to treat it as something
that acts on its

11:54
own doesn't make sense.
That's like taking Adam

11:57
Smith's invisible hand
a metaphor intended to

12:00
illustrate the action of
the market and turn

12:03
it into an actual force
in the world. There is

12:07
no invisible hand that makes
buyers and sellers

12:10
agree on prices. It's just
a useful description.

12:15
And these are very useful
descriptions.

12:17
But where they fall
down, Latour says,

12:20
is in dealing with new
phenomena. Because when

12:23
behavior changes, when
interactions change, when

12:27
people construct social
things differently, if

12:30
we stick with the same old
catalog of categories

12:34
then we're going to be misled,
and we're not going

12:37
to understand how things
happen. And of course

12:40
we're not going to be able
to change them. This

12:45
is Alphonse for Radio Free
Beszel, www.beszel.ca.

12:51
Good night.

Introduction
Money
Google
Sociology's Mistake
Metaphysics and Free Will
What Are Categories Made Of?