User:Timtimgibbons/sandbox

Social Construction - Social constructions are human created ideas, objects, or events created by a series of choices and interactions. These interactions have consequences that change the perception that different groups of people have on these constructs. Some examples of social construction include gender, class, race, money, and citizenship. The concept of class is an example of society privileging certain groups over others. According to the What is Social Construction? by Laura Flores,

"Social construction work is critical of the status quo. Social constructionists about X tend to hold that: X need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is. X, or X as it is at present, is not determined by the nature of things; it is not inevitable Very often they go further, and urge that:     2) X is quite as bad as it is.      3) We would be much better off if X were done away with, or at least radically transformed."

"Technologies are shaped via interaction among people, influenced by their eras, organizations, role incentives, and other cultural, psychological, political, and economic factors. There is no formula by which to determine what is most worth designing, building, and buying. The reason this is important: If technologies are socially shaped rather than somehow determined by scientific truths and required engineering practices, then it makes sense to find out how the world got its present technologies – and to consider whether and how to reconstruct anything considered unsatisfactory by enough people."

Our earlier example of the development of the safety bicycle is of this kind. Another example is variations within the high-wheeler. The high-wheeler's meaning as a virile, high-speed bicycle led to the development of larger front wheels for with a fixed angular velocity one way of getting a higher translational velocity over the ground was by enlarging the radius. But groups of women and of elderly men gave quite another meaning to the high-wheeler. For them, its most important characteristic was its lack of safety: Owing to the disparity in wheel diameters and the small weight of the backbone and trailing wheel, also to the rider's position practically over the centre of the wheel, if the large front wheel hit a brick or large stone on the road, and the rider was unprepared, the sudden check to the wheel usually threw him over the handlebar. For this reason the machine was regarded as dangerous, and however enthusiastic one may have been about the ordinary- and I was an enthusiastic rider of it once- there is no denying that it was only possible for comparatively young and athletic men.