Social Construct

Is everything around us social constructed?  In class we talked about sociologist Peter Berger and four concepts that help make up a society being social construct, externalization, habitualization, and institutionalization.   They work together in order, but from the reading and class it is an obscure concept to think that we live into today is socially constructed.  At first this thought seems so odd, but Berger is able to see that we have created everything that surrounds us.  The car, buildings, ect is all socially constructed by humans.  We just didn’t so up on this earth with all this here, rather we adapted, grew, and produced what we live in today.  When you break it down like this, you can take a look around your community and see how it is socially constructed. 

A good example is new subdivisions and how they are structured.  They are all made around the same time, newer, relatively nice, all have the same basic earth colors, and around the same price, usually on the more expensive side.  People can see this house as a nice property, in a nice area, and they are able to fit it.  It is almost crazy to see a house that is orange or yellow now a days.  Maybe its people don’t like those colors, or that people making the houses don’t make them that way.  A cool example of a song is little boxes by walk off the earth (which is a remake)                                                                                           (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM8JhvfoqdA)  and used as the theme song of the show weeds.  We see here how we socially construct this idea of a community and see what is normal and acceptable.  For an example in the show weeds, this single mom becomes a drug dealer in a high end subdivision.  It is a good example how we people socially construct societies.