Seeing Reality as a Social Construct

That reality is socially constructed is not news to most social scientists and marketing-, brand-, and political consultants. The former may quibble over philosophical implications and consequences; the latter about how to best leverage it to create a desired - but not always desirable - reality.

For most people, however, the notion that reality is a social construct is a harder idea to absorb. It can deeply challenge fundamental beliefs about the world and their place and power in it. It challenges the very experience of what is concrete, self-evident, immutable and an integral part of some sort of “natural order”.

And indeed, it can be highly disconcerting to realise that "money“, "the economy“, "ownership“, a "company“, a "nation“, the year we count as 2025, or "marriage“ are not real in the same way that a mountain, a flower, or a lake are real. After all, they very much seem like that. That their existence - their reality - relies on mere agreements and shared imaginations among a group seems esoteric. And indeed these agreements and collective imaginations are like magic in their power to generate hard social facts.

This applies, for example, to the social realisation and enactment of gender, nationality, ethnicity, race, tribes, class, or caste, the existence of which in a given human world relies on social construction and recreation to sustain them. For the most part these agreements are not explicit. Rather they are implicit in the social norms, traditions and conventions into which we are socialised.

That also means that changing such features of social reality is possible, albeit complicated. To attempt change, we need to understand the elements of social construction. Fortunately, as social actors, all of us are intimately familiar with them. Recognising them clearly, however, is like asking fish to describe the water they swim in. Here are just two examples:

The element of ritual

Rituals, such as signing papers or digital forms that constitute a "contract“, bring us into close contact with the nature of social construction and can make us at least semi-aware of how social construction works.

Rituals are a social technology, a gateway to a different "reality.“ They can profoundly transform us by shifting perceptions, beliefs, emotions, expectations and behaviors among members of a group that practice and recognize them. A baptism, a wedding, a funeral, a "rite of passage", an employment contract, a court judgment, a graduation, an inauguration, an initiation, a check mark on a form or application, a handshake, a retirement party, a peace treaty or a declaration of war are all ways to usher in new realities. They move members of groups collectively into a different way of understanding, seeing and acting. It is most likely an important part of rituals that they make and structure space for emotional focusing, processing, and generation - they galvanize anger, grief, resolve, courage, joy, solidarity and importantly cohesion and togetherness. Thereby it is relatively unimportant which particular cultural form these rituals take.

The scripts for the new realities are stubborn parts of the cultural codes we acquire when becoming a member of a group. And, they are not the same for all members, nor are they deterministic. There is variation among members of a group and much room for elaboration, modification, shifts, changes, and new forms of social creation and imagination. This is perhaps what makes human social behavior and social developments so difficult to predict and/or control and also so interesting and exciting.

The element of language

We acquire languages, we do not invent or discover them. That means that the sound patterns and conventions of their utterance and symbolic representation (writing) are pre-structured but not rigid and immutable. Each of us has the capability to shift the meaning of words (semantic shifts), invent new terms (neologism), together with the rules of their use - we modify and elaborate language and with it the ideas about the world and the realities and fantasies they uphold.

Some examples of semantic shifts include: "literally" originally meant exactly as stated. Many younger speakers today use it as an intensifier, even when the statement is figurative (e.g., "I'm literally dying of laughter."); "gay" used to mean joyful or carefree in earlier generations, but today, it primarily refers to homosexuality; "awful" once meant full of awe (something impressive or inspiring), but now means terrible; and "salty" used to mean containing too much salt, but today can also mean being overly annoyed or bitter. Examples of neologisms include: "doomscrolling" (the act of compulsively scrolling through negative news on social media); "ghosting" (ending a relationship or communication by suddenly cutting off contact without explanation); "being hangry" (a blend of hungry and angry, describing irritability caused by hunger); and "shrinkflation" (the practice of reducing the size of a product while keeping its price the same).

It is important to remember that the same phenomenon applies to the vocabulary we painstakingly acquired to describe features of social reality. The word  “race”, for example, was first recorded in this form around 1490–1500. English borrowed race from the French race, which derives in turn from the Italian razza, meaning “kind, breed, lineage.” The word “nation” comes from the Latin "natio", which originally meant "birth, tribe, or people" and was derived from the verb "nasci" (meaning to be born). It entered the English language around the 13th-14th century, meaning a group of people with shared origins and later came to signify a distinct political entity or sovereign state. Similarly, the gender binary is a relatively recent social construct, shaped by religious, scientific, and colonial influences. This makes the introduction of a “third gender", the gender-sensitive use of language and the use of pronouns a project of social reconstruction.

Historical and ethnographic evidence indicates that gender diversity has always existed, and many cultures have recognized multiple genders beyond male and female. For example: A “Two-Spirit” identity among some Native American tribes; Hijras in South Asia, a recognized third gender category; Muxe people in Zapotec culture (Oaxaca, Mexico) exist outside the male-female binary; and priests of the goddess Inanna (gala and assinnu) in ancient Mesopotamia, who did not conform to the strict male/female roles that were prescribed through Judeo-Christian influence in Europe and later reinforced scientifically until recently.

These are just four of numerous examples, but they illustrate the critical role of language in constructing and shifting social reality. Language is key to shaping the cognitive landscape upon which social construction, deconstruction and re-construction projects critically rely. This is not a trivial matter. After all, our shared cognitive landscape is the battleground for those seeking to deliberately create and shape new human realities (in both desirable and undesirable ways).

We humans are a socially inventive species

The examples above also make clear that the idea of "social construction“ does not mean that the experienced reality is therefore in some sense not actually "real“ - just illusion or even delusion. Nor are they frivolous or random. Social constructions create hard realities that can be harsh and even lethal.

Just reflect on how the semantic shift of “race” has underpinned a rigid classification system which justified enslavement, the institutionalisation of racism (including antisemitism), segregation and persecution that have fueled ethnic warfare and genocides. Together with “ethnicity”, “culture”, and “nationality” it has given rise to colonialism, nationalism, imperialism, ideas of ethnic purity and ethnic cleansing, segregation, and other forms of divisiveness and “othering”, de-humanization, and exclusion.

Today, in many societies, the labels of “migrant” or “refugee” increasingly fall into this category. Without them the re-emergence of new forms of imperialism and “land claims” in the name of ethnic unity and unification that are underpinning international tensions and wars on almost all continents would not be possible.

We humans are a viciously creative species. Particularly when it comes to inventing, justifying and/or normalising social hierarchies, differentiation, and exclusion, our creativity can be boundless. This alone should give us reasons to examine carefully how meanings and constructs are created and reinterpreted to deliberately and slowly shift our thinking, understanding, emotional dispositions and choices.

Of course, we cannot deny that we have also socially constructed greater levels of inclusiveness: the declaration of universal Human Rights, some religious movements, inclusive notions of nationality and belonging, and affinity structures based on shared values, professions or pursuits. Organisations in the sciences, arts, purpose-oriented non-governmental institutions, and some business organisations may serve as examples. For some reason though, humanity seems more creative and susceptible to the construction of exclusion, separation, and alienation.

(Re-)claiming our constructive agency

We need to remember that unlike mountains, none of these social constructs are features of the natural world, but are social in nature. That also means that they are subject to collective human agency - choices we make about their continuation, modification, revolution, deconstruction and reconstruction. Choices about supporting or antagonizing political forces or perhaps by standing and staying silent are the stuff human history is made of.

Tragically, we often don’t realise our part in social construction projects. For the most part, we do not stop to reflect and critically examine the concepts we readily and customarily use to describe and reinforce reality - the concept of “race” or “nationality”, of “foreigner” and “compatriots”, of “foe” and “friend”, to name a few examples.

Periods of social stability in particular give us the illusion that social constructions have the same stability we see in the natural order... until a sense of disruption alarms us, awakens us to social contingency, and perhaps mobilises us and our agency to protect and preserve, modify and change, or heal and repair.

It is through disruptions that we are reminded of the contradictory essence of social constructions: they are hard and fragile at the same time. What makes them hard - the presumed massiveness of collective beliefs and agreements that uphold them - is also what makes them fragile, namely when that "mass“ fractures and dissipates, seemingly in an instant.

Empires crumble, walls fall, and dictatorships dissolve as a result. The breakup of the Soviet empire, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria recently are just a few examples. Of course, social developments can also move in other directions. Democracies erode, new distinctions, borders and walls are drawn up, and authoritarianism arises. Social developments may not follow a specific, pre-determined trajectory. The course of human history might still surprise us.

This brings us to the present where the presumed certainties and stabilities in “the West” - also a construct - are being shaken, exposing the fragility of their construction and the threat that they may be dismantled and deconstructed …  democratic governance and the rule of law in the U.S., the “international order”, notions of historical exceptionalism, moral and ethical superiority, and inclusive solidarity, to name just a few.

Hearing and heeding "the call"

In the hero’s journey described by Joseph Campbell, an epic adventure starts with a calling that the protagonist at first ignores, rejects and then reluctantly embraces. Similarly, the current levels of disruption and crisis are a call. This call, I believe, is to become conscious of the extraordinary creative power we possess and exercise in groups. When we then decide to turn this creative power in the deliberate service of creating a culture of thriving for all, we will write a hero’s journey of a different kind - one that does not place an individual at the center, but a group - a heroes’ journey, in other words, and very much in the spirit of Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

The specific act of citizenship exercised collectively is one that I would call “critically reflective agency” - the type of agency directed at the process and dynamics of social construction that we are all implicated in. This means that groups would make time to deliberately step out of “action”, “doing” or “producing” modes in order to observe, identify, and describe the shared “truths”, assumptions, implicit and explicit constructs and beliefs upon which their shared world is built and depends.

Once identified and described, the groups would critically assess these constructs and beliefs and the quality of the world they uphold. This must include the ways these constructs and beliefs manifest in the decisions and behaviors of the group and those the group influences and affects. They would examine questions like:

• How is our current reality (our current world) configured and how well does it support the thriving of all stakeholders now and in the future? How do we know?
• What certainties, convictions, assumptions and beliefs do we need to challenge that uphold the current reality and that we may possibly need to abandon or modify to enable thriving for all?
• Are we willing and able to abandon and/or modify certainties? … which certainties? Why and why not? What do we fear? What do we have to gain?
• Which new behaviors and norms are we willing to cultivate? … and how specifically will we do this?
• How can and will we institutionalise the process of critical reflection and learning together in the “new reality” we seek to create?
• How will we engage others and inspire them to critically reflect and exercise their agency?

The general terms “reality” and “world” that I have used so far in this article need to be translated into the specific social spheres in which we participate and that we influence through our reactions, behaviors and choices in our specific community, our team, our family, our organisation, etc.

Critical reflectiveness, the way I understand it, is essential to the success of deliberate transformation and adaptation in and of human organizations of all types - families, communities, societies, teams, companies and institutions. This thought invokes the insights of eminent sociologist Margaret Archer, who describes the mode of meta-reflexivity as a necessary condition for social change.

Unfortunately, meta-reflexivity (or critical reflectiveness) is frequently undervalued, under-represented and/or atrophied in groups and decision-making forums. I worry that in times of accelerating crises and disruption, the allure of denial, messianic populism, or outdated ideologies is stronger. In any case, seizing the potential of a better future may rest on our ability to embrace our power of social construction, invent new forums for critical reflectiveness, and to focus collective agency to generate and experiment with social and cultural innovations.

In conclusion …

The reality of social construction means that we all are, to varying degrees, co-constructors of the current human world with all its challenges and opportunities. The essential building blocks of this constructed reality are deeply embedded features in the belief structure upon which we run our lives. When we leave them unchallenged and unexamined, we end up either perpetuating the status quo or rendering change efforts ineffective, because we are not addressing the roots of the reality we seek to change.

If we want to be effective in constructing meaningful change, we need to invoke consciousness of the constructive and creative powers that are part of our shared human endowment. That requires that groups, not individuals, engage in shaping and shifting social reality. A new reality emerges out of the dynamics of the social, relational world. By activating “critical reflective agency”, these groups put key insights into practice and co-create their heroes’ journey.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn in February 2025.

About the Author

Joerg Schmitz is a business anthropologist passionate about exploring human behavior through the lens of anthropology and organizational culture. He is the founder and Managing Director of The Inclusive Leadership Institute (@TheInclusiveLeadershipInstitute). After 35 years living in the US and working with organizations and institutions globally, he currently resides in Bremen, Germany. Connect with him at [email protected] to continue the conversation.