DEFINITION:
Social constructs are the by-products of countless human choices, rather than laws resulting from human judgment. Social constructionism is not the result of anti-determinism, though. Social constructionism is typically positioned in opposition to essentialism, which sees phenomena in terms of inherent, transhistorical essences independent of human judgment.
A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by humans. The social construction of reality is an ongoing, dynamic process that is (and must be) reproduced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge of it. Because social constructs as facets of reality and objects of knowledge are not "given" by nature, they must be constantly maintained and re-affirmed in order to persist. This process also introduces the possibility of change: what "justice" is and what it means shifts from one generation to the next.
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