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Ian Hacking identified a key motivation behind the emergence of social constructivism as the attempt to demonstrate that if a social category X is constructed, then it is not inevitable—it could have been defined differently, or it might be possible to redefine it. As long as a feature that defines a given social category (such as race, caste, gender, etc.) is understood as natural or biologically determined—a position referred to as essentialism—it is difficult to imagine how such a feature could be changed. This, in turn, leads to the legitimization of certain social policies and attitudes that are often perceived as oppressive and denoted by pejorative terms (racism, transphobia, heteronormativity, and so forth). If, however, we adopt the paradigm according to which social categories are not objective but merely projections of society, shaped by historical and cultural contingencies, it becomes possible to claim that the way we categorize members of society is not necessary. These categories could be altered or even abolished altogether, and individuals might be free to choose the categories to which they wish to belong. Because this paradigm carries an emancipatory potential, it has inspired numerous movements throughout history asserting that characteristics once regarded as natural are, in fact, products of social attitudes. In this way, race, gender, sex, and disability have gradually been denaturalized. This paper focuses on a critical examination of the fundamental assumption that if category X is a social construct, it is therefore not inevitable. The lecture will distinguish among different meanings of the claim “X is a social construct,” assess whether, in these senses, standardly recognized social categories can indeed be regarded as constructs, and, drawing on the works of various social constructivists (Gergen, Tremain, Amundson, Barnes, Davis), demonstrate that the assumption of the contingency of social constructs is far from self-evident and, in many crucial respects, does not hold.
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