<P> Hacking observes, "the label' social constructionism' is more code than description" of every Leftist, Marxist, Freudian, and Feminist PostModernist to call into question every moral, sex, gender, power, and deviant claim as just another essentialist claim--including the claim that members of the male and female sex are inherently different, rather than historically and socially constructed . Hacking observes that his 1995 simplistic dismissal of the concept actually revealed to many readers the outrageous implications of the theorists: Is child abuse a real evil, or a social construct, asked Hacking? His dismissive attitude, "gave some readers a way to see that there need be no clash between construction and reality," inasmuch as "the metaphor of social construction once had excellent shock value, but now it has become tired ." </P> <P> Informally, they require human practices to sustain their existence, but they have an effect that is (basically) universally agreed upon . The disagreement lies in whether this category should be called "socially constructed ." Ian Hacking argues that it should not . Furthermore, it is not clear that authors who write "social construction" analyses ever mean "social construction" in Pinker's sense . ". If they never do, then Pinker (probably among others) has misunderstood the point of a social constructionist argument . </P> <P> To understand how weak social constructionism can conclude that metaphysics (a human affair) is not the entire "reality," see the arguments against the study metaphysics . This inability to accurately share the full reality, even given time for a rational conversation, is similarly proclaimed by weak artificial intelligence . </P> <P> Constructionism became prominent in the U.S. with Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann's 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality . Berger and Luckmann argue that all knowledge, including the most basic, taken - for - granted common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions . When people interact, they do so with the understanding that their respective perceptions of reality are related, and as they act upon this understanding their common knowledge of reality becomes reinforced . Since this common sense knowledge is negotiated by people, human typifications, significations and institutions come to be presented as part of an objective reality, particularly for future generations who were not involved in the original process of negotiation . For example, as parents negotiate rules for their children to follow, those rules confront the children as externally produced "givens" that they cannot change . Berger and Luckmann's social constructionism has its roots in phenomenology . It links to Heidegger and Edmund Husserl through the teaching of Alfred Schutz, who was also Berger's PhD adviser . </P>

Social structure might be imagined as a type of