Example Of Social Construction

Social construction is one of the important sociological concepts that can be seen in this short story. Generally, social construction means that we perceive something in a certain way because our society is built that way, but if we functioned differently, we would view it in a different way. In this case, we can talk about social construction of death. In our society death is perceived as something unpleasant, as opposite of life and as a result it’s feared and resented. Additionally, we believe that humans are superior to other creatures, and as a result, human’s death is more painful than death of something else. One more thing that makes death even worse is that we believe in importance of individuals and in self, so when a specific individual that is close to us dies, we are mourning end of his/her life and his/her presence in our lives.
Now, if society was organized differently and if individuals were not given so much importance, death would not be perceived in such a way, it would be just another state of existence that is natural and normal. In this short story homeless man shares social construction of death and thus says: “I couldn’t help overhearing. My condolences. May I buy you a drink?” This shows that we are used to taking death as something terrible and assume that if your acquaintance dies, you must be