David Newman - Building Reality The Social Construction Of Knowledge.pdf

03-Newman 12/15/03 9:41 PM Page 52
Building Reality
3The Social Construction of Knowledge
Understanding the Social Construction of Reality
Laying the Foundation: The Bases of Reality
Building the Walls: Conflict, Power, and Social Institutions
Appreciating Sociological Research
he year was 1897. Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon became upset when her
T friends told her that there was no Santa Claus. Her father encouraged her to write
a letter to the New York Sun to find out the truth. The editor’s reply—which included
the now famous phrase “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!”—has e a classic
piece of American folklore. “Nobody sees Santa Claus,” the editor wrote, “but that is
no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that
neither children nor men [sic] can see”(“Is There a Santa Claus?” 1897).
In his book Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee (1971) examines the life
and ideas of David Brower, who was one of the most essful and energetic environ-
mentalists in the United States. McPhee recalls a lecture in which Brower claimed that
the United States has 6% of the world’s population and uses 60% of the world’s
resources and that only 1% of Americans use 60% of those resources. Afterward,
McPhee asked Brower where he got these interesting statistics:
Brower said the figures had been worked out in the head of a friend of his from data assem-
bled “to the best of his recollection.”. . . [He] assured me that figures in themselves are merely
indices. What matters is that they feel right [emphasis added]. Brower feels things. (p. 86)
What do these two very different examples have mon? Both reflect the fickle
nature of “truth” and “reality.”Young Virginia was encouraged to believe in the reality
of something she could and would never perceive with her senses. She certainly learned
a different sort of truth about Santa Claus when she got older, but the editor urged th