Marxism and social construction
pp. 7-27
in: Suke Wolton (ed), Marxism, mysticism and modern theory, Berlin, Springer, 1996Abstract
Today the proposition that identities are socially constructed is common place. A hundred years ago, characteristics like sex, race, nationality, generation and social class would have been seen as natural characteristics. Now, just as unassailably, these self-same characteristics are no longer seen as natural, but rather attributed to a social process of the construction of identity. In some cases these characteristics are renamed to signify their social origins: race becomes ethnicity, sex becomes gender. It is not just that these social categories are supposed to overlay natural properties, the proposition is that there is no discrete natural foundation to identities, rather socially constructed identities are the real content of the characteristics once attributed to nature.
