What Is Non-Inevitable?

Abstract

In this paper, I contend that the use of the notion of non-inevitability on the part of many social constructionists and non-social constructionists alike is either vague or relies too heavily on intuition. I propose two readings, namely the Dependence and Alterability Readings, to provide a principled criterion for determining whether and to what extent something may be argued to be non-inevitable. By utilizing the examples of gender and human emotion as case studies, my ultimate goals herein are not to provide a wholly foolproof criterion to delimit the non-inevitable, but to proffer one attempt at fleshing out a structured analysis at what non-inevitability might amount to and, also, to highlight the importance of why the notion of non-inevitability must be précised in order for social constructionist or non-social constructionist programs to hold weight.

1. Introduction

I analyze to what extent the theoretical cogency and practical efficacy of social constructionist programs are affected by vagueness surrounding the meaning of “non-inevitability.” My task is successful if it can explain, organize, and clarify how this issue affects social constructionist programs and ameliorative versions especially. Very roughly, descriptive social constructionists ask “What is X?” or “In virtue of what social factors is X constituted?” Given issues of social justice, ameliorative social constructionists ask (in the spirit of Sally Haslanger’s Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique [2012]) “What should X be?” or “How should we alter our conception of X?” In what follows, I examine the concepts/referents of gender and human emotion as case studies to attempt to delineate and flesh out what sense can be made of the claim that gender, emotions writ large, particular emotions, or whatever purported socially constructed X is “not inevitable.” In so doing, I elucidate how the claim of non-inevitability on the part of social constructionists has not been adequately justified and argue that the meaning of non-inevitability has not been made precise or relies too heavily on intuitions about what is social/natural, unnecessary/necessary, and alterable/inalterable.

My aim herein is not to attempt to disarm any social constructionist program. Rather, I seek to provide valuable conceptual tools for social constructionist programs by proposing two understandings of “non-inevitability,” which, though somewhat coarse-grained are not thereby merely half-baked. I undertake this endeavor without any personal commitment to the truth of any X being socially constructed and without commitment to whether the question of whether X or Y is “really” socially constructed is even epistemically viable. On the latter point, none of us possess access to the objective answer most questions. On this point, I expect to know “the real” criterion for delineating the natural from the social at the same time that I come to know why there is something rather than nothing. Nonetheless, what I present is not therefore a fool’s errand. I contend that despite my epistemic and metaphysical agnosticism, the understandings that I recommend are both more substantive and precise than what has so far been offered in existing social constructionist literature.

2. The Vagueness of “Inevitability”

According to Ian Hacking (1999), social constructionists about X usually hold that:

(0) In the present state of affairs, X is taken for granted, X appears to be inevitable. (12)

(1) X need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is. X, or X as it is at present, is not determined by the nature of things; it is not inevitable. (6)

They often go further and argue that:

(2) X is quite bad as it is.

(3) We would be much better off if X were done away with, or at least radically transformed (6).

Hacking’s presentation of the employment of “non-inevitability” by social constructionists is vague. André Kukla expounds upon this same theme in Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science (2000). As Kukla notes, Theses (2), (3), and (0) elucidate “the point” of social constructionist claims rather than their meaning (2000, 2). This is to say that Hacking’s Theses (0), (2), and (3) are not critical prerequisites for descriptive social constructionist claims, though they are, I propose, for ameliorative or emancipatory versions. However, Thesis (1) is a necessary condition for the truth of the claim that “X is socially constructed.” For Hacking and for social constructionists, “X is socially constructed” entails that X is not inevitable (Kukla 2000, 2). In other words, according to Hacking’s understanding of Thesis (1), a necessary condition for the validity of social constructionist claims (i.e., that “X is socially constructed”) entails that “X is not inevitable” and vice versa. Yet, X’s being socially constructed does not fully define “non-inevitability” and nor does “non-inevitability” fully define the meaning of “socially constructed.” While Kukla does not proffer, and nor does he take as his primary goal to proffer, an amended account of the meaning of “non-inevitability” in the context of social constructionist programs, I take this as my main assignment in what follows.

Making clearer what inevitability amounts to is important since what establishes X’s non-inevitability, and indeed, whether X is or is not non-inevitable, is often precisely what is in question between social constructionists and their opponents (and between social constructionists as well). Stated as it is, Thesis (1) offers no criterion to delimit the inevitable from the non-inevitable and the natural or non-social from the social. It is the criterion or criteria that decides these matters that is part of what is at issue between advocates and opponents of social constructionism and between many social constructionists themselves. Thus, I attempt to make clearer the various ways in which the claim of X’s non-inevitability might be understood. I also present what I take to be the most promising interpretations of Thesis (1), which I name the “Dependence Reading” and the “Alterability Reading” respectively. While not entirely fine-grained, I see the two Readings I propose, whether taken individually or together, as offering a substantive account of non-inevitability that, as a matter of course, is politically and otherwise practically useful.

I begin by way of elucidating what I call the “Extremist Reading” of Thesis (1), a reading I take to be largely implausible. I do so to underscore the inadequacies of this reading with the larger goal of showing, later in this paper, how the Dependence or Alterability Readings might avoid them. On the Extremist Reading, Thesis (1) means that X is not inevitable in the sense that everything might be non-inevitable—for example, most extremely, perhaps there need not have been something rather than nothing. The problem with this reading is that everything (including everything largely inarguably purely physical or part of the empirical world) is not inevitable from the obviously non-social (e.g., Earth’s moon, the evergreen in my neighbor’s yard, the bison in the city zoo in my hometown). If one subscribes to, say, Platonic or analytic conceptions of number theory, it might be that only such things as mathematical or logical truths are inevitable in the sense of the Extremist Reading, though I will not discuss this possibility further. ¹ The Extremist Reading thus shows that the distinctive feature of social constructions cannot be that they are not inevitable in this sense. The Extremist Reading can also be flipped on its head such that at least two possibilities exist: (i) nothing need be as it is or (ii) everything since the beginning of spacetime (t¹)—if it had a beginning—is/was determined by God/physics/the Hegelian unfolding of thesis-anthesis-synthesis, some unknown cause Y, and so on, and therefore must be exactly as it is. Thus, the Extremist Reading does not provide any sort of tractable criterion/criteria for establishing what is inevitable from non-inevitable. Nevertheless, expounding upon this Reading is valuable as it reveals that for most social constructionist purposes, “natural” should not be understood as necessarily coextensive with “inevitable” and that “socially-constituted/caused” should not be understood as necessarily coextensive with “non-inevitable” either.

Later, in addressing certain arguments advanced by Ron Mallon and Steven Stich in “The Odd Couple: The Compatibility of Social Construction and Evolutionary Psychology” (2000), I attend further to the importance of remembering that for most social constructionist agendas, “natural” should not be understood as necessarily coextensive with “inevitable” and that “socially-constituted/caused” should not be understood as necessarily coextensive with “non-inevitable.” It is also important to emphasize that my Dependence and Alterability Readings are most plausible should one accept the following theses: (i) the causal closure of the physical world, which is to say that for every physical event, there is a sufficient physical cause and that (ii) all mental and social events are somehow parasitic on the physical or exist as byproducts of other mental and social events that are, in turn, directly parasitic on the physical. Concerning thesis (ii), I assume that there are no non-physically grounded causally efficacious ghosts, forces, Cartesian souls, Zeitgeists entirely unrelated or unfettered to collective brain-states, or something else. I am thus committed only to the view that all social phenomena are also ultimately dependent on physical phenomena (minimal reductionism). Given my commitments, the social and the physical can nonetheless be delineated if the social is conceived of as, at base, the product of individuals’ mental events (somehow connected or fettered to physical substrates) that possess qualia or as a phenomenon/phenomena that exists as a sort of secondary byproduct of individuals’ mental events, which are, in turn, directly parasitic on brain-states or other physical states or events. These theses are, I believe, consistent with the view put forth by Mallon and Stich (2000).

3. Introducing the Dependence and Alterability Readings

I now turn to the Dependence Reading. I take this reading to be a more credible understanding of Thesis (1) than the Extremist Reading. On this interpretation, the claim of inevitability on the part of social constructionists is a claim about what features are central to X’s existence. To claim that some phenomenon X is not inevitable is to think of it in terms of its degree of dependence on social phenomena. Understood this way, non-inevitability falls on a spectrum: the more dependent X is upon social factors, the more X is not inevitable. There is, therefore, not a hard and fast distinction between the inevitable and the non-inevitable just as I have suggested in the preceding section that there is not a hard and fast distinction between the physical and the social. Rather, at one end of the spectrum are those phenomena that exist most directly as a result of biological or other physical features. Moving along the continuum are phenomena that are more dependent on social factors. Non-inevitability increases, for example, as one moves from kinship structures (phenomena highly dependent upon biological features) to marriage (a pervasive cross-cultural phenomenon), to such phenomena as engagement rituals, the wearing of a ring on a given finger, bachelor and bachelorette parties, and wedding/bridal showers. To reiterate, the less X is the result of non-social factors (the less causally or constitutively dependent X is upon social factors), the more X is inevitable, and the more X is a feature of, or parasitic upon, social practices or features, the less X is inevitable. On this view, marriage is more non-inevitable than kinship structures since without the latter, the former would not exist. Engagement parties are more non-inevitable than marriage because without the concept of marriage, there would not be engagement parties. Again, though this reading cannot perhaps offer an infallible or highly exact manner of assessing grades of social dependence, it goes quite some way in articulating a principled method of settling debates about whether and to what extent X is a social construction.

Closely related to the issue of X’s non-inevitability is that of X’s alterability—specifically, X’s potential for alteration by human action, intentional or otherwise. The Dependence Reading is closely connected to alterability, though logically independent. Revealing the dependence of X upon culture and individual or collective decisions/mental events suggests that it is within our power to change X through future choices. Highlighting X’s dependence upon social factors may also stress our responsibility to modify X if X is (thought to be) unjust. Yet given the particularities of socio-political-material circumstances, some social phenomena may be difficult or even impossible to alter at a given point in space and time due to conceptual or physical limitations—consider, for instance, the likelihood of same-sex marriage being considered a conceptual or substantive legal possibility in Canada in the year 1900. According to the Alterability Reading, the claim that “X need not have happened or be at all as it is” refers to the extent to which it is within our control to some significant extent to determine whether X continues to exist as it is currently or at all in some space and time.

Again, the Alterability and Dependence Readings are not equivalent. According to the former, X must be alterable substantively and not merely theoretically and X must be, at least in part, socially caused or constituted. Without adding this last caveat, too many obviously non-social phenomena would be included under the banner of “alterable,” phenomena we would certainly not want to qualify as social constructions (e.g., the distance between Earth and Mars, the genome of the fruit fly). While the Alterability Reading specifies that X must be alterable by us, our alteration of X, whether synchronically or diachronically and whether historically or in the time to come, need not be deliberate. The Alterability Reading offers a strengthened version of the Dependence Reading, or, to put the point differently, it provides a more strict or robust criterion by which X can be said to count as a social construction. According to the Alterability Reading, the locution “X is not determined by the nature of things, it is not inevitable” is roughly equivalent to saying that X (where X meets the conditions specified by the Dependence Reading) is within our power to alter in the here and now. The Dependence Reading thus requires less of an X in order that it qualify as a social construction: X can qualify as a social construction without meeting the conditions of the Alterability Reading (e.g., X may be dependent on social factors for its existence at time t³, but be inalterable, given ideological constraints at t³).

Whether X is within our power to alter is both a theoretical and a practical issue. While X may be theoretically alterable (while X may be alterable in the widest sense of counterfactual possibility), it may be practically inalterable in some space and time—in this case, one may want to say that X meets the conditions of the Dependence Reading, but not those of the Alterability Reading. This is to say that even if the social constructionist sees the here and now as a good and timely condition for X’s alteration, as a matter of course, X may fail to be altered in the way the social constructionist envisions or may fail to be altered at all. In other words, the ameliorative social constructionist’s program may fail to be taken up and substantively enacted by some or all of its audience. This may be because the program fails, in the audience’s opinion, to accurately capture what it intends to capture or because the audience, even accepting the program as persuasive, fails to take up, for a variety of reasons, the ameliorative or transformative aspects that the program specifies. Oftentimes, independent of whether there exist good reasons for a community to alter X, whether X really is alterable by human effort in a given space and time is an issue that can only be answered after the fact. As Charles Taylor (1971) writes on this theme, “[h]uman science is largely ex post understanding. Or often one has the sense of impending change, of some big reorganization, but it powerless to make clear what it will consist in …” (50). There is, to put it simply, an issue about whether there are good reasons for people to be moved to alter X and an issue about whether they will.

4. Considering Gender as a Social Construct

With these difficulties on the table, I nonetheless illustrate how the Alterability Reading might function. I do this through a consideration of alterability as it applies to the following case—the baptism of a child as “female-” or “male-” gendered and sexed by the child’s parents and community in a context where conceptually, only two gender categories exist (male and female) and where gender assignments correspond without question to sex assignments. Given the social conditions, that is, given that the community recognizes only two mutually exclusive gender categories, the child will be declared either female or male gendered and sexed. ² This situation is counterfactually alterable—it was possible (in some wide sense) that the community did recognize more than two gender categories, recognized the possibility of non-cisgendered people, or that the community even rejected the concept of gender altogether. The degree to which the situation (in this case, gender and sex assignment) is counterfactually alterable is, in turn, dependent on the particularities of the social-historical context. In this sense, gender and sex designation is more likely to be made inclusive of non-binary genders and in the year 2023 in some parts of the world than it was in the year 1900 in Canada. However, one does not want to say that in Canada circa 1900 gender assignment was not a social construction tout court: Categories of gender assignment were and are, at least in part, dependent on social factors. Whether anyone knew/knows it, gender met and meets the simple Dependence Reading both in 1900 and today, thereby qualifying gender (both the idea and the actual material referents of the concept [given people’s genders]) as socially constructed. Furthermore, by now, at least in many parts of the world, it is commonplace to accept that gender is a social construct, and one which also meets the conditions stipulated by the Alterability Reading. Contemporarily and to lesser or larger degrees depending on geographical and ideological milieus, the belief(s) that a given gender’s typical manifestations (a given gender’s prescribed comportment, “purpose,” and so on), as well as the possibility of one’s becoming a new gender or not possessing a gender at all is made plausible by the proliferation of terms/concepts such as “gender fucking,” “pan-genderism,” and materially, by the designation of more and more “gender-neutral” bathrooms, “unisex” clothing lines, and so forth.

While gender meets the Dependence Reading’s conditions, thus constituting an instance of a social construction on my account, gender assignment in Canada circa 1900 did not meet the criteria stipulated by the Alterability Reading. This is because, in the not-so-distant past, the actual capacity for gender assignment’s being conceived as non-binary (and even more recently and only in select places, the capacity for medical/legal recognition of sex assignment’s being non-binary) was not within our power to amend because it was not within our imaginations. With the Alterability Reading in mind, perhaps it is best to say that gender was less socially constructed in Canada in 1900 precisely because it was less alterable. One might not want to make commit to this claim and may wish to rather stipulate plainly that gender either was or was not a social construction in 1900. According to such an understanding and given my defense and elucidation of the Dependence Reading because gender met the conditions of the Dependence Reading in 1900, gender simply was a social construction whether anyone knew it in Canada circa 1900. Meeting the condition of the Dependence Reading seems, thus, to be the most minimal condition by which some X can count as a social construction.

Socially constituted phenomena alterable at a given time may be inalterable or vary in their degree of alterability at another time or location. As the gender assignment example illustrates, X can count as a social construction according to the Dependence Reading, but nonetheless be inalterable at some point in space and time; thus, I stress once more that the Dependence and Alterability Readings are logically independent. The Dependence Reading seems to capture what descriptive social constructionists want to capture: That X’s being a social construction is a matter of degree, namely the degree to which X’s existence is dependent on social factors. The Alterability Reading intends to persuade its audience that X is substantively (and not merely in the widest sense of theoretical possibility) alterable by us in the here and now. But this—that is, X’s actual potential for alteration by us, is something to be determined after the fact and depends on audience uptake, complicated ideological relations, and so on. The Dependence Reading does not emphasize or state a claim about our actual ability to change X, but merely underscores the degree of dependence of X’s existence upon social factors. I suggest that meeting the Dependence Reading, nonetheless, is sufficient to qualify X as a social construction. Alterability, as I have defined it above, is a stricter or more robust version of the Dependence Reading. Hence, one might say that if X meets the conditions of the Alterability Reading, it is a more robust social construction than one that meets one the Dependence Reading.

5. Is Gender Social? A Culture War

Some may object that utilizing the example of gender as a case study is a poor choice to bolster my understandings of “non-inevitability” given that the belief that gender is a social construct is, in much of the world, a now taken for granted notion. ³ Thus, I must be more specific. What claim seems fairly uncontroversial is that for cisgender folk, the what it’s likeness to be male- or female-gendered has changed both unintentionally and intentionally according to space and time. Recently, however, the surge of popularity in the number of individuals, children, and adults alike, claiming to be transgender has perhaps complicated the waters with many specialists and folk under various banners asserting either that gender and sex can come apart, if not entirely, then substantially or claiming that to lesser or larger degrees, one’s gender is derivative of one’s sex. Again, what seems old news is the claim (note: I do not argue for the truth of whether gender—cis- or trans—or otherwise is socially constructed) that the constraints and enablements, to borrow Ásta’s language from Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories (2018), or the scripts and stereotypes that follow from being, say, a cisgender male or female in Berlin in the year 2023 are dependent on one’s situation in space and time.

What is currently a significantly more heated question is whether one can “legitimately” transition from a male-sexed body to “become” female-gendered or from a female-sexed body to “become” male-gendered. There is an initial and obvious question, namely, to what does “legitimately” refer? Some may also object that any idea of a transition of gender here is misplaced. At least according to many trans folk and various experts on transgenderism, the physical transformations sometimes undertaken to “match” one’s “real” gender with one’s “natural,” but “incorrect” or “dysphoria-causing” sex characteristics is the only transition or “becoming” that can occur. On this understanding of transgenderism, one always was “of the other gender”—the body simply did not “match up.” Invoking the issue of transgenderism draws attention to the fact that distinguishing the new entanglements in which the concept of gender figures as a social construction now meets with some novel pushback of a “conservative” or “biology-backed” nature in the lived world. Considering gender as understood in the cases of transgenderism and agenderism, etc. may be argued to weaken my contention that the Dependency and Alterability Readings are strong sortal criteria for distinguishing the “non-inevitable” from the “inevitable” because there seems no agreement on whether, how, and to what degree, gender is dependent on the physical.

The more mundane suggestion that a given gender, say, being female, is socially constructed may be argued to weaken my arguments presented in defense of my understanding of non-inevitability, too, but for a different reason. The charge, I suppose, is that in utilizing the concept of a given gender (in the case of a cisgender person), I am, in other words, employing the presumed conclusion of the query to sneak in a metaphysics that supports said (presumed to be true) conclusion—namely that for cisgender people, gender is at least largely socially constructed. I cannot refute this objection, but I do not think it necessary that I must. To reiterate, my goal is not to defend the truth of social constructionism concerning any object or sortal concept, but to provide a more robust and tractable understanding of “non-evitability” should one wish to argue for the social construction of some X. In the case of the question of the social construction of gender with respect to cisgender persons, my Dependence and Alterability Readings provide such a metaphysics.

6. Is Emotion a Social Phenomenon?

Just as much literature exists concerning the social construction of gender, much literature exists concerning the social construction of emotion. The content of this literature largely focuses on case studies or examples of purported evidence for some emotion’s being or gender being a social construct or cultural product. Similarly, much literature exists producing biological, evolutionary biological, or otherwise physical explanations of gender and emotion. Much of this literature focuses mainly on case studies or empirical examples. Since my goal herein is merely to present a useful sortal tool for delineating the more inevitable and alterable from the less, I do not attend to such literature. This is because the understandings I present could be useful for social constructionist and physical understandings of gender, emotion, or some other phenomenon alike. I therefore engage with only one article on the topic of the social construction of emotion to further expound my Dependency and Alterability Readings.

Like the issue of whether cisgender individuals’ genders are socially constructed or whether sex and gender can indeed be more than analytically delineated, that is, whether transgender people “really are” the gender to which they “have transitioned,” turning to the possibility that some or all emotions are socially constructed presents a complicated landscape that queries the import of biology or “natural”/“intrinsic” features and contrasts such features sharply with cultural influence. Which has more affect—nature or culture? Attending to the study of emotions, whether such studies be evolutionary psychological, biological, or otherwise physical studies, most often explanations or metaphysics proffered are still mostly taken to be irreconcilable with social constructionist approaches from the social sciences and humanities. Following Mallon and Stich (2000):

social constructionists emphasize the enormous diversity of social and psychological phenomena to be found in cultures around the world and throughout history, and much of the research in this tradition has been devoted to describing that diversity-in emotions, moral and religious beliefs, sexual behavior, kinship systems, theories about nature, and much else besides. (133–34)

Mallon and Stich (2000) argue that social constructionists advocate for the Standard Social Science Model, thereby positing an empiricist conception of the mind as a tabula rasa upon which experience writes (134). Mallon and Stitch (2000) furthermore contend that “while no serious social constructionist would deny that our innate mental [and I would add, “more generally biological, bodily, or physical”] endowment imposes some constraints on what we can learn and what we can do, they believe that most of these constraints are weak and uninteresting” (134). Therefore, for Mallon and Stich (2000), accounting for the diversity of emotions, preferences, beliefs, comportments, and other psychological phenomena [note: it is possible that cisgenderism and transgenderism are such psychological phenomena] is made possible by pointing to differences in culture—that is, to differences in spaces and history (134).

Evolutionary psychologists present a more “inevitable” and “inalterable” view of human psychological phenomena inspired by a rationalist understanding of the mind, which focuses on commonalities amongst humans rather than differences (Mallon and Stich 2000, 134). On this view,

… human minds have a rich, species-typical cognitive architecture composed of functionally distinct systems—“mental organs” as Steven Pinker has called them—that heave been shaped by natural selection over millions of years. Many of these mental organs embody complex, domain-specific algorithms and theories (or stores of information) which play a major role in shaping and constraining beliefs, preferences, emotional reactions, sexual behavior, and interpersonal relationships. This evolved psychology also plays a major role in shaping and constraining social institutions. (134)

The truth of evolutionary psychological understandings need not meet an extremely high bar of providing evidence of some suitably large number of exceptionless categories of human psychological commonalities or universals to hold weight, though where the bar should be set is itself an issue of dispute.

Mallon and Stich (2000) focus on the dispute between evolutionary psychology and social constructionist approaches to emotions, but their account is intended to be generally applicable to other areas of purportedly socially constructed phenomena (136). They view emotions as a crucial case for analysis since they note that there exists a sense that social constructionists and opponents of social constructionism each take their view of the metaphysics of emotion to constitute one of their own “success stories” (Mallon and Stich 2000, 136). Mallon and Stich (2000) also draw attention to the possibility that disagreement concerning the metaphysics of emotions might be purely semantic. To elucidate this possibility, they elucidate the view of some evolutionary psychologists who champion a “biosocial” model of human psychology to underscore how particular human emotions can both exist cross-culturally and at once display “significant cross-cultural differences in the situations which provoke these emotions and the behaviors they lead to” (150). Mallon and Stich (2000) emphasize that proponents of biosocial models

can simply adopt an account of meaning and reference on which an emotion term in English can refer to mental states in some other culture even if the ethnopsychology in that culture is significantly different from our own. (151–52)

If Mallon and Stich (2000) are correct, it is mainly messy semantics which has given rise to the widespread perception that there is a substantial empirical dispute about the nature of emotions. Still, the degree to which emotions are locally or even individually felt or possibly felt (and so “inevitable”) or the degree to which they are alterable (possible differences regarding the what it’s likeness of feeling some emotion, perhaps) remains an open issue. On my readings, the degree to which each emotions writ large or particular emotions is indeed actual or possible delineates which emotions are more or less socially dependent or alterable. However, since the only things we know to be possible are what is actual, and since what is actual is still up for debate, my Dependency and Alterability Readings are, admittedly, modest. On my view, we can ascertain which current categories or phenomena are more or less non-inevitable by looking backwards only. Looking to history and anthropology, we can see which categories and phenomena first emerged to then produce later more complicated rituals or practices and to some of which categories and phenomena disappeared or were altered either consciously or unconsciously. Perhaps some will protest that such an account is altogether too modest. To this objection I can only retort: How is it that you have epistemic and metaphysical objectivity and how is it that you have infallible epistemic access to the future?

7. The Alterability Reading and Its Complications

The Alterability Reading faces complications. I have already provided one example of a contemporary question that has ignited a culture war. Is gender so alterable that a male-sexed person “really is” or “really can become” a female-gendered person and vice versa? The usual thought, or at least the usual implication on the part of social constructionists, is that phenomena more dependent on social factors are more easily alterable than phenomena that are less dependent for their existence upon social factors. At worst, this thought is simply wrongheaded and at best, it requires much more careful analysis—certainly more than I can provide here. But let me say at least a few words on the issue. There may exist some natural or empirical (biological, chemical, physical) factors over which we have as much or even more control than social factors. Intervention into the physical differs from intervention into the social for a variety of reasons. Insofar as mechanisms of causation are sometimes more easily isolatable in the physical domain, the alterability of natural (non-social) phenomena undertaken by us may be more straightforwardly or effectively carried out than in the case of our attempts to alter social phenomena. As Taylor (1971) writes of the social domain, “we cannot shield a certain domain of human events, the psychological, economic, political, from external interference; it is impossible to delineate a closed system” (49).

A condition of success of social constructionist debunking and the successful alteration of elements of the social world in turn requires an effective analysis and critique of ideology. But ideologies are not typically bounded. Delineating how many ideologies are at work and how to separate and target their force is epistemically and practically challenging. Further, ideology’s normalizing and hegemonic effects also challenge the alterability of some social phenomena. Once an ideology is well entrenched, it can be invisible to those who participate in upholding it. Thus, social phenomena may be difficult to alter on account of human beings’ tendency toward the status quo. Further, while there exist interactions between social-scientific and lay classifications and practices and broader habits or cultural practices, these interactions are typically between classifications and individuals who unreflectively conform or react to them. Since it is unclear to what extent ideologies are volitional, it is also unclear how to go about undermining their force. Another major impediment to amending current concepts or practices relates to the relevance of space and time to the contents of consciousness. As the gender conferral example above serves to illustrate, in the ever-present now, human beings are not capable of conferring any meaning whatsoever upon a situation and nor are they capable of understanding any individual or group as falling under any social category whatsoever. Individuals and groups are constrained by their situatedness in space and time in their ability to alter or possess concepts. The very possibilities for the content of consciousness or directions of concrete action are limited by one’s social-historical-political situation.

8. Saving the Possibility of Claiming “Non-Inevitability”

The complexities elucidated above do not wholly undermine the Alterability Reading of “non-inevitability” tout court but do show that if one adopts the Alterability Reading, then some phenomena that are socially constructed or non-inevitable in the here and now were perhaps not in the past and vice versa. Unless this is an intolerable consequence, which I do not think it is, the existence of these complexities does not present a damning case against the Alterability Reading’s understanding of “non-inevitability” or of what it means to say that some X is socially constructed. Even in contexts where X is widely agreed to be a social construction, that is, a phenomenon moderately to highly dependent upon social features and which is, at least to some extent, knowingly within our power to alter (given history, present amendments, or other factors), a social constructionist analysis has purchase. Such an analysis serves to clarify or delimit the nature of X and to remind and keep open-minded a particular audience of X’s nature.

9. Conclusion

I have suggested that the claim of non-inevitability on the part of social constructionists can be fruitfully understood as (i) a claim about what kind of features are central to X’s existence (i.e., a claim about the degree of dependence of X on other social features) and (ii) a claim about X’s alterability which refers specifically to why, in the here and now, it is within our ability to change X. Though the distinction between the inevitable and the non-inevitable is not hard and fast, and although the possibility of successful alteration must be relativized to context (space/time/imaginative possibilities), the social constructionist’s assertion of Thesis (1) is not therefore rudderless. The social constructionist offers a productive program just in case she can do as little (or as much) as disrupt an interlocutor’s confidence or fideism in the view that some X’s existence is independent of social factors or inalterable. Minimally, the social constructionist succeeds in her program if she can move her interlocutors to be skeptical rather than dogmatic about X (even where X refers to the notion of “non-inevitability” itself). Inducing skepticism does not necessarily lead to quietude or to defeatism. If one’s commitments can be shaken concerning the inevitability of X or the necessity of X’s particular features, one may become more willing to alter their commitments, both theoretically and practically.