A brief introduction of the main metaphor, and the main conundrum that today’s postmodern social “constructivism” presents to the study of modern cosmologies.

In Chapter 9, I move the focus from epistemology to ontology. I ask what kind of objects natural numbers are and show why different types of realist answers are problematic. I then endorse a constructivist account, according to which natural numbers exist as social constructs through our shared number concepts. This account is compatible with the social constructivist views of Cole and Feferman. However, I see my account as an improvement on their work because it provides a strong explanation as to why numbers are widely applicable social constructs. This explanation is based on the important role that proto-arithmetical abilities have both for the way we experience our environment and the development of arithmetic. Finally, I discuss the question of whether natural numbers as social constructs exist primarily as ordinals or cardinals, showing that, although more empirical research is needed, there is no reason to currently believe that natural numbers must be fundamentally ordinal.

This chapter re-inserts the (rethought) concept of territory into the legal-theoretical framework, offering a look at how this concept can be realised and might differently operationalise concepts such as sovereignty and jurisdiction. Taking the concept of sovereignty first, the chapter operationalises this concept as a bundle of legal rights, duties, etc. informed by legal realist methods and social constructivism. The chapter then turns to the concept of jurisdiction, problematising the ‘boundaries’ of and reterritorialising extraterritorial jurisdiction. The chapter offers an alternative to the ‘ownership’ and ‘exclusive’ model of legal rights, which otherwise has at its core a reified and flat territory. The final part explores actorhood, demonstrating how the spaces of international organisations can be understood as their territories. Taking as its starting point the possibility of territorial pluralism, multiplicity, and continuous (re)production, the chapter ends with an account of territories proliferating rather than diminishing. Taking the idea of reterritorialising seriously, it proposes a legal account of the relationship between actors and their spaces.

Chapter 12 provides insight into the large amount of science learning that can occur through informal experiences. Informal experiences relate to those that happen outside formal educational settings, such as family settings, museums, zoos and natural locations. As learning in these environments is free choice, children tend to be more motivated and interested in learning than in formal educational settings. This chapter describes the importance of informal experiences in the learning of science, the funds of knowledge that families share with their children, the rich and diverse cultural and linguistic science experiences that children bring to their educational settings, and the importance of the EC professional acknowledging and using children’s and families’ funds of knowledge in developing science learning experiences.

Chapter 2 provides a review of the existing literature on the representation of, and attitudes towards, mental illness in a variety of text types (e.g. online data, newspaper data, spoken data) and across a range of analytical disciplines. In addition to exploring research on the representation of mental illness in these different data types and disciplines, the theoretical position of Social Constructionism (particularly in reference to CDA) is discussed.

This chapter provides an account of why and how the dominant “atrocity aesthetic” model identified in the previous chapter has persisted, despite remaining itself, grounded in unstated and untested assumptions concerning the fundamental nature of the causal dynamics of mass harm causation. It does so by examining the substance, structure, and application of ICL in light of insights from social constructivist norm development theories, and research on the role aesthetic considerations play in individual and social meaning-making processes. Through this analysis, this chapter identifies a variety of factors within the substance and practice of ICL that encourage actors to rely heavily on aesthetic perception when identifying potential international crimes and assessing their relative gravity. These factors include: the complexity of many atrocity situations; the continued presences of considerable zones of ambiguity within ICL; the extreme selectivity of ICL investigations and prosecutions; and the spectacular visibility and self-evident nature of many historical, recent and ongoing situations involving the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, and/or war crimes.

This chapter assesses the role aesthetics play in the social construction of dominant shared understandings of the so-called core crimes of ICL: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It demonstrates how, since the inception of ICL, widely shared understandings of these crimes have remained grounded in an aesthetics of horrific spectacle, which I refer to as the “atrocity aesthetic.” That is, shared understandings of both atrocity and international crime are associated with spectacular acts of horrific violence and abuse, reflecting deeply held, if rarely articulated, assumptions concerning how genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes will manifest themselves and the means through which they may be committed.

The ascendancy of new materialist theory in the humanities since the turn of the century parallels the rise of anthropogenic climate change as a central political concern. This is not a coincidence: climate change exposes the limitations of both social constructivism and scientific realism. This essay examines the new materialist approaches to climate change proposed by Bruno Latour, Astrid Neimanis, and Rachel Walker Loewen. In Latour’s account, the categorical distinction between nature and culture has prevented climate science from openly embracing the political task of assembling a new polity encompassing both human and nonhuman entities. Neimanis and Walker Loewen, on the other hand, argue that the abstract quality of climate science is the principal reason for society’s failure to respond to anthropogenic climate change, and suggest that it must be reconceived in terms of concrete entanglements between human and nonhuman bodies. In placing their emphasis on embodied experience, however, both approaches fail to account for the rhetorical frames and the larger dynamics of communication that shape how climate change becomes socially relevant.

Science learning occurs in many places other than formal educational settings. These are called informal learning experiences. Such places are called informal learning environments and include family settings, museums, zoos and natural locations. As learning in these environments is free choice, children tend to be more motivated and interested in learning than in formal educational settings. This chapter describes the importance of learning in informal learning environments, the funds of knowledge that families share with their children, the rich and diverse cultural and linguistic science experiences that children bring to their educational settings and the importance of educators/teachers acknowledging and using children’s and families’ funds of knowledge in developing science learning experiences.

Taking as a point of departure a 2016 report in the media of the fatal shooting of a gorilla in the Cincinnati zoo and its transformation into a meme that went viral on the Internet, I consider some of the post-modern theories that explain the effect of digital technology and social media on the way such incidents are socially constructed. I compare the way parents and friends read the incident and college students interpreted it. I discuss Foucault’s notion of disciplinary society, Debord’s spectacle society and Baudrillard’s concept of hyper-reality and simulacrum from the 1970s and 1980s. I show how today these concepts have been supplemented by Harcourt’s notion of expository society that prizes visibility, normativity and veridiction. I show how today, Anderson’s notion of imagined community, born in an era of nationalism, has been supplanted by a kind of conviviality typical of social media in our era of globalization. This conviviality is accompanied by what Ferraris and Martino call “documediality,” the power of the Web to archive and disseminate verbal, visual and audio documents over the Internet in viral fashion. Digital communication is today a crucial aspect of the use of language as symbolic power.

Introduces the argument that technological change draws on existing social and economic structures in order to succeed, even while destroying or transforming them. Those institutions and expectations, however, are themselves changing in order to make new machines work. A literature review guides readers through the methods and approaches developed in the history of technology and deployed in the text. These include the divide between internalist and contextual analysis, between the causation claims inherent in technological determinism and social constructivism, and the effort to reconcile the two in actor-network theory and in maintenance studies. This historiographical overview also briefly addresses the approaches found in economic history, national and global history, and social and labor and environmental history, and shifts the Big Question in the history of Industrial Revolution historiography from “Why did England industrialize?” to “Why did these specific machines work then and there?”

This chapter traces the development of education in America from the end of Reconstruction to World War II. The industrialization that characterized this period gave rise to a system of “scientific” management which prized efficiency and competition above all other factors. This in turn influenced the philosophy of behaviorism, which remains a pillar of American education. The chapter exposes the faulty premises of behaviorism and its unfortunate effects when applied in schools. In addition, the chapter examines sources as varied as the Founders’ writings and the latest neuroscientific research to critique behaviorism and endorse social constructivist pedagogy. The chapter also features a brief discussion of the outer limits imposed by the Supreme Court on the government’s ability to regulate education. The discussion includes an examination of three seminal cases: Pierce, Meyer, and Yoder.

This chapter illuminates the many deficiencies of contemporary educational reform movements. Most notable among these movements are “accountability,” privatization, vouchers, and charter schools. All of these impulses prove, under closer examination, to be inimical to the tenets of social constructivism, the vision of the Founders, and the project of democracy. Many of these “reforms” have even tacitly adopted the language and principles of behaviorism. The chapter concludes by proposing social constructivist pedagogy and early childhood intervention as the best way to educate a democratic citizenry.

The Introduction notes that the language of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution would, if fully embraced by courts, result in a jurisprudence more dedicated to equal educational opportunity. It argues that the disparities in opportunity currently in existence are inimical to a participatory democracy. The best tool to fight these disparities is social constructivism. The introduction previews the specific categories of educational injustice that the book intends to examine.