Evelyn P Parsons, University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff, UK
Don M Bradley, University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, UK
Published online: September 2006
DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005866
Social constructionism is an approach within the social sciences that challenges traditional assumptions about the objectivity of scientific and medical facts. Social constructionists would argue that genetic risk is not a mathematical entity that has independent reality, but is a social fact that is constantly negotiated and constructed by individuals, scientists and clinicians in their everyday lives.
Keywords: genetic risk; psychosocial genetics; social constructionism
| References | |
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| Further Reading | |
| Bury M (1986) Social constructionism and the development of medical sociology. Sociology of Health and Illness 8: 137–169. | |
| book Clarke AJ and Parsons EP (eds) (1997) Culture, Kinship and Genes: Towards Cross-cultural Genetics. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. | |
| book Cuff EC, Sharrock WW and Francis DW (1990) Perspectives in Sociology. London, UK: Unwin Hyman. | |
| book Douglas M (1986) Risk Acceptability According to the Social Sciences. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. | |
| book Fleck L (1935) Genesis and the Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. | |
| Jasanoff S (1993) Bridging the two cultures of risk analysis. Risk Analysis 13: 123–129. | |
| book Lupton D (1994) Medicine as Culture – Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies. London, UK: Sage. | |
| book Marteau T and Richards M (1996) The Troubled Helix: Social and Psychological Implications of the New Human Genetics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. | |
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