TIL: Values as a Social Construct?

Rebecca SE Tan

20 October 2022

How are our values and desires formed? This question is tackled by Nancy Hirschmann in her book “The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom”. First, she explores two possible explanations – adaptive preference and socialisation – to illustrate how external factors and internal factors are affected by one other.

1. Adaptive preference is the idea that we adjust our desires according to what is available to us. Imagine we are in a castle full of doors to choose from; the more doors there are, the “freer” we are. But of these doors, only half are open while the other half are locked. The door we finally to walk through in the end is hence dependent on the options that were originally available to us. In the same way, this can be applied to a vast majority of our choices – the major, job or political representative you choose is dependent on your school, grade, country, location, political system, etcetera. (I am also suddenly reminded of Singapore’s hilarious merger referendum in 1962 where the options were – yes to merger, yes to merger, and… yes to merger: https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2013-10-25_190302.html)
   

2. Socialisation takes things one step further to say that we are conditioned by others to want particular things (think: Pavlov’s dogs). This means that we have already internalised social norms, such as not breaking the law, because we think that is the right thing to do. Hirschmann illustrates this with a woman in a manipulative and abusive relationship. If her partner dictates what she should do, the woman instinctively understands the expectations or consequences of her various decisions. Hence, while she is “free” to make her own choices, she is conditioned to think about the choices she has in a particular way (e.g. to minimise harm to herself).

After exploring these two explanations, though, Hirschmann contends that these processes still imply that there is some “false” self being imposed on our “true” self – which again repeats what she sees as a problematic divide between the internal and the external. In order to solve this conundrum, she then goes further to suggest that our values, choices and choice-making are all social constructs. She argues that people are not only limited by social formation but also produced through them as well. Hence, even what we consider acceptable to be limited – such as not being able to murder – are social constructions. Note here that this proposition does not claim whether social construction is good or bad, as it only calls to recognise that these values are part of how and who we are.

Here is a table to further elucidate the difference:

How our desires and values come to be	Adaptive preference and socialisation	Social construction
Implication	Like wearing a coloured lens - an imposition on our “true” self.	Is not an imposition of my freedom; as it is a part of who we are
Example: a girl wearing make-up	Can be argued to be “unfree” because the girl is conforming to some external beauty standards/ socialised into thinking this is how she must look.	Can be argued to be “free” because wearing make-up is set within its own context and value system, and hence she may just be wearing makeup because it makes her feel good.

Up to here - all seems well and good with me. I do agree with the idea of social construction, from how we view money, education, nature, capitalism, political systems to even the idea of a nation-state. However, after the lecture, my primary concern is this - does social construction imply that there is no absolute “good”? If so, what justification can we use to be critical of any system we are in? Let me explain what I mean:

Since our very views of values and choices are a social constructs that is produced and reproduced in society, there is no real good that should always be free to do. (Think about values like life or even liberty itself?). How then can we decide what we should restrict and what we need to protect? (E.g. restricting murder/ hate crimes). Take for example pre-abolition in the U.S. – the concept of freedom then only applied to white people. Where then do you derive the moral justification, in that context and time, to claim that that is unfair, or wrong? In other words, how can we go from descriptive claims of individual values through time and social context to normative claims that something is desirable or undesirable?

This isn’t merely theoretical or a problem of the past. Even in our context today, Hirschmann poses a provoking question: how can women go about rejecting patriarchal discourse if we have inadvertently participated in its very construction, as well as makes up who we are? This isn’t just a matter of tearing down external institutions or structures – how do we even figure out who we are or what we want, within the patriarchal context we are situated in?

I am unsure if Hirschmann ever gave a solution, or if there is one at all. I’d have to read and think about this a lot more when my brain recovers from this lesson xD. But for now – what do you guys think? Did your brains implode? Let me know in the comments below!

* BTW, after his lecture on social construction, I raised my concern about the lack of an absolute good to my professor. He replied that he believes social construction can still have a critical edge, but after trying to probe further on the “how”, he told me we’ll get through it in a future lecture. Patience, I guess, is a socially constructed virtue…