Within a community or culture people are exposed to people that deal with the same surroundings and conditions. These surroundings and conditions vary from culture to culture and create foundations that these cultures live by. These foundations are made up of the four elements of the social constructionist perspective: symbolic codes, cognitive customs, cultural traditions, and sets of roles and rules. In a general American social construction there are ways to explain these elements that may not exist in other cultures.
In America there is very much an emphasis on wealth as a way to communicate how successful an individual is. Americans are exposed to this in all elements of the social constructionist perspective. In other cultures the idea of success as communicated through the elements of social constructionism are very much different. In many cultures a person's success in life may be communicated through their spirituality. Many Muslim cultures take religion as first priority and the citizens of these cultures are very much exposed to this through the four elements of social constructionism.
These are just very general ways to look at very large cultures that may have many contradicting sub cultures. It can be argued that lack of either of these elements in their assigned culture may communicate a general message of unsuccessfulness.
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I like the way that you used specific cultures to make examples of the Social Constructionist theory. It's true, in America we tend to focus on wealth and prosperity, whereas in other countries such things are not considered as important, and they focus on more spiritual or family matters. The idea that we as a country focus on such matters had been a debate for ages, as to whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. Do you think we as a society should be focusing more on a spiritual wealth and family matters? Or do you think that it's just the natural progression of things, ending up where we are now?
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