First we should understand the main principles and issues of human nature. How does an individual define what is real? One does it through ones perception of the world, which is based on learned interpretations. This learning is social: we learn from and among persons in social interaction. The main vehicles which convey this meaning: symbols, including language, cultural myths -- larger social meanings of objects, actions, signs, episodes, the structure and practice of our institutions, our rules for congruent action. These vehicles of meaning together construct: our world-view -- our sense of how the world works, what is valuable, why things are the way they are. Our sense of ourselves, our identity, purpose, our ideologies -- our sense o

An aspect of this construction of reality is found through tracking. Tracking is the tendency of our social institutions to categorize and rank the members of our society almost from birth. The categorization and ranking of children begins in the first years of grade school with the administering of tests which create ranks and categorizations in which to place the children, based on the performance of the children on the tests. The reality of each child is defined to an extent, by the categories in which they are immediately placed as a result of tracking. This tracking continues, and becomes an early form of feedback by which the child is programmed to perceive his place in society, and thus his place in the external environment. Tracking is a means by which conventions are perpetuated within the minds, convention and thus the realities of the individual members of society.

In a more general sense, the function of racism within society illustrates the means by which the reality of the individual is defined, whether ethical or not, through the conventions which he adapts. Racism is the most clear and visible illustration of the means by which man can define a reality, which is inaccurate or unjust. Yet, even though the reality is inaccurate, the individual chooses to adopt it rendering himself ignorant or bigoted. Labeling occurs within all walks of society, and this labeling occurs as an outgrowth of the tracking, which is institutionalized within society. The resultant categorizations illustrate the means in which reality has been distorted so often by man, and demonstrates how fallible in character man truly is. Yet, through this fallibility, this subjectivity emanating from convention, does man define himself. The purpose of sociology is to study and record this phenomenon, and maintain the distinctions therein, so that the conventions of society do not obscure the fact that individuals are bonded by their humanity, not their individual categorizable physical characteristic.

The social construction of reality thus becomes important because it is a subjective reality, a product of the conventions of society. Without society, and the inherent conventions therein, man would man would have no

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Approximate Word count = 1494
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)