Toward a sociology of perception: Sight, sex, and gender

Abstract

Many theories of social construction make some reference to sight, yet few offer sustained examinations of perception. In light of this, I highlight the visual dimension of the social construction of reality by analyzing visual perception as a process of 'socio-mental filtration'. Building on theories of social construction - most notably those using the concepts 'frame', 'paradigm' and 'schema' - in which expectations are the organizing force of experience, I focus on how social construction happens. One key effect of expectations is to enact selective attention, which is evocatively captured by the metaphor of a filter. Drawing on the case of sex and gender, I demonstrate that using filter analysis to identify the specific dynamics of 'socio-optical construction' - adding a concrete analysis of visual perception to the general idea of social construction - may help scholars to more effectively account for some of the 'hard problems' of constructionist theory, such as the body. © The Author(s) 2011.