The Social Construction of Non-Human Agency: The Case of Mental Disorder

Abstract

In diverse ways, constructionist studies demonstrate the profound relevance of social processes to the emergence and assessment of mental disorders in various organizational settings. However, there remains a curious silence in the constructionist literature regarding how mental disorders, once assembled as meaningful objects of discourse and practice, might come to exercise their own causal influences upon members' experiences and activities. In this paper, I draw upon the notion of social problems work to provide for the practical dynamics whereby members, in effect, animate the categorical objects that they presume to populate their worlds. More than enacting identifiable objects of social problems discourse, social problems work at times actually realizes these objects as causally influential non-human agents, such that one may find members interacting with these objects much as they do with one another in the ongoing production of local affairs. While the analysis presented in this paper concerns the social construction of mental disorders as causally influential non-human agents, it is intended as a case study of the more general phenomenon.

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