'The Gururumba people experience the state of "being a wild pig" (Newman 1964). In this state they run wild, looting articles of small value and attacking bystanders. The Gururumba think the wild-pig syndrome is caused by being bitten by the ghost of a recently dead member of the tribe. They believe that this releases impulses supressed by society and civilisation. The syndrome is treated as a disease by the tribe. The antisocial behaviour is tolerated to a quite remarkable extent. The disease either runs its course or is ritually cured. Wild-pig behaviour is largely restricted to males between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. At this age men are likely to be under considerable economic pressure following the acquisition of a wife. Wild-pig behaviour seems to occur when a man cannot meet his financial obligations. After a display of wild-pig behaviour the individual receives special consideration without denying the fact that the demands made on him are legitimate. The behaviour is an action, but it is not acknowledges as such either by the individual or by society. It is part of the wild-pig role that wild-pig behaviour is involountary.

In a recent book on multiple personality syndrome (MPS) Ian Hacking describes a form of social construction very similar to that seen in the Gururumba (Hacking, 1995). According to Hacking the modern symptamotology of MPS evolved hand in hand with theories of the disorder. By channeling their distress into forms recognised by current theory, individuals were able to gain social acceptance as "sick" and to receive positive feedback from therapists, support groups, and so forth. In the early days of the modern MPS epidemic individuals rarely presented with the full range of symptoms. Distressed individuals were "trained" in the production of MPS symptoms, first by expert therapists and later by a volountary movement of laypersons. Today, with the help of literature and television talk shows, patients are able to produce the symptoms without individual tuition. MPS has become part of the local culture in countries suffering from the MPS epidemic.

A similar explanation might be given of the syndrome found in a number of southeast Asian societies and referred to as amok. This syndrome consists of indiscriminate attacks on others and usually culminates in the killing of the person who runs amok. Amok is traditionally triggered by perceived dishonor. Cases are cites of Westerners living in Asia running amok, presumably by example. Once again, this can be interpreted as a disclaimed action. The man running amok is not pretending to be in a frenzy, but he would not be in the frenzy unless he had learned that this is an appropriate response to certain unbearable social pressures. He is acting out a social role, part of which is that he is not in control of his actions. It might be argued that a similar syndrome now exists in Western culture. Men who believe that none of their options alows them self-respect exhibit a rather stereotyped pattern of behaviour, probably derived from contemporary action films. They shoot at a large group of people, not necessarily people associated with their misfortunes, before being shot or shooting themselves. They purport to be "out of control" and are treated as such by society, yet their behaviour is under the fairly precise control of a recently developed model of how one might behave in such a situation.
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There are at least three important senses in which categories can be socially constructed. First, there is the trivial sense in which all concepts are socially constructed. In this sense, the concepts of electron, magnesium, and clade are social constructions, as well as the concepts of citizen, member of parliament, and licensed dog owner. None of these CONCEPTS can exist independently of a community of speakers and thinkers, and each was created by a socio-linguistic process.

In the second, stronger sense, citizens, members of parliament, and lisenced dog owners are social constructions, whereas those referred to by the second list are not. The CATEGORIES electron, magnesium, and clade would exist (their members would have certain properties in common) whether or not the concepts of those categories had been formulated. The elements described by the periodic table do not need the activities of a community of speakers and thinkers to make them differ in atomic weight and number. Modern systematics was not needed for evolving lineages to speciate. The category of MP's, however, depends for its existence on the formulation of the concept of a member of parliament. Were it not for the sociolinguistic activities centred on this concept, the members of parliament would have nothing in common to differentiate them from nonmembers. According to Hacking the same is true of multiple personality syndrome. The potential to develop MPS could have developed very differently. Another society might make something very different of the individuals who are now made into sufferers of MPS. That society might also make some cases of MPS into one alternative way of being and others into another alternative way of being. This way of grouping would find as much justification in the occurring phenomena as the current groupings. Hacking describes his view as DYNAMIC NOMINALISM. Dynamic nominalism differs from simple nominalism in that the members of a category do share something over and above the fact that they are members of that category. However, the fact that the members have these shared properties reflects the existence of the category and the social practices in which it is embedded (Hacking, 1995).

The third sense of socially constructed is the sense expressed when someone remarks that a thing is "just socially constructed" and infers from that that no such thing exists. It would be natural to say this about Newman's condition of ghost possession. Ghost possession is not a category like electron which exists independently of our social practices, but neither is it like member of parliament or licensed dog owner. Most people would happily admit that the only difference between MP's and non MP's is that we as a community treat these people in a particular way. This realisation has no effect on the social practice in which the concept of MP is embedded. But it would make all the difference in the world to the Gururumba if they believed that the only difference between wild-pig men and other men is the decision of the men to be wild pigs and the decision of the community to treat them as such. The Garurumba practice of ghost possession rests on a collective pretense that this is not the case. Socially constructed categories in this third sense are social pretenses that cannot survive the realisation that they are merely our inventions. The general acceptance of Hacking's analysis of multiple personality syndrome would have a corrosive effect on the social practices of the modern MPS community. Another Western example of this third sort of social construction may be the social construction of gender. Our social practices have been transformed by the growing acceptance that traditional gender characteristics are not the inevitable effects of biological sex.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Emotions-.../dp/0226308723

Examples of implicit looping kinds include categories such as demonic possession and being possessed by a wild pig. The notion is that when we believed in these concepts then our belief in them and our social practices around them results in opening up new ways of behaving that are stereotypic of the category. If we take a person to be a member of the category or if they take themselves to be a member of the category then this may cause them to behave in ways that are stereotypic of the category. Members of the category are thus able to be identified as members of the category in virtue of sharing certain stereotypical properties in common. What is supposed to be distinctive about these categories, however, is that they cannot survive our realisation that they refer to looping kinds. The notion is that once we become aware that the properties are due to our social practices then we cease believing in them and we inevitably alter our social practices so that the individuals no longer display those common features. This phenomena is probably best conveyed by way of Ian Hacking's characterisation of Multiple Personality Disorder which he takes to be an 'all too perfect illustration of the feedback effect' in implicit looping kinds:


'We tend to behave in ways that are expected of us, especially by authority figures – doctors, for example. Some physicians had multiples among their patients in the 1840's, but their picture of the disorder was very different from the one that is common in the 1990's. The doctors' vision was different because the patients were different; but the patients were different because the doctors' expectations were different. That is an example of a very general phenomenon: the looping effect of human kinds. People classified in a certain way tend to conform to or grow into the ways that they are described; but they also evolve in their own ways, so that the classifications and descriptions have to be constantly revised. (Hacking, 1995, p. 21)'.


Hacking thus maintains that in the case of implicit looping kinds there is a tension in that possession of the concept and our social practises around this are the mechanism that both stabilises and destabilises the property cluster. With respect to the stabilising function he considers that individuals symptoms are shaped because when the clinician applies the concept to the patient this results in the clinician having either implicit or explicit expectations of the symptoms they expect to find in the patient. This changes the way that the clinician relates to the patient and is thought to lead to the patient exhibiting the symptoms they are expected to exhibit. Another way this can happen is if the clients apply the concept to themselves and thus come to exhibit symptoms that they believe to be stereotypic features of the category. In this way the concept and our social practices stabilise the symptoms that the patient exhibits as they come to behave in ways that are consistent with the stereotype.


Hacking also considers how our social practices can have a destabilising effect, however. He traces how the stereotypical features of Multiple Personality Disorder have evolved through time. Hacking tells a complex story of destabilisation and he draws on a variety of factors including political and theoretical, which lead to our beliefs about the concept evolving and the symptoms evolving in response to this. Some examples he has of this effect in the case of MPD include how many alters are thought to be typical (one or several or over one hundred); whether there is one or two way amnesia; how long it takes to switch between alters; and reports of abuse. It thus seems that the change seems mostly to be a function of a change in the theoretical views of clinicians. This led to a subsequent change in how they related to their clients and what kinds of symptoms they expected to see. Hacking seems to regard implicit looping kinds as having some homeostasis but the homeostasis is less stable than other kinds of socially constructed and natural kinds in that awareness of their status as looping kinds will result in the dissolution of the category.

___________________________
it DOES matter what his conception is.
it affects me whether he likes it or not.
whether he is aware of it or not