Social things (money, genres, institutions, ‘art’) are real because people collectively make and sustain them. They could be otherwise.
- +Fits Interpretivist Epistemology, Constructivist Epistemology, Feminist Epistemology
- –Tension with Positivist Epistemology
Key thinkers: John Searle, Anthony Giddens, Peter Berger
The longer story
Here's a genuinely interesting puzzle: what kind of thing is 'money'? Or 'art'? Or 'being a professional'? These things are real—they affect your life profoundly—but they exist only because we collectively agree they do. Social ontology examines this strange in-between status. It's not that nothing is real; it's that some real things are made by us. The category 'artist' didn't exist in medieval Europe the way it does now. Understanding this matters because the things you're studying might be historically specific, not universal. If you're researching creative careers or cultural categories, you're studying socially constructed reality—real, but made.