2. The Social Construction of Reality
2.1 Introduction
A constant theme in El Salvador's modern history is the repeated attempt by young army officers to straighten out the country’s aimlessness and achieve some reforms which alleviate the grave inequalities and injustices at the heart of the Salvadoran social order. The last of these attempts (which have continued incessantly and without any break between them) was the 15 October 1979 coup d’état, the prelude to the civil war which officially broke out in 1981 (See Martín-Baró, 1981a). The ruling social forces of the country have neutralized every attempt with relative ease, ensuring that struggles fade into temporary agreements of one kind or another (Castro Morán, 1984). The repeated failure of El Salvador's young military men to reform even a sliver of the most negative aspects of the social order is proof of the social system’s solidity, of its resistance to experiment with change, or at least with those changes which do not directly benefit the holders of power.
Resistance to change is not just a part of one kind of social system (though one system may have degrees of solidity and consolidation not found in system), but also of particular regimes. As sociologists of the Parsonsian persuasion have emphasized, every social system organizes itself toward the function of survival. Nevertheless, the diversity of existing social systems in the contemporary world shows how little any of these social orders can be considered a "law of nature," let alone the natural order. Each social system is the fruit of history, and we make history as human beings. The social system into which a Salvadoran campesino of Chalatenango is born differs from the social system which the Guatemalan plateau native experiences, or that of a North-American from Cleveland, a Senegalese person from Dakar, or an Asian from Nanking. As we noted, all make their way through the social system, but the work of each human collectivity is in turn responsible for the conservation or reformation of that social system. Thus, each social system is simultaneously a pre-existing condition and a product of human activity. The Nicaraguan born and raised under the flight of the Somozas is today the agent and witness of a collective force structurally changing their oppressive social order.
Consequently, it is important to observe the processes of groups and individuals which spark the genesis of a particular social order. This does not entail finding a “ground zero,” since this is non-existent from a historical perspective. Every social system pulls itself out from the bowels of its predecessor and, even in the purest of cases, from those of previous forces and conditions which converged and collided in the shaping of a society. From the perspective of social psychology, one is interested in seeing how and why a social order emerges in terms of structures which develop and regulate what people are and do: How and why did the social order of a country like El Salvador emerge? How and why have these structures arisen which in fact benefit a select few while oppressing and alienating almost everyone else? (See Text Six).
The rise of a social order can be examined from two perspectives. On the one hand, it can be understood in terms of a social totality, that is to say, as a system with basic economic and political structures. This is the macrosocial perspective. On the other hand, it can be studied in terms of immediate regulation of human behavior, that is to say, norms which each system articulates and which structure the daily lives of groups and individuals. This is the microsocial perspective. We now intend to incorporate both focuses, beginning with the microsocial analysis of norms.
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