A classic sociological theme is how knowledge constructs social reality.
The first article I published was ‘Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation’ (Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1999). Focusing on England and France from the 16th to the 19th centuries, it shows how the cartographic knowledge helped to constitute the modern state.
I have recently returned to this theme using the contemporary example of transgender identity, by tracing the effects of two bodies of knowledge. One is queer theory. Although this is a highly abstract and even abstruse kind of knowledge, Queer Theory and the Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons (Journal of Controversial Ideas, 2022) demonstrates how it was used to restructure one type of institution in the early 21st century. The other form of knowledge is practical: the use of a drug (Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone agonist) to block puberty. ‘The Technology of Puberty Suppression’ (Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader 2023), shows how the adoption of this technology by gender clinics—starting in the Netherlands in the 1990s—helped to construct a new type of person, the transgender child.
In a similar vein, ‘Self-Fulfilling Prophecies’ (The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology, 2009) explores one particular type of explanation: a belief has consequences that make reality conform to the initial belief, and at least some actors fail to understand how their initial belief helped to construct that reality. The chapter covers a range of phenomena, the simplest being the placebo response (within a single individual) and the most complex being self-fulling social theory (queer theory arguably has this character)