What is Social Production?

The term “social production” comes to us from the 19th Century social scientists who observed the complex and interconnected division of labor among a variety of people (as individuals and organizations) depending on each other in the process of producing something of value. It was the philosophers of political economy who first and foremost concerned themselves with production, productive relations and their values as features of economic life.

In the classic sense, these “social relations of production” and, therefore, “social production” could apply to any social, economic or cultural endeavor. The result of that production could be a material output or a service. Put simply, “social production” refers to the composite of “many scattered production processes [that] flow into one social production process."[1] Referring to an activity as social production recognizes the interdependent efforts by various actors that go into producing something, therefore making it a social—rather than a purely individual—process.

The sum total of the relations of production, that is, the relations men establish with each other when they utilize existing raw materials and technologies in the pursuit of their productive goals, constitute real foundations upon which the whole cultural superstructure of society comes to be erected. Relations of production… does not only mean technology, though this is an important part, but the social relations people enter into by participating in economic life.

Lewis A. Coser[2]

To Karl Marx, for example, a distinctly human mode of production had two parts: (1) the means of production and (2) the means of distribution. For Marxists, labor is the heart and soul of the process by which people become human, in the sense of human conscious human beings.[3] Franz Borkenau and Emile Durkheim also considering that the moral essence of "human solidarity" is found in division of labor.[4]

Social production continues to be a term used in political science, sociology and economic theory today.[5] Marx had suggests that we may classify social production by (1) agriculture, (2) industries and division of labour in general.[6] However, since his time, social scientists have studied the patterns of relationships involved in a wide range of productive activity, examining more and more-specific categories in the social production of tangible and even intangible creations,[7] including, for example:

Social production of "cultural capital"[8]

Social production of urban space[9]

Social production of information[10]

Social production of culture”[11]

Social production of theory[12]

Social production of food[13]

Social production of risk[14]

Social production of art[15]

The complex relations that go into any productive activity could, therefore, qualify as social production. Hence, the term is not new or alien to most disciplines in social science. However, more popular applications of the term have emerged, particularly in the “social production of habitat.” For an explanation of the meaning and application of this term, click here.

[1] V. I. Lenin, What are the Friends of the People? 1894, Collected Works, Vol. I.

[2] Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context, 2d ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1977), p. 45.

[3] Karl Marx summarized that "the mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, reprinted in MESW (1848), p.35 ‘The Critique of Political Economy,’ excerpted from the “Preface,” (1859).

[4] Meanwhile, all these social scientists observed a fractionated, unequal world. For Marx, the social relations of production come into continuous crisis, however, with the exchange of their products at fluctuating prices and the uneven distribution of the value derived from the products of labor.

[5] Siegwart Lindenberg, "Social Production Functions, Deficits, and Social Revolutions," Rationality and Society, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 51–77; Siegwart Lindenberg, “Individual economic ignorance versus social production functions and precarious enlightenment,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, no. 142 (1986), 20–26; Siegwart Lindenberg, “Cohorts, social production functions and the problem of self-command,” in H. Becker, ed., Dynamics of Cohort and Generations Research (Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers, 1992), pp. 283–305.

[7] See, for example, Jonathan H. Turner, Leonard Beeghley and Charles H. Powers, The Emergence of Sociological Theory, 4th ed. (Cincinnati OH: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998).

[8] Allen Luke, “Theory and Practice in Critical Discourse Analysis,” in L. Saha, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Education (Elsevier Science Ltd.), at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/ed270/Luke/SAHA6.html.

[9] Gottdiener, Mark. 1994. "Urban Ecology, Economics and Geography: Spatial Analysis in Transition " in The social production of urban space. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.

[10] As part of the search for a social, ethical theory of information. See Joseph A. Goguen, “Technical Systems and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide,” in Geoffrey Bowker, Les Gasser, Leigh Star and William Turner, eds., Social Science Research (Erlbaum, 1997), pp. 27.

[11] Douglas Kellner, “Cultural Studies and Social Theory: A Critical Intervention,” 1–23, http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html.

[12] As highlighted in postmodern social work theory. See Peter Beresford, Social Work: What Kinds of Knowledge? (Brunel University, 26 May 1999), at

http://www.elsc.org.uk/socialcareresource/tswr/seminar1/beresford.htm.

[13] Defined “goods produced for the use of others in prestation, ceremony and ritual, and hence having a primarily social purpose.” See H. Brookfield “Intensification and disintensification in Pacific agriculture,” Pacific Viewpoint 13 (1972): 30–41, at 38.

[14] According to Ulrich Beck, "in advanced modernity, the social production of wealth is systematically accompanied by the social production of risks." Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986); also published as Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity (New York: Sage, 1992).

[15] Janet Wolff`s The Social Production of Art (London: Macmillan, 1993).