Social construct.

[Belacqua]

I've seen some examples of what a social construct is using Google.

It seems fairly simple but I've come to  a conclusion I can't think of much that isn't a social construct.

For example with a tree, I don't think there's an exact precise definition of when a dead tree stops being a tree or when a tree becomes a tree and stops being a seed.

Pretty much all definitions are based on one person communicating to another person vaguely what something is.  Even if it's a precise explanation by normal social standards.

Am I missing the point of what a social construct is or has anyone got an obvious example of a non social construct.

I'd say that there are obvious empirical facts which are not socially constructed. For example, the fact that the earth is round.

"This rock is heavier than that rock," is not socially constructed. On the other hand "this rock (a diamond) is more valuable than that rock (limestone)," is socially constructed, because value, price, etc., depend on a general measure of what people in a society are willing to pay. Money itself is socially constructed -- which is not to say that it's not real.

Tentatively, I wonder if a test for this would be to ask: "could it be different, if society were different?" Economics could be different, but water being H₂O couldn't.

Marxists have written about what they call "second nature," which for them refers to social constructs which seem so inevitable and so deeply embedded that they appear to us as non-socially-constructed as physical things. Capitalists, for example, will argue that capitalism is completely natural, given the basic character of the human animal. If in fact capitalism is a social construct, then there are alternatives. 

Some of the controversies we hear about these days boil down to whether something is socially constructed or not. People who opposed gay marriage, for example, thought that marriage is determined by biology. Others, who thought marriage laws could be changed, see it as social construction. Current debates about gender break down along the same boundaries.