Construction: Building a foundation–for what? for whom?

The idea of constructing a building serves as a metaphor for the notion of building a social construct. Basically, people have accepted “understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality” (Wikipedia). In other words, unlike the lovely new white tile building going up in my neighborhood, social constructs aren’t made of stone or steel. They only exist in our minds and in our shared understandings of what other people think. They are imagined, but shared and thus accepted as real.