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How to Get New Landscaping and Lawn Service Clients FAST ?Watch the Lawn Care Marketing Video Below First

In order to start up a successful lawn care or landscaping business, there are a few more tips that you need to know. The good news is, starting this kind of venture is not really that hard at all. Just look at all the teenagers running around with a nice landscaping trailer, as well as some decent equipment like zero turn mowers. It doesnt require much, but you could really use some directions in order to be successful with your company. There are also many yards that need mowing in the United States and the green industry is growing.

Many a starry eyed entrepreneur have thought that they could start a mowing service because how hard could it be? I know how to cut my own grass. Unless they have no money to start a lawn service, after spending thousands on commercial equipment they soon find that having a good cash flow and making a profit in the low baller lawn care market is not that easy. After a season or two they realize their mistake and sell their accounts and equipment. So should you buy or sell your landscaping business? The best advice I can give about getting into this businesses, and can pay cash, is that buying an existing company is the best way to go. You will pay far less for the used equipment and the existing client accounts will provide some immediate cash flow.

The first and one of the most important things about starting up your very own service is, of course the will and full desire to do so. You should take this venture as an exciting game rather than a hard task. If you are not heartily into it, perhaps you should just go back home. The second thing you will need is to craft your very own business plan for this certain type of endeavor. This would cover giving a good name for your lawn business, making a list of your starting expenses, jotting down a vision and mission statement, as well as coming up with a business plan for long and short-terms goals that you would like to achieve. After that, build up a number of points which will serve as your main keys towards success for the business. Lastly, you should lay out the necessary steps that must be taken by you in order to meet up with your long and short-term goals.

This is definitely one of the biggest steps that will lead towards prosperity for your startup. As a novice yourself, you need to be oriented with the professional equipment necessary. To name some would be a walk-behind mower and a zero turn if you can afford it, a backpack blower, an edger, a weed eater and, of course the hand tools. These are the main types of equipment that would be essential for the initial chapter of your lawn service journey. For the business end of things it would be a good idea to pick up some lawn business software to keep track of accounts and invoices. Though this equipment can cost you quite a lot, there are ways that you can follow in order to save on them. Rather than buying from the very first equipment store you find, take some time to look through other sources out there. You can also go through sites like your local Craigslist.com and Ebay.com as there is a high failure rate for outdoor service type businesses. If you are not handy with small motor or landscaping equipment repairs, find a good mower repair shop because service is always necessary.

Generally speaking the legal barriers to entry for a grounds maintenance company are very low. You should get a county business license as well as liability insurance. Your liability insurance will run you between $400 and $700 dollars depending on where you live. Some services you may be contemplating offering will come with more stringent requirements. Sprinkler repair or low voltage lighting in many states necessitate a separate licensing procedure as well as testing along with proof of time spent working in the industry. Pest control is highly regulated in most areas as well. However, most landscapers repair irrigation and lighting and spray RoundUp with no problems and it pays very well.

If you starting a new lawn care company it can cost plenty of money getting all the proper legal documents prepared. You are both qualified and competent to complete many of the legal documents that you encounter. Most business documents that you will need are located online in a PDF format. I will walk you through the process of getting a Tax Identification Number. Your Tax ID or Employer ID is like having a Social Security number for your business and allows you to pay taxes. You will need this number in conjunction with your Articles of Incorporation (Corporation) or Articles of Formation (Limited Liability Company) or DBA Certificate (Fictitious Name Filings) to get a business checking account with the business name on it. You will also use this number to build business credit for your lawn care company.

For security reasons we couldnt show you the next steps, however, follow the directions closely and you are on your way. The entire process should only take you about 12-15 minutes. Services like this would normally cost $50-300. You just saved yourself some valuable start-up capital by doing it yourself. Now youre thinking like a good CEO.

Now that you have everything set to start your business, the final and the most crucial thing you should know is how to bring in customers. This requires coming up with some lawn care marketing ideas. First of all, you can print out some lawn care flyers or door hangers, pass them to your friends or even with your family that would somehow let them do the promotion for you. Those fliers should contain your contact details, of course, so that customers will be able to inquire about your service right away. It would also be best to offer discounts to the very first 20 or so clients so that they will be hyped to avail your services. When starting, the two things you have to have for efficient advertising is a phone and phone number committed only to your business (with a business greeting) and landscaping business cards printed for dispersing to present and prospective customers. Do this since having a dedicated business phone and business cards assist to identify your service company as a genuine and professional lawn care company in the minds of your clients. I recommend Vista print for your business cards due to the fact that they have easy to use software and are very cost effective.

Advertising and marketing is exactly what separates the successes from the failures. The objective to remember in all of your marketing and advertising is that projecting and preserving an expert image is essential. You can do the best work in town, however if your business doesnt project an image that mirrors that, you will continuously struggle to discover customers and work. There are four main outlets for advertising your yard care business that will yield respectable returns on your financial investment.

There is absolutely nothing that will get you more calls than an expert looking and useful internet site. It is a bigger cost of both money and time in advance, but produces yields that exceed any other marketing technique. As soon as this is done, an internet site will need nothing but periodic upgrading of pictures and updating. A fantastic internet site is the key in the yard care market for numerous reasons listed. To begin with, not many lawn care, pressure cleaning, irrigation repair, and landscape lighting companies have internet sites and the ones that do generally have very amateur or sloppy websites, which does not gain customers. This indicates that there is less competitors online and it is easy to rank your website on the top pages of Google and on Google business listings in a relatively brief amount of time when making use of proper lawn care SEO techniques. Think about adding a local lawn care blog like this one about lawn care in Chicago to your website so thatyou can easily add fresh content. Even more individuals than ever are browsing the web to discover services because of how easy and fast it is to do and you need to take advantage of that. As an added bonus offer for having a website, you will get a bulk of the calls from individuals that possess second homes in your area or that are out of town and forgot to make plans for their lawn service. These people are frequently the very best customers since: 1) They arent there to complain about anything and 2) They are generally going to pay greater rates because of their have to get it done. This lets your consumers contact you by any means of email or contact form on your website so that you can begin to build an e-mail list to send out landscape discounts or fast communication with your clients which will conserve you hours of time and energy over the life of your business.

This could appear simple or insignificant, but you would be shocked the number of people do not utilize this technique of getting their company name and reputation out there to the degree that it could be utilized. This is a great tactic and everyone likes to hear about others experience with a landscaping company. This method is not actually efficient till you have a few customers, but once you do make sure to ASK to suggest your business to possible new customers. Be direct about this and even provide to contact anyone whose name they offer you. Dont be excessively aggressive about it to the point of being annoying, however being assertive and considerate and you will find that this is a great way to obtain new clients. Offer a business card for the customer to keep and even an extra one that the customer could give to someone that they know. One of the very best rewards of word of mouth marketing is that you will oftentimes get numerous consumers in one area. This is extremely advantageous since close together houses require less travel time and correspond to greater profits per hour. Most importantly, this approach of advertising doesnt cost you a penny!

This method of marketing your business is good (maybe for a little while longer) but not that popular anymore since the internet, however it is still efficient, particularly with the older generation who prefers using the Yellow pages instead of the internet. Make certain you speak with an agent and ask for offers such as a two for one cost where you can promote under both landscaping and lawn care or a little freebie included somewhere such as a complementary pressure cleaning advertisement or text ad. Most of these service companies are hurting, for business with the increase of the Internet, so use that to your advantage.The main issue with Yellow page ads is that every company in your area has one, so ensure that yours stands apart. Hand over a little more cash for a slightly larger advertisement with your site, contact number, services, and anything that sets you apart or that will help you stick out and it will pay huge dividends. Make sure that it is interesting, to the point, which it lets individuals understand what they are getting the moment they see it. These ads can get a bit costly, particularly if you are in a huge city given that rates is based upon distribution, but most of the times is worth the investment if you are wanting to grow your business.

Direct circulation is preferred, but has definitely dreadful returns on your effort and time most of the times with an extremely low conversion rate.I have discovered that it is worth it to do this just in locations where you currently have a customer so that that in your copy you can state something along the lines of (Your Company Name) is presently doing work for consumers in your community and would like to provide our expert services to you also. Then list the types of services that your business offers and if there are any specials that you might have.Because putting mail in peoples mailboxes is against the law, just attach your business card to the flag of the mailbox. These fliers should look professional and only be twice the size of a business card. When writing your marketing copy, dont let clients infer that you are the most inexpensive around, however rather that you are the very best and that you are an expert in town. Fighting low price wars is a losing situation for everyone, so do not play that game.

The average cost of lawn services varies depending on a number of things. For instance, typical services include prices for services such as regular lawn maintenance which includes edging, mowing and blowing, fertilization, weeding beds, hedge trimming, shrub removal, replacement or moving, grass replacement, landscaping, irrigation among other lawn services. These services in most cases are priced separately however sometimes they might be priced together into one monthly service price. It is always advisable to go for a package service price because the packages come at discounted prices. Below are the average prices of different lawn service packages offered;

The average price of a weekly lawn cut depends on a number of factors such as the size of the lawn, location, obstacles etc. For a lawn_business_pricing_examplehalf an acre lawn, the average price of a weekly cut is between$20 and $40 depending on the factors such as howquickly your lawn can be mowed. The cheapest prices are charged on flat lawns on open properties that are small in size because they are the fastest to lawn. The presence of any obstacles in a property can also increase the price of a weekly lawn cut. This is because obstacles increase the time taken to finish mowing a lawn. Examples of obstacles that may increase the average weekly lawn cost include, trees, outdoor furniture among other obstacles. The proximity of your property to the service company also affects the price. For instance, the closer the property is the cheaper the services will be.

The average price charged for weed beds monthly is between $25 and $50. The price can however vary depending on factors such as how many weeding sessions arerequired and also how big the garden is. The bigger the beds are, the higher the cost of maintaining them. There are cheaper ways of eliminating weeds on your beds through mulching which is effective and capable of eliminating the cost of weeding beds completely.

Lawn services also include spring cleanups which cost an average of $200 for a half acre plot. The price however varies depending on the number of times spring cleanups are done. Spring cleanups are vital if a fall cleanup has not been done. In cases where a fall cleanup was not done, the average price of a spring cleanup is bound to be higher. In cases where a fall cleanup was done, then the price will be lower. Otherwise, the price of a spring cleanup is generally based on the accumulations over the winters that are composed of leaves and sticks. The number of beds also affects the price of a spring cleanup. For instance, the more the beds the higher the average price because edging is a labor intensive lawn service.

Landscaping is also a common lawn service. The average cost of landscaping depends on a number of factors such as the number of shrubs, ornamental trees, and hedges in a property. This is because landscaping property with numerous shrubs, trees, and hedges is more labor intensive. The nature of your landscape also affects the average price of landscaping. Extensive landscapes take longer to be trimmed and maintained therefore making it more expensive. The last time your property underwent landscaping also determines the price. For instance, if it has been years since your last landscaping, then the price will be higher because it will take more time and labor to clean up the clippings and reshape the land. The expertise of the landscaping workers also affects the price. For instance, hiring the services of a professional landscaper will cost more than using an unskilled landscaper. With all the above considerations, the average price of trimming landscaping is $175-$400 for a typical ranch house that is surrounded by shrubs, hedges, and trees.

Fall cleanups cost an average of $200-$500 for a half acre plot with a partial shade. Like spring cleanups the average price depends on the number of times fall cleanups are done. The average price also depends on the number of trees you have on your property. I.e. the more trees you have, the more leaves you will have to clean up which costs more. The number of adjacent trees around your property also contributes to the average price of the fall cleanup lawn service. If you have neighbors who have trees, the fall cleanup is bound to be more as leaves get blown into your property which will increase the price. Another factor that might affect the price of a fall clean lies in the disposal of the leaves. The cleanup leaves can be disposed in two ways i.e. the leaves can be disposed as trash, left to be blown into woods, or they can be removed by the lawn service company which usually comes at an additional charge. Depending on the above factors, the average price should not exceed $500 for a property less than half an acre. This is also a good time to winterize the irrigation system.

Chemical programs are also common services. Chemical programs, unlike other lawn services, are done less frequently. The average price of a chemical program is however higher because the service involves chemical use as the name suggests which are expensive to buy. The average price of chemical programs is also usually higher because of the legal requirements often associated with applying pest control chemicals. Among the factors that affect the average price include the size of the lawn. The price of a chemical program is solely based on this. With all the above factors in play, the average price of a chemical program is $400-$700 annually for a half acre lawn. In conclusion, the average cost of lawn services depends on the above factors. The main considerations affecting the price of the above services include the size of the lawn, the frequency of the service and lastly the type of labor hired. It is important to note that packaged lawn services have a lower average cost as opposed to individual services. Some Final Thoughts This is a very difficult field to enter and make decent money. For every big company with a dozen trucks and a million dollars in revenue, there are a hundred struggling or near bankrupt landscapers. Lets face it, anybody can cut grass and pull weeds, and that is the problem. There is a big difference between having the ability to maintain a nice yard and having the business acumen needed to make a profit doing it for others. In the end this is a business just like any other. You need to know how to control costs, manage employees and provide customer service. If you are not good at all of it, it will be your lawn care business listed for sale on Craigslist next year. You can find all our content on our sitemap.[one_third_first] Lawn Care Business Plan TemplateHow to Choose A Catchy Name For Your Landscape BusinessChoosing Landscaping CompaniesBest Lawn Care Software Reviews 2016 2017 Landscaper Marketing and the Yellow PagesSeven Lawn Care Marketing Ideas [/one_third_first][one_third] Lawn Business Mission StatementGrowing Your Landscaping Business Landscaping Business Cards Starting a Lawn Business with No Money All About Owning a Landscaping BusinessLawn Business Equipment Cost [/one_third][one_third_last] AboutContact Me Lawn Care Business Lawn Care FlyersLawn Care SEO Lawn Care Business PlanBuilding a Mobile Lawn Business Website [/one_third_last]

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Whether you are after a one-off, quick grass cut before new tenants move in, some interim maintenance while youre away on holidays, ormore regular lawn-maintenance & gardening services, let us show you why Jims is the largest and most trusted Lawn Mowing and Gardening Service in Australia.

Our work is backed by Jims famous 100% SatisfactionGuarantee. Our team are all fully trained, insured and police checked, so your lawn and your property are in safe hands. Your local Jims Lawn Care & Mowing team can also provide advice and assistance for longer-term, seasonallawn care including weeding and pest control, fertilizing, soil management, aeration, coring, through toturf laying and repair.

You will see the difference with professional lawn cut provides with experttrimming and edging of entire lawn area, around trees and garden features.

For larger properties, we offer ride-on lawn mowing services and grass slashing for rural and industrial areas. For commercial properties and businesses, we can co-ordinate lawn mowing to be after hours or in the off peak times for your businesses.

So call Jims Lawn Mowing today on 131 546or Book Online for all your Lawn Mowing, Lawn Care and Garden Maintenance needs.

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Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The theory centers on the notion that meanings are developed in coordination with others rather than separately within each individual.[1]

Social constructionism questions what is defined by humans and society to be reality. Therefore, social constructs can be different based on the society and the events surrounding the time period in which they exist.[2] An example of a social construct is money or the concept of currency, as people in society have agreed to give it importance/ value.[2][3] Another example of a social construction is the concept of self/ self-identity. Charles Cooley stated based on his Looking-Glass-Self theory: "I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am."[2] This demonstrates how people in society construct ideas or concepts that may not exist without the existence of people or language to validate those concepts.[2][4]

There are weak and strong social constructs.[3] Weak social constructs rely on brute facts (which are fundamental facts that are difficult to explain or understand, such as quarks) or institutional facts (which are formed from social conventions).[2][3] Strong social constructs rely on the human perspective and knowledge that doesn't just exist, but is rather constructed by society.[2]

A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event.[citation needed] In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society.

A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways social phenomena are developed, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by humans.

In terms of background, social constructionism is rooted in "symbolic interactionism" and "phenomenology."[5][6] With Berger and Luckman's The Social Construction of Reality published in 1966, this concept found its hold. More than four decades later, a sizable number of theory and research pledged to the basic tenet that people "make their social and cultural worlds at the same time these worlds make them."[6] It is a viewpoint that uproots social processes "simultaneously playful and serious, by which reality is both revealed and concealed, created and destroyed by our activities."[6] It provides a substitute to the "Western intellectual tradition" where the researcher "earnestly seeks certainty in a representation of reality by means of propositions."[6]

In social constructionist terms, "taken-for-granted realities" are cultivated from "interactions between and among social agents;" furthermore, reality is not some objective truth "waiting to be uncovered through positivist scientific inquiry."[6] Rather, there can be "multiple realities that compete for truth and legitimacy."[6] Social constructionism understands the "fundamental role of language and communication" and this understanding has "contributed to the linguistic turn" and more recently the "turn to discourse theory."[6][7] The majority of social constructionists abide by the belief that "language does not mirror reality; rather, it constitutes [creates] it."[6]

A broad definition of social constructionism has its supporters and critics in the organizational sciences.[6] A constructionist approach to various organizational and managerial phenomena appear to be more commonplace and on the rise.[6]

Andy Lock and Tom Strong trace some of the fundamental tenets of social constructionism back to the work of the 18th century Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist Giambattista Vico.[8]

Berger and Luckmann give credit to Max Scheler as a large influence as he created the idea of Sociology of knowledge which influenced social construction theory.[9]

According to Lock and Strong, other influential thinkers whose work has affected the development of social constructionism are: Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Jrgen Habermas, Emmanuel Levinas, Mikhail Bakhtin, Valentin Volosinov, Lev Vygotsky, George Herbert Mead, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gregory Bateson, Harold Garfinkel, Erving Goffman, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, Ken Gergen, Mary Gergen, Rom Harre, and John Shotter.[10]

Since its appearance in the 1950s, personal construct psychology (PCP) has mainly developed as a constructivist theory of personality and a system of transforming individual meaning-making processes, largely in therapeutic contexts.[11][12][13][14][15][16] It was based around the notion of persons as scientists who form and test theories about their worlds. Therefore, it represented one of the first attempts to appreciate the constructive nature of experience and the meaning persons give to their experience.[17] Social constructionism (SC), on the other hand, mainly developed as a form of a critique,[18] aimed to transform the oppressing effects of the social meaning-making processes. Over the years, it has grown into a cluster of different approaches,[19] with no single SC position.[20] However, different approaches under the generic term of SC are loosely linked by some shared assumptions about language, knowledge, and reality.[21]

A usual way of thinking about the relationship between PCP and SC is treating them as two separate entities that are similar in some aspects, but also very different in others. This way of conceptualizing this relationship is a logical result of the circumstantial differences of their emergence. In subsequent analyses these differences between PCP and SC were framed around several points of tension, formulated as binary oppositions: personal/social; individualist/relational; agency/structure; constructivist/constructionist.[22][23][24][25][26][27] Although some of the most important issues in contemporary psychology are elaborated in these contributions, the polarized positioning also sustained the idea of a separation between PCP and SC, paving the way for only limited opportunities for dialogue between them.[28][29]

Reframing the relationship between PCP and SC may be of use in both the PCP and the SC communities. On one hand, it extends and enriches SC theory and points to benefits of applying the PCP toolkit in constructionist therapy and research. On the other hand, the reframing contributes to PCP theory and points to new ways of addressing social construction in therapeutic conversations.[30]

Like social constructionism, social constructivism states that people work together to construct artifacts. While social constructionism focuses on the artifacts that are created through the social interactions of a group, social constructivism focuses on an individual's learning that takes place because of his or her interactions in a group.

Social constructivism has been studied by many educational psychologists, who are concerned with its implications for teaching and learning. For more on the psychological dimensions of social constructivism, see the work of Ernst von Glasersfeld and A. Sullivan Palincsar.[31]

Systemic therapy is a form of psychotherapy which seeks to address people as people in relationship, dealing with the interactions of groups and their interactional patterns and dynamics.

A bibliographic review of social constructionism as used within communication studies was published in 2016. It features a good overview of resources from that disciplinary perspective.[32]

The concepts of weak and strong as applied to opposing philosophical positions, "isms", inform a teleology the goal-oriented, meaningful or "final end" of an interpretation of reality. "Isms" are not personal opinions, but the extreme, modal, formulations that actual persons, individuals, can then consider, and take a position between. There are opposing philosophical positions concerning the feasibility of co-creating a common, shared, social reality, called weak and strong.

John R. Searle does not elucidate the terms strong and weak in his book The Construction of Social Reality,[33] but he clearly uses them in his Chinese room argument, where he debates the feasibility of creating a computing machine with a sharable understanding of reality, and he adds "We are precisely such machines." Strong artificial intelligence (Strong AI) is the bet that computer programmers will somehow eventually achieve a computing machine with a mind of its own, and that it will eventually be more powerful than a human mind. Weak AI bets they won't.

David Deutsch in his book The Fabric of Reality uses a form of strong Turing principle to share Frank Tipler's view of the final state of the universe as an omnipotent (but not omniscient), Omega point, computer. But this computer is a society of creative thinkers, or people (albeit posthuman transhuman persons), having debates in order to generate information, in the never-ending attempt to attain omniscience of this physicsits evolutionary forms, its computational abilities, and the methods of its epistemologyhaving an eternity to do so. (p.356)

Because both the Chinese room argument and the construction of social reality deal with Searle and his debates, and because they both use weak and strong to denote a philosophical position, and because both debate the programmability of "the other", it is worth noting the correspondence that "strong AI" is strong social constructionism, and "weak AI" is weak social constructivism.

Strong social constructivism says "none are able to communicate either a full reality or an accurate ontology, therefore my position must impose, by a sort of divine right, my observer-relative epistemology", whereas weak social constructivism says "none are able to know a full reality, therefore we must cooperate, informing and conveying an objective ontology as best we can."[34]

Weak social constructionism sees the underlying, objective, "brute fact" elements of the class of languages and functional assignments of human, metaphysical, reality. Brute facts are all facts that are not institutional facts (e.g., metaphysical, social agreement). The skeptic portrays the weak aspect of social constructivism, and wants to spend effort debating the institutional realities.

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker[35] writes that "some categories really are social constructions: they exist only because people tacitly agree to act as if they exist. Examples include money, tenure, citizenship, decorations for bravery, and the presidency of the United States."

In a similar vein, Stanley Fish[36] has suggested that baseball's "balls and strikes" are social constructions.[37]:2931

Both Fish and Pinker agree that the sorts of objects indicated here can be described as part of what John Searle calls "social reality."[38]:22 In particular, they are, in Searle's terms, ontologically subjective but epistemologically objective.[33]:63 "Social facts" are temporally, ontologically, and logically dependent on "brute facts." For example, "money" in the form of its raw materials (rag, pulp, ink) as constituted socially for barter (for example by a banking system) is a social fact of "money" by virtue of (i) collectively willing and intending (ii) to impose some particular function (purpose for which), (iii) by constitutive rules atop the "brute facts." "Social facts have the remarkable feature of having no analogue among physical brute facts" (34). The existence of language is itself constitutive of the social fact (37), which natural or brute facts do not require. Natural or "brute" facts exist independently of language; thus a "mountain" is a mountain in every language and in no language; it simply is what it is.[33]:29, et seq

Searle illustrates the evolution of social facts from brute facts by the constitutive rule: X counts as Y in C. "The Y terms has to assign a new status that the object does not already have just in virtue of satisfying the Y term; and there has to be collective agreement, or at least acceptance, both in the imposition of that status on the stuff referred to by the X term and about the function that goes with that status. Furthermore, because the physical features brute facts specified by the X term are insufficient by themselves to guarantee the fulfillment of the assigned function specified by the Y term, the new status and its attendant functions have to be the sort of things that can be constituted by collective agreement or acceptance."[33]:44

It is true that language is not a "brute fact," that it is an institutional fact, a human convention, a metaphysical reality (that happens to be physically uttered), but Searle points out that there are language-independent thoughts "noninstitutional, primitive, biological inclinations and cognitions not requiring any linguistic devices," and that there are many "brute facts" amongst both humans and animals that are truths that should not be altered in the social constructs because language does not truly constitute them, despite the attempt to institute them for any group's gain: money and property are language dependent, but desires (thirst, hunger) and emotions (fear, rage) are not.[33]:62 (Descartes describes the difference between imagination as a sort of vision, or image, and intellect as conceptualizing things by symbolic manipulation.) Therefore, there is doubt that society or a computer can be completely programmed by language and images, (because there is a programmable, emotive effect of images that derives from the language of judgment towards images).

Finally, against the strong theory and for the weak theory, Searle insists, "it could not be the case, as some have maintained, that all facts are institutional [i.e., social] facts, that there are no brute facts, because the structure of institutional facts reveals that they are logically dependent on brute facts. To suppose that all facts are institutional [i.e., social] would produce an infinite regress or circularity in the account of institutional facts. In order that some facts are institutional, there must be other facts that are brute [i.e., physical, biological, natural]. This is the consequence of the logical structure of institutional facts.".[33]:56

Ian Hacking, Canadian philosopher of science, insists, "the notion that everything is socially constructed has been going the rounds. John Searle [1995] argues vehemently (and in my opinion cogently) against universal constructionism."[39]:24 "Universal social constructionism is descended from the doctrine that I once named linguistic idealism and attributed, only half in jest, to Richard Nixon [Hacking, 1975, p. 182]. Linguistic idealism is the doctrine that only what is talked about exists, nothing has reality until it is spoken of, or written about. This extravagant notion is descended from Berkeley's idea-ism, which we call idealism: the doctrine that all that exists is mental."[39]:24 "They are a part of what John Searle [1995] calls social reality. His book is titled the Construction of Social Reality, and as I explained elsewhere [Hacking, 1996], that is not a social construction book at all."[39]:12

Hacking observes, "the label 'social constructionism' is more code than description"[39]:15 of every Leftist, Marxist, Freudian, and Feminist PostModernist to call into question every moral, sex, gender, power, and deviant claim as just another essentialist claimincluding the claim that members of the male and female sex are inherently different, rather than historically and socially constructed. Hacking observes that his 1995 simplistic dismissal of the concept actually revealed to many readers the outrageous implications of the theorists: Is child abuse a real evil, or a social construct, asked Hacking? His dismissive attitude, "gave some readers a way to see that there need be no clash between construction and reality,"[39]:29 inasmuch as "the metaphor of social construction once had excellent shock value, but now it has become tired."[39]:35

Informally, they require human practices to sustain their existence, but they have an effect that is (basically) universally agreed upon. The disagreement lies in whether this category should be called "socially constructed." Ian Hacking[40] argues that it should not. Furthermore, it is not clear that authors who write "social construction" analyses ever mean "social construction" in Pinker's sense. ".[41] If they never do, then Pinker (probably among others) has misunderstood the point of a social constructionist argument.

To understand how weak social constructionism can conclude that metaphysics (a human affair) is not the entire "reality," see the arguments against the study of metaphysics. This inability to accurately share the full reality, even given time for a rational conversation, is similarly proclaimed by weak artificial intelligence.

Constructionism became prominent in the U.S. with Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann's 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality. Berger and Luckmann argue that all knowledge, including the most basic, taken-for-granted common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions. When people interact, they do so with the understanding that their respective perceptions of reality are related, and as they act upon this understanding their common knowledge of reality becomes reinforced. Since this common sense knowledge is negotiated by people, human typifications, significations and institutions come to be presented as part of an objective reality, particularly for future generations who were not involved in the original process of negotiation. For example, as parents negotiate rules for their children to follow, those rules confront the children as externally produced "givens" that they cannot change. Berger and Luckmann's social constructionism has its roots in phenomenology. It links to Heidegger and Edmund Husserl through the teaching of Alfred Schutz, who was also Berger's PhD adviser.

During the 1970s and 1980s, social constructionist theory underwent a transformation as constructionist sociologists engaged with the work of Michel Foucault and others as a narrative turn in the social sciences was worked out in practice. This particularly affected the emergent sociology of science and the growing field of science and technology studies. In particular, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Bruno Latour, Barry Barnes, Steve Woolgar, and others used social constructionism to relate what science has typically characterized as objective facts to the processes of social construction, with the goal of showing that human subjectivity imposes itself on those facts we take to be objective, not solely the other way around. A particularly provocative title in this line of thought is Andrew Pickering's Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics. At the same time, Social Constructionism shaped studies of technology the Sofield, especially on the Social construction of technology, or SCOT, and authors as Wiebe Bijker, Trevor Pinch, Maarten van Wesel, etc.[42][43] Despite its common perception as objective, mathematics is not immune to social constructionist accounts. Sociologists such as Sal Restivo and Randall Collins, mathematicians including Reuben Hersh and Philip J. Davis, and philosophers including Paul Ernest have published social constructionist treatments of mathematics.

Social constructionism can be seen as a source of the postmodern movement, and has been influential in the field of cultural studies. Some have gone so far as to attribute the rise of cultural studies (the cultural turn) to social constructionism. Within the social constructionist strand of postmodernism, the concept of socially constructed reality stresses the ongoing mass-building of worldviews by individuals in dialectical interaction with society at a time. The numerous realities so formed comprise, according to this view, the imagined worlds of human social existence and activity, gradually crystallized by habit into institutions propped up by language conventions, given ongoing legitimacy by mythology, religion and philosophy, maintained by therapies and socialization, and subjectively internalized by upbringing and education to become part of the identity of social citizens.

In the book The Reality of Social Construction, the British sociologist Dave Elder-Vass places the development of social constructionism as one outcome of the legacy of postmodernism. He writes "Perhaps the most widespread and influential product of this process [coming to terms with the legacy of postmodernism] is social constructionism, which has been booming [within the domain of social theory] since the 1980s."[44]

Social constructionism falls toward the nurture end of the spectrum of the larger nature and nurture debate. Consequently, critics have argued that it generally ignores biological influences on behaviour or culture, or suggests that they are unimportant to achieve an understanding of human behaviour.[45] The view of most psychologists and social scientists is that behaviour is a complex outcome of both biological and cultural influences.[46][47] Other disciplines, such as evolutionary psychology, behaviour genetics, behavioural neuroscience, epigenetics, etc., take a naturenurture interactionism approach to understand behaviour or cultural phenomena.

In 1996, to illustrate what he believed to be the intellectual weaknesses of social constructionism and postmodernism, physics professor Alan Sokal submitted an article to the academic journal Social Text deliberately written to be incomprehensible but including phrases and jargon typical of the articles published by the journal. The submission, which was published, was an experiment to see if the journal would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."[48] The Postmodernism Generator is a computer program that is designed to produce similarly incomprehensible text.[49] In 1999, Sokal, with coauthor Jean Bricmont published the book Fashionable Nonsense, which criticized postmodernism and social constructionism.

Philosopher Paul Boghossian has also written against social constructionism. He follows Ian Hacking's argument that many adopt social constructionism because of its potentially liberating stance: if things are the way that they are only because of our social conventions, as opposed to being so naturally, then it should be possible to change them into how we would rather have them be. He then states that social constructionists argue that we should refrain from making absolute judgements about what is true and instead state that something is true in the light of this or that theory. Countering this, he states:

But it is hard to see how we might coherently follow this advice. Given that the propositions which make up epistemic systems are just very general propositions about what absolutely justifies what, it makes no sense to insist that we abandon making absolute particular judgements about what justifies what while allowing us to accept absolute general judgements about what justifies what. But in effect this is what the epistemic relativist is recommending.[50]

Later in the same work, Boghossian severely constrains the requirements of relativism. He states that instead of believing that any world view is just as true as any other (cultural relativism), we should believe that:

If we were to encounter an actual, coherent, fundamental, genuine alternative to our epistemic system, C2, whose track record was impressive enough to make us doubt the correctness of our own system, C1, we would not be able to justify C1 over C2 even by our own lights.

Woolgar and Pawluch[51] argue that constructionists tend to 'ontological gerrymander' social conditions in and out of their analysis. Following this point, Thibodeaux[52] argued that constructionism can both separate and combine a subject and their effective environment. To resolve this he argued that objective conditions should be used when analyzing how perspectives are motivated.

Social constructionism has been criticized by psychologists such as University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson and evolutionary psychologists, including Steven Pinker in his book The Blank Slate.[53] John Tooby and Leda Cosmides used the term "standard social science model" to refer to social-science philosophies that they argue fail to take into account the evolved properties of the brain.[54]

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Social constructionism - Wikipedia

For over 25 years, Mid-America Contractors, Inc. has provided full-service contracting services to commercial clients throughout Kansas City, MO and the surrounding areas. We specialize in commercial construction and contracting services including: new construction, custom cabinetry, carpentry services, retrofitting services, and tenant finishing services.

Our team of commercial contractors works hard to complete every job on time and within budget. We work with each client one-on-one to ensure the job is completed to their exact specifications. We work hard to provide outstanding customer service and are always available to answer questions you have about our services.

Whether you're looking to retrofit your restaurant, office, or medical facility, we have the tools and skills necessary to complete the job. By working with Mid-America Contractors you cannot only expect the best, you'll receive the best service.

For commercial contracting services you can trust, contact Mid-America Contractors, Inc today! We look forward to helping you and your business build or retrofit the office or retail space you need and deserve.

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Mid-America Contractors - Commercial Construction

By knowing the basics about tree trimming and tree pruning, you may be able to handle the majority of this kind of work yourself. There are a variety of great trimming tips and pruning techniques that can help keep your trees in excellent shape. With the right knowledge and equipment, you can prune your trees as necessary to maintain their appearance and health and to eliminate potentially dangerous dead branches and other common issues.

While there are many tree trimming techniques out there, if you want to this yourself you only need to concern yourself with the basics to keep things in order. Alternatively, you can hire a professional and not think twice about it! Read our guide below for more information.

Trees are generally trimmed for one of three purposes: aesthetics, safety or health. For example:

The following tips and techniques will help guide you if youre planning on pruning a tree or if you just want to educate yourself about typical tree trimming care and maintenance techniques.

If you need to thin the crown of a tree, you should keep the following tips and techniques in mind:

Here are a few tree pruning techniques to keep in mind:

Keep these tricks and techniques from this tree pruning guide in mind before taking on the task of pruning and trimming your trees.

If you want to keep your landscaping attractive, you should consider having your your trees trimmed and pruned. Trimming or pruning helps remove dead or broken limbs and helps keep your tree healthy. The cost of tree trimming depends on a variety of factors, but is especially dependent on whether you do it yourself or hire a professional. Learn more with our Tree Trimming Cost & Prices Guide. For a list of questions to ask a contractor, see our Tree Cutting & Trimming Service Guide.

**Some images courtesy of International Society of Arboriculture.

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Tree Trimming & Pruning Guide: Tips, Techniques For ...

West Coast Turf and Western Sod have been the leaders in the sod farming industry since 1972, with the aim of providing the best natural turf grass sod and sod installation service in the business. Only West Coast Turf has earned the name "Home of Super Bowl Sod" having supplied turf grass to a record 8 Super Bowls from California to Florida, including Super Bowl 50 at Levi's Stadium. Check out our list of other famous clients.

West Coast Turf is the leader for California sod and Arizona sod products. We offer more than 30 different varieties of sod and stolons, grown locally at our Phoenix area Arizona sod farms, serving Phoenix sod, Scottsdale sod, Tempe sod, Tucsonsod, delivering to nearly every corner of the state; and in Southern California sod farms in the Coachella Valley/Palm Springs/Palm Desertsod areas, Escondido, and Winchestersod serve the entire Los Angeles basin, Orange County, San Diegosod, and beyond, delivered fresh to your home or project in SoCal. In Northern California, our Livingston sod farm serves the San Francisco Bay Area sod, including Sacramento, San Jose, Oakland and everywhere in between.

We specialize in water conserving environmentally friendly bermuda & paspalum grasses with none of the toxic health risks of synthetic grass, and are drought tolerant grasses. We also grow other optimal coastal turf varieties to suit your needs. You can have an environmentally friendly lawn during this drought if you water wisely!

Order sod online for special internet discounts, or call one of our expert customer service representatives for more information.

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Vista Window Company was established by a group of industry veterans determined to make the best window on the market for your home. Over a decade later, that objective has not changed. We take pride in our customer-centric attitude, and it is the foundation on which we plan our continued growth.

At our state-of-the-art glass facility, we manufacture some of the most energy-efficient insulated glass units available. Having our own glass plant gives us the advantage of producing our windows quickly, but also gives us the ability to adapt our product to incorporate the latest technology available. All Vista products have been tested and meet or exceed NFRC requirements, many qualifying for the ENERGY STAR Most Efficient program.

We constantly strive to develop innovative products to help you reduce energy costs and add beauty to your home, all while fitting in your budget. Products like our Panorainbow Exterior Color System allow you to customize the look of your home, and LockIQ adds security and ease of operation to our windows.

Our goal is to continue growing our company. We can only do this by earning your business and providing you the finest vinyl windows in the industry.

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Vista Window Company - Vinyl Replacement Windows & Patio Doors

Recent Requests for Cabinet Refacing Companies in Ashburn, Virginia:

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 11/09/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Painted wood

Request Stage: Planning & Budgeting

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Comment: Replace cabinet doors and drawer facings with laminate soft close

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 11/05/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Painted wood

Request Stage: Ready to Hire

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Covered by Insurance: No

Property Owner: Yes

Project Location: ASHBURN, VA 20148

Date: 09/2018

Request Stage: Planning & Budgeting

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 09/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Painted wood

Request Stage: Ready to Hire

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Comment: Kitchen island resurface 3 sides

Project Location: ASHBURN, VA 20147

Date: 08/2018

Request Stage: Planning & Budgeting

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 08/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Painted wood

Request Stage: Planning & Budgeting

Desired Completion Date: More than 2 weeks

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Comment: The carbonates are painted white and it looks dated I would like to refresh and modernize the look

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 08/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Don't Know

Request Stage: Planning & Budgeting

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 07/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Stained wood

Request Stage: Planning & Budgeting

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 07/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Stained wood

Request Stage: Ready to Hire

Desired Completion Date: Within 1 week

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Covered by Insurance: No

Property Owner: Yes

Comment: Our realtor would like our kitchen cabinets to be updated last week! We have 16 upper cabinets, 15 lower cabinets and 15 drawer or drawer faces. He wants an off white cabinet.

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20148

Date: 06/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Stained wood

Request Stage: Planning & Budgeting

Desired Completion Date: More than 2 weeks

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Comment: We would like the wooden cabinets in our home refinished in white. The island cabinets are currently painted and we would like them sanded and also refinished in white.

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 06/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Painted wood

Request Stage: Planning & Budgeting

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 05/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Painted wood

Request Stage: Ready to Hire

Desired Completion Date: Within 1 week

What kind of location is this?: Home/Residence

Covered by Insurance: No

Property Owner: Yes

Comment: I have eight small kitchen cabinets that are 12 1/2 by 14 1/2. The middle of these eight cabinets have an indent square that i would like to remove and replace with glass. I need someone that can cut a hole in each oak cabinet. We are in the process of painting our kitchen cabinets. Thank you.

Project Location: Ashburn, VA 20147

Date: 05/2018

Refacing Location(s): Kitchen

Cabinet Material: Stained wood

Special Features: Other

Request Stage: Ready to Hire

Desired Completion Date: Timing is flexible

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Cabinet Refacing Services in Ashburn, VA - HomeAdvisor.com

Custom Designed Spaces for Business or Income Properties

Working with General Steel is a collaborative process that ensures that your final product reflects your specific needs. The process starts with a two-way conversation between you and our experienced team. We want to know exactly how you will be using your metal office building, how it will fit on your property, and your ideas for interior and exterior design, among other factors. We then research the location of the office building to ensure that its equipped to withstand the wind and snow loads of your area as well as any insulation requirements.

Once we get an idea of what building kit best suits your project, we work with you to add customization options, including a wide variety of doors, windows, and exterior color schemes. The ease of steel construction allows us to modify layouts and add further customizations without breaking your budget. From design to construction, we provide the materials and expertise to transform a building kit into an attractive and highly functional office facility.

Steel is renowned for its strength, but one of the primary benefits of purchasing a steel building for your office building is its versatility. Our building kits are designed according to use, which means we are able to modify floor layouts as well as include customization options that reflect precisely how your building will be used.

Another major advantage in selecting steel for your office building is the quick and easy construction. Steel building kits come ready to be erected with simple, DIY-friendly bolt-together construction. This not only allows you to save up to 50% on time and material costs over traditional building materials like wood and stone, it also allows you to get your business up and running as soon as possible.

Can we expand if needed in the future?

Steel building kits can easily be modified and are designed with future expansion in mind.

How do I avoid the big-box aesthetic of a steel building?

We provide customization options, including several choices for windows, doors, and color schemes to make your building your own.

How is a steel building priced?

There are three factors that affect the cost of your building: building design, the price of steel, and economies of scale.

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Prefab Office Buildings - Metal Office Building Kits ...

What is a Building Department?

A Building Department ensures the construction of safe buildings, primarily through the development and enforcement of building codes. Building codes establish standards for the construction of buildings and address virtually all aspects of construction, including design requirements, building materials, parking, resistance to natural disasters, and trades such as electric and plumbing. State and local governments share the responsibility of ensuring safe building construction, and both run Building Departments.

Building Departments at the state level are primarily involved in establishing the state's building code. A review board is usually responsible for adopting the building code, though in some cases separate boards are established for each trade. The state Building Department provides training and certification of building inspectors who implement the code at the county and local level. In many states, the Building Department is responsible for inspecting and issuing licenses for all elevators and escalators. A state Building Department may also conduct inspections of state owned buildings and facilities.

Building Departments at the county and local levels are responsible for implementing and enforcing the building code, as well as any locally adopted standards and regulations related to building construction. Building Departments enforce the building code by reviewing design plans in advance of construction and inspecting buildings during and after construction to verify code compliance. Before a building may be occupied, it must be issued a permit by the department's building inspector. For small scale building projects, the building inspector may only inspect the building after the project has been completed.

The Building Department may also inspect buildings following a fire or other damage in order to determine whether the structure is safe to occupy. In cases where severe damage or neglect has made a building unsafe for occupancy, the Building Department has the power to condemn the building.

In many locations, the local Building Department is fully or partially responsible for enforcing other local rules and regulations, such as property maintenance codes or zoning regulations.

County and local Building Departments and their staff are typically certified or licensed by the state.

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New Jersey Building Department - County Office