The review considers D.G. Podvoisky’s new book as an intellectual event that prompts a renewed engagement with the fundamental questions of social theory in order to rethink the nature of social constructions. The analysis is structured around the central theoretical intuition of the study, according to which, in creating social reality, the human being becomes both its product and its captive. The possibilities of applying a constructivist methodology to the study of modernity, norms, institutions, and the academic sphere are assessed. The internal tensions and lacunae of the study are identified: an emphasis on solidity at the expense of the fragility of social forms, a predominant focus on the prohibitive (rather t han e nabling) f unction o f social s tructures, a s w ell a s u nresolved contradictions b etween constructivism and realism, and between sociological and philosophical conceptualizations of freedom.