In the case of nations, we don't have to agree for them to be real. For example, China (the Peoples Republic of China) does not agree that Taiwan (the Republic of China) exists or vice versa, yet both are undeniably real. The same with Serbia and Kosovo.
Some things exist only because of convention or an agreement between people, like the value of a Nobel prize or money.
Other things exist because we can empirically prove that they exist, like protons and gravity. If we all agree that they don't exist, it doesn't make it so.
Yes, they do. The government calling itself the PRC denies the legitimacy of the ROC, and vice versa, but despite each claiming to be the sole legitimate government of the combined territory, each very clearly believes that the other exists, and reacts to the actions of the other and to third parties’ actions toward the other.
Iirc my lit friends follow the Man Booker prize more closely; perhaps there are other non-english prizes that could also compete with the swedes.
Why should they have? That's not what the statutes say should be awarded so that particular criticism is a bit unfair.
Actually sometimes after hearing about a book or film I think I might be interested in I'll go and read a load of 'normal people' reviews on Amazon or IMDb and they might sway me one way or the other. They may not be skilled reviewers but they use their own words and it helps me ascertain what kind of persons they are and whether their opinions are likely to be in tune with my own. Also I get a spread, rather than niche view.
So I suppose that means that for me, normal people's opinions hold more prestige than the Nobel Committee's.
The word has meaning because we all agree it has meaning.
Corporations exist because we all agree that corporations exist.
Money has value because we all agree that it has value.
The United States of America exists because we all agree that it exists.
Yes, there is a difference between objective reality and intersubjective reality. But I think you're making too much of that difference.
A huge amount of our everyday world is based entirely off broad mass agreement. The vast majority of the things we interact with in modern life would immediately cease to exist if all the people who believed in them just vanished one day - if an extraterrestrial species arrived on Earth the day after, they would not be able to observe almost anything about our lives. That doesn't mean our reality is fake or that our interaction with it is arbitrary. It just means that it is geopolitically and/or culturally defined.
Bottom line: Yes, social science is hard, but lighten up.