"Content","Page"

"Peter L. Berger
and Thomas Luckmann
The Social Construction
of Reality
A Treatise in the Sociology
of Knowledge
Penguin Books","2"
"London","3"
"Penguin Books 1991","3"
"The man .in the street does not ordinarily
trouble himself about what is'real' to him and about what he
'knows' unless he is stopped short by some sort of problem.
He takes his 'reality' and his.'knowledge' for granted. The
sociologist cannnot do this, if only because of his systematic
awareness of the fact that men in the street take quite different
'realities' for granted as between one society and another. The
sociologist is forced by the very logic of his discipline to ask, if
nothing else, whether the diffference between the two'realities'
may not be understood in relation to various differences be
tween the two societies","8"
"To include epistemological questions concerning the validity
of sociological knowledge in the sociology of knowledge is
somewhat like trying to push a bus in which one is riding.","13"
"In other words, common-sense 'know
ledge' rather than 'ideas' must be the central focus for the
sociology of knowledge. It is precisely this 'knowledge' that
constitutes the fabric of meanings without which no society
could exist.
The sociology of knowledge, therefore, must concern itself
with the social construction of reality.","14"
"Th4 sociology of knorDW,e must concern itselfwith erJerythingt1uzt passes for
'knorDW,e' in society. As soonery
on as one states this,one realizes that the focus on intellectUal history is ill-
chosen,
or rather, is ill-chosen if it becomes the central focus of the
sociology of knowledge. Theoretical thought, 'ideas', Weltan
scluzattgscluzattg
society contains these phenomena, they are only part of theINTRODUCTION
sum of what passes for'knowledge'. Only a very limited group
of people in any society engages in theorizing, in the business
of 'ideas', and the construction of Weltanscluluungen. But
everyone in society participates in its'knowledge' in one way
or another. Put diffferently, only a few are concerned with the
theoretical interpretation of the world, but everybody lives in
a world of some sort","14"
"Theoretical thought, 'ideas', Weltan
scluzattgscluzattg
society contains these phenomena, they are o","14"
"The reality of everyday life contains typificatory schemes m
terms of which others are apprehended and 'dealt with' in
face-to-face encounters. Thus I apprehend the other as 'a
man' 'a European', 'a buyer', 'a jovial type', and so on. All
'
these'
typifications ongoingly affect my interaction with him as,
say, I decide to show him a good time on the to
_wn bef?re_
trying to sell him my product. Our face-to-face mteracuon
will be patterned by these typifications","23"
"The social reality of everyday life is thus apprehended
in a continuum of typifications, which are progressively
47","24"
"THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
anonymous as they are removed from the 'here and now' ofthe
face-to-face situation. At one pole of the continuum are those
others with whom I frequently and intensively interact in
face-to-face situations - my 'inner circle', as it were. At the
other pole are highly anonymous abstractions, which by their
very nature can never be available in face-to-face interaction.
Social structure is the sum total of these typifications and of
the recurrent patterns of interaction established by means of
them. As such, social structure is an essential element of the
reality of everyday life.","25"
"Mutatis mutandis, a large part ofthe sooal stoc� ofknowledgeconsists of recipes
for the mastery of routine pr
.oblems","29"
"Since everyday life is dominated by the pragmatic motiveyday life is dominated by
the prag
recipe knowledge,' that is, knowledge limited to pragmati�
competence in routine performances, occupies a prominent
place in the social stock of knowledge. For example, I use the
telephone every day for specific pragmatic purposes of my
own. I know how to do this.","29"
"I return to the
'serious' world of business, once more recognize the logic of
its maxims, and act acCQrdingly.","30"
"Th� social stock of knowledge further supplie� me With the typificatory schemes
required for the majorroutmes of everyday life, not only the typifications of
others
that have been discussed before, but typifications of all sorts
of events and experiences, both social and natural.","30"
"By presenting itself to me as an integrated whole the social
stock of knowledge also provides me with the means to inte
grate discrete elements of my own knowledge. In other words,","30"
"'what everybody knows' has its own logic, and the same logic
can be applied to order various things that I know.","30"
"All �uman activity is subject to habitualization. Any actionthat ts repeated
frequently becomes cast into a pattern","36"
"Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal
typification of habitualized actions by types of actors. Put
differently, any such typification is an institution.","37"
"Institutions also, by the very fact of their existence,
control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of
conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the many
other directions that would theoretically be possible.","37"
"Nevertheless, the empirical fact remains that institutions do
tend to 'hang together'.","41"
"In actual fact, sets of institu
tionalization processes take place concurrently. There is no a
pr-iori reason for assuming that these processes will necessarily
'hang together' functionally, let alone as a logically consistent
system.","41"
"It follows that great care is required in any statements one
makes about the 'logic' of institutions. The logic does not
reside in the institutions and their external functionalities, but
in the way these . are treated in reflection about them. Put
differently, reflective consciousness superimposes the quality
of logic on the institutional order.","42"
"since human be
ings are frequently stupid, instituticnal meanings tend to
become simplified in the process of transmission, so that the
given collection of institutional 'formulae' can be readily
learned and memorized by successive generations. The 'for
mula' character of institutional meanings ensures their","44"
"THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
memorability. We have here on the level of sedimented
meanings the same processes ofroutinization and trivialization
that we have already noted in the discussion ofinstitutionaliza
tion.","45"
"a segmentation of the institutional order�
with only certain types of individuals performing certain
actions, and, following that, a social distribution of knowledge,
with role-specific knowledge coming to be reserved to certain
types.","51"
"We then argued that the empirical fact that insti
tutions do hang together, despite the impossibility of assuming
this a priori, can be accounted for only in reference to the
reflective consciousness of individuals who impose a certain
logic upon their experience of the several institutions.","51"
"Another consequence of institutional segmentation is the
possibility of socially segregated sub-universes of meaning.
These result from accentuations of role specialization to the
point where role-specific knowledge becomes altogether eso
teric as against the common stock of knowledge.","52"
"n esoteric sub-universe of
medicine. The lay public must be convinced that this is right
and beneficial, and the medical fraternity must be held to the
standards of the suq-universe.","53"
"To underline its authority the medical pro
fession shrouds itself in the age-old symbols of power and
mystery, from outlandish costume to incomprehensible lan
guage, all of which, of course, are legitimated to the public and
to itself in pragmatic terms.","53"
"In other words, an
entire legitimating machinery is at work so that laymen will
remain laymen, and doctors doctors, and (if at all possible)
that both will do so happily.","53"
"A society in which discrepant worlds are generally available
on a market basis entails specific constellations of subjective
reality and identity. There will be an increasingly general con
sciousness of the relativity of all worlds, including one's own,
which is now subjectively apprehended as 'a world', rather
than 'the world'. It follows that one's own institutionalized
conduct may be apprehended as 'a role' from which one may
detach oneself in one's own consciousness, and which one may
'act out' with manipulative control. For example, the aristocrat
no longer simply is an aristocrat, but he plays at being an
aristocrat, and so forth. The situation, then, has a much more
far-reaching consequence than the possibility of individuals
playing at being what they are not supposed to be. They also
play :tt being what they are supposed to be - a quite different
matter. This situation is increasingly typical of contemporary
industrial society, but it would obviously transcend the scope
of our present considerations to enter further into a sociology
of-knowledge and social-psychological analysis of this con
stellation. 38 What should be stressed is that such a situation
cannot be understood unless it is ongoingly related to its
social-structural context, which follows logically from the
necessary relationship between the social division of labour
(with its consequences for social structure) and the social dis-
192SOCIETY AS SUBJECTIVE REALITY
tribution of knowledge (with its consequences for the social
objectivation of reality). In the contemporary situation this
entails the analysis of both reality and identity pluralism with
reference to the structural dynamics of industrialism, parti
cu!arly the dynamics of the social stratification patterns pro
duced by industrialism.39
19","97"