Today my Professor discussed Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The lecture is supposed to be some kind of discussion between the students and the professor, but as usual all the students, except me ^_^ , sat quietly the whole time. I don't claim that I said a lot, but at least I asked a couple of questions that I thought were relevant.
Anyway.
Berger & Luckmann published a very influential book in 1966, called The Social Construction of Reality. At that time the book was not very well received, as it wasn't perceived as Marxian enough.
Many years later the book was rediscovered and is now seen as one of the founding books of the social constructionism movement. In short B & L mean that there is no difference between real and deceptive knowledge. As you might know, Durkheim said that social facts should be seen as something out side of the individual. According to Weber society should be studied through the intentions of the individuals. B & L ask how a world full human actions can result in a world of social facts. They answer the question by saying that the human consciousness is intentional and that the world consists of a multitude of realities. By comparing our realities with each other, which we do in our everyday life, we construct a inter-subjective reality.
Our professor continued on another specific part of B & L's theory, that of legitimization.
According to B&L there are four kinds of legitimization.
- Linguistic objectification. To give a phenomenon or matter a name makes it more real and visible.
- pre-theoretic knowledge. This can be exemplified by proverbs, values and myths.
- Explicit theories. legitimises institutions and such based on theories, E.g. the church.
- Symbolic universes. These are what make the world understandable for the individual, although they might not comprehend all the different parts as it at the same time also gives explanations to difficult situations.
Well that was this Tuesday.
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