Social Constructivism: The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge – by Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann (1966)
摘要
Berger and Luckmann’s 1966 work “The Social Construction of Reality” is considered one of the most influential sociological books worldwide. It has been translated into more than 20 languages, and the English edition alone has sold over a million copies. The central question that Berger and Luckmann attempt to unravel in this book is how the subjective knowledge of an individual can become an intersubjective perception of reality within a society. Based on considerations about everyday knowledge, they demonstrate how the different knowledge of many people becomes a common idea of reality, serving as the basis for social action. The basic idea of their social constructivist view is that social facts are not simply given but are produced in everyday interaction in processes of habituation and institutionalization, i.e., the objectification of social experiences. Through internalization in socialization processes, the individual human being ultimately experiences the created order of society and their environment as an objective reality, which they reproduce, but can also modify and change. In this understanding, for Berger and Luckmann society is established in a continuous dialectical interplay as both “objective” and “subjective” reality.