The Social Construction of Reality Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann

“The basic contentions of the argument of this book are imp­licit in its title and sub-title, namely, that reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyse the process in which this occurs. The key terms in these con­tentions are ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’, terms that are not only current in everyday speech, but that have behind them a long history of philosophical inquiry. We need not enter here into a discussion of the semantic intricacies of either the everyday or the philosophical usage of these terms. It will be enough, for our purposes, to define ‘reality’ as a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as having a being independent of our own volition (we cannot ‘wish them away’), and to define ‘knowledge’ as the certainty that phenomena are real and that they possess specific characteristics.”

Sociological interest in questions of'reality' and 'knowledge' is thus initially justified by the fact of their social relativity. What is 'real' to a Tibetan monk may not be 'real' to an American businessman. The 'knowledge' of the criminal differs from the 'knowledge' of the criminologist. It follows that specific. agglomerations of 'reality' and 'knowledge' pertain to specific. social contexts, and that these relationships will have to be included in an adequate sociological analysis of these contexts. The need for a 'sociology of knowledge' is thus already given with the observable differences between societies in terms of what is taken for granted as 'knowledge' in them. Beyond this, however, a discipline calling itself by this name will have to concern itself with the general ways by which 'realities' are taken as 'known' in human societies. In other words, a 'sociology of knowledge' will have to deal not only with the empirical variety of 'knowledge' in human societies but also with the processes by which any body of 'knowledge' comes to be socially established as 'reality'.

It is our contention, then, that the sociology of knowledge must concern itself with whatever passes for 'knowledge' in a society, regardless of the ultimate validity or invalidity (by whatever criteria) of such 'knowledge'. And in so far as all human 'knowledge' is developed, transmitted and maintained in social situations, the sociology of knowledge must seek to understand the processes by which this is done in such a way that a taken-for-granted 'reality' congeals for the man in the street. In other words, we contend that the sociology of know­ledge is concerned with the analysis of the social construction of reality.

Peter L. Berger is Professor of Sociology at Boston University and Director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture. He has previously been Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, New Jersey, and in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the author of many books including Invitation to Sociology, Pyramids of Sacrifice, Facing up to Modernity, The Heretical Imperative and The Capitalist Revolution, and is co-author (with Hansfried Kellner) of Sociology Reinterpreted and (with Brigitte Berger) of Sociology: A Biographical Approach and The War over the Family.

Thomas Luckmann is at present Professor of Sociology at the University of Constance, German. Previously he taught at the University of Frankfurt, at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, and was fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioural Sciences in Stanford. He has published widely, and his titles include The Invisible Religion, The Sociology of Language, Life-World and Social Realities and The Structures of the Life-World (with Alfred Schutz). He is editor of Phenomenology and Sociology and The Changing Face of Religion (with James A. Beckford).