#peter berger

[symbolicinteractionism]

The sociologist thinks of "society" as denoting a large complex of human relationships, or to put it in more technical language, as referring to a system of interaction.

Two people chatting on a street corner will hardly constitute a "society," but three people stranded on an island certainly will. The applicability of the concept, then, cannot be decided on quantitative grounds alone.

...Two men chatting on a street corner do not constitute a "society," but what transpires between them is certainly "social." "Society consists of a complex of such "social" events. ...It is difficult to improve on Max Weber's definition of a "social" situation as one in which people orient their actions towards one another.

— Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, "Sociology as a Form of Consciousness", Peter Berger.

[noosphe-re]

Language builds up semantic fields or zones of meaning that are linguistically circumscribed. Vocabulary, grammar, syntax are geared to the organization of these semantic fields.

Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge

[maaarine]

The Social Construction of Reality (Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann, 1966)

“Consciousness is always intentional; it always intends or is directed towards objects.

We can never apprehend some putative substratum of consciousness as such, only consciousness of something or other.

This is so regardless of whether the object of consciousness is experienced as belonging to an external physical world or apprehended as an element of an inward subjective reality.

Whether I (the first person singular, here as in the following illustrations, standing for ordinary self-consciousness in everyday life) am viewing the panorama of New York City or whether I become conscious of an inner anxiety, the processes of consciousness involved are intentional in both instances. (...)

Different objects present themselves to consciousness as constituents of different spheres of reality.

I recognize the fellowmen I must deal with in the course of everyday life as pertaining to a reality quite different from the disembodied figures that appear in my dreams.

The two sets of objects introduce quite different tensions into my consciousness and I am attentive to them in quite different ways.

My consciousness, then, is capable of moving through different spheres of reality. Put differently, I am conscious of the world as consisting of multiple realities.

As I move from one reality to another, I experience the transition as a kind of shock.

This shock is to be understood as caused by the shift in attentiveness that the transition entails. Waking up from a dream illustrates this shift most simply.”

[graceandgracey]

The difference between dogs and people is that dogs know how to be dogs.

Peter Berger, via John Green.

[symbolicinteractionism]

The sociological problem is always the understanding of what goes on here in terms of social interaction. Thus the sociological problem is not so much why some things "go wrong" from the viewpoint of the authorities and the management of the social scene, but how the whole system works in the first place, what are its presuppositions and by what means it is held together. The fundamental sociological problem is not crime but the law, not divorce but marriage, not racial discrimination but racially defined stratification, not revolution but government.

— Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, “Sociology as a Form of Consciousness”, Peter Berger.

[noosphe-re]

...language is capable of transcending the reality of everyday life altogether. It can refer to experiences pertaining to finite provinces of meaning, it can span discrete spheres of reality.

Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge

[noosphe-re]

[noosphe-re]

Any significative theme that thus spans spheres of reality may be defined as a symbol, and the linguistic mode by which such transcendence is achieved may be called symbolic language. On the level of symbolism, then, linguistic signification attains the maximum detachment from the 'here and now' of everyday life, and language soars into regions that are not only de facto but a priori unavailable to everyday experience. Language now constructs immense edifices of symbolic representations that appear to tower over the reality of everyday life like gigantic presences from another world. Religion, philosophy, art, and science are the historically most important symbol systems of this kind. To name these is already to say that, despite the maximal detachment from everyday experience that the construction of these systems requires, they can be of very great importance indeed for the reality of everyday life. Language is capable not only of constructing symbols that are highly abstracted from everyday experience, but also of 'bringing back' these symbols and appresenting them as objectively real elements in everyday life. In this manner, symbolism and symbolic language become essential constituents of the reality of everyday life and of the common-sense apprehension of this reality. I live in a world of signs and symbols every day.

Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge