#peter l berger

[noosphe-re]

Invitation to Sociology, Peter L. Berger

[cleonard4]

Different skills are required at different ages in one society as against another, or indeed in varying sectors of the same society. The age at which, in one society, it may be deemed proper for a child to be able to drive an automobile may, in another, be the age at which he is expected to have killed his first enemy. An upper-class child may learn the "facts of life" at an age when a lower-class child has mastered the rudiments of abortion technique. Or, an upper-class child may experience his first stirrings of patriotic emotion about the time that his lower-class contemporary first experiences hatred of the police and everything they stand for.

The Social Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, p. 137

[aezterx]

[postersbykeith]

[cleonard4]

Since the child has no choice in the selection of [her or] his selection of significant others, [her or] his identification with them is quasi-automatic. For the same reason, [her or] his internalization of their particular reality is quasi-inevitable. The child does not internalize the world of [her or] his significant others as one of many possible worlds. [She or] He internalizes it as the world, the only existent and only conceivable world, the world tout court.

The Social Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, p. 134

[cleonard4]

One must make do with the parents that fate has regaled one with. This unfair disadvantage inherent in the situation of being a child has the obvious consequence that, although the child is not simply passive in the process of [her or] his socialization, it is the adults who set the rules of the game. The child can play the game with enthusiasm or with sullen resistance. But, alas, there is no other game around.

The Social Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, p. 134

[cleonard4]

In primary socialization there is no problem of identification. There is no choice of significant others. Society presents the candidate for socialization with a predefined set of significant others, whom [s]he must accept as such with no possibility of opting for another arrangement...One must make do with the parents that fate has regaled one with

The Social Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, p. 134

[cleonard4]

the organism, and, even more, the self cannot be adequately understood apart from the particular social context in which they were shaped.

The Social Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, p. 50