Peter L.

Berger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter Ludwig Berger

Born

March 17, 1929 (age 86)

Vienna, Austria

Fields

Sociology, Theology

Institutions

Boston University

Alma mater

Wagner College (B.A. 1949)

The New School (M.A. 1950, Ph.D. 1954)

Known for

Co-author of The Social Construction of Reality

Influences

Max Weber, Alfred Schtz

Peter Ludwig Berger (born March 17, 1929) is an Austrian-born American sociologist known
for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization,
and theoretical contributions to sociological theory. He is best known for his book, coauthored with Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1966), which is considered one of the most influential
texts in the sociology of knowledge, and played a central role in the development of social
constructionism. The book was named by the International Sociological Association as the
fifth most influential book written in the field of sociology during the 20th century. In addition
to this book, some of the other books that Berger has written include: Invitation to Sociology:
A Humanistic Perspective (1963); and A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the
Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969). Berger has spent most of his career teaching atThe
New School for Social Research, Rutgers University, and Boston University. Before retiring,
Berger was at Boston University since 1981, and was the director of the Institute for the
Study of Economic Culture.
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Contents
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1Biography

1.1Family life

1.2Education and career

2Sociological thought
2.1The Social Construction of Reality

2.1.1The Reality of Everday Life

2.1.2Society as Objective and Subjective

2.2Humanistic Perspective

3Religion and society

o

3.1Religion and the Human Problems of Modernity

3.2Transcendence

3.3Secularization Theory

4Theoretical contributions

5Influences

6Honors

7Works

8References

9Further reading

10External links

Biography[edit]
Family life[edit]
Peter Ludwig Berger was born on March 17, 1929, in Vienna, Austria, to George William and
Jelka (Loew) Berger. He emigrated to theUnited States shortly after World War II in 1946 at
the age of 17 and in 1952 he became a naturalized citizen. On September 28, 1959, he
married Brigitte Kellner, herself an eminent sociologist who was on the faculty at Wellesley
College and Boston University, was author of Societies in Change (1971), The Homeless
Mind (1974), The War over the Family (1984), and The Family in the Modern Age (2002).
Brigitte Kellner Berger died in 2015. They had two sons, Thomas Ulrich and Michael
George.
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Education and career[edit]

Berger attended Wagner College for his Bachelor of Arts and received his M.A. and Ph.D.
from the New School for Social Research in New York in 1954. In 1955 and 1956 he worked
at the Evangelische Akademie in Bad Boll, Germany. From 1956 to 1958 Berger was an
assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; from 1958 to 1963 he
was an associate professor at Hartford Theological Seminary. The next stations in his career
were professorships at the New School for Social Research, Rutgers University, andBoston
College. Recently retired as a professor, since 1981 Berger was the University Professor of
Sociology and Theology at Boston University. In 1985 he founded the Institute for the Study
of Economic Culture, which later transformed into the Institute on Culture, Religion and
World Affairs (CURA), and is now part of the Boston University Pardee School of Global
Studies. He remained the Director of CURA from 1985 to 2010.
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Berger is a moderately Christian Lutheran conservative whose work in theology,

secularisation and modernity has been somewhat distanced from contemporary mainstream
sociology which tends to lean away from any right-wing political thinking. Ultimately though,
Berger's perspective in sociology is a humanist one with special emphasis on "value-free"
analysis.
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Sociological thought[edit]
The Social Construction of Reality[edit]
The Reality of Everday Life

[edit]

Berger and Luckmann present this as the sphere of reality that presents itself upon human
existence most intensely and immediately. Everyday life is contrasted with other spheres of
reality dreamworlds, theatre and is considered by a person to be the objective,
intersubjective (shared with others) and self-evident. Life is ordered spatially and temporally.
Spatial ordering allows interaction with other people and objects; the human ability to
manipulate zones of space can intersect with another's ability.
Social interactions in everyday life favour personal, face-to-face encounters as the best
scenarios where human beings can actually connect with each other through interactions.
Humans perceive the other in these interactions as more real than they would themselves;
we can place a person in everyday life by seeing them, yet we need to contemplate our own
placement in the world as it is not so concrete.
Language is imperative to the understanding of everyday life. We understand knowledge
through language. The knowledge relevant to us is the only necessary knowledge to our
survival, but humans interact through sharing and connecting the relevant structures of our
lives with each other.
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Society as Objective and Subjective

[edit]

Objectively, social order is a product of our social enterprise: it is an ongoing process that
results from human activity. Institutions are a product of the historicity and need to control
human habitualization (the repeated behaviours or patterns). The shared nature of these
experiences and their commonality results in sedimentation, meaning they lose their
memorability. Many behaviours lose sedimented institutional meanings. Institutional order
involves specified roles for people to play. These roles are seen as performing as this
objective figure an employee is not judged as a human but by that role they have taken.
Subjectively, we experience first and second socialisation into society. Firstly, we are
socialised into the world and secondarily we internalise institutional "sub worlds." We
maintain our subjective world through reaffirmation with social interactions with others. Our
identity and the society are seen as dialectically related: our identity is formed by social
processes, which are in turn ordered by our society.
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Humanistic Perspective[edit]
The humanistic perspective is generally outside of mainstream, contemporary sociology. It is
considered as a view that relates more to the humanities literature, philosophy than to
social science. Its ultimate purpose lies in freeing society of illusions to help make it more
humane. In this sense, we are the "puppets of society," but sociology allows us to see the
strings that we are attached to, which helps to free ourselves. Berger's "Invitation to
Sociology" outlines his approach to the field of sociology in these humanistic terms.
Methodologically, sociologists should attempt to understand and observe human behaviour
outside the context of its social setting and free from whatever influence a sociologists'
personal biases or feelings might be. The study of sociology, Berger posits, should be valuefree. Research should be accrued in the same manner as the scientific method, using
observation, hypothesis, testing, data, analysis and generalisation. The meaning derived
from the results of research should be contextualised with historical, cultural, environmental,
or other important data.
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