Quotes from book
The Social Construction of Reality

The Social Construction of Reality
Peter L. Berger

The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge is a 1966 book about the sociology of knowledge by the sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann.

Peter L. Berger photo

“By ‘successful socialization’ we mean the establishment of a high degree of symmetry between objective and subjective reality.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 163

Peter L. Berger photo

“Compared to the reality of everyday life, other realities appear as finite provinces of meaning, enclaves within the paramount reality marked by circumscribed meanings and modes of experience.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 25

Peter L. Berger photo

“Habitualization carries with it the important psychological gain that choices are narrowed… the background of habitualized activity opens up a foreground for deliberation and innovation [which demand a higher level of attention].”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 53

Peter L. Berger photo

“The child does not internalize the world of his significant others as one of many possible worlds… It is for this reason that the world internalized in primary socialization is so much more firmly entrenched in consciousness than worlds internalized in secondary socialization…. Secondary socialization is the internalization of institutional or institution-based ‘sub worlds’… The roles of secondary socialization carry a high degree of anonymity… The same knowledge taught by one teacher could also be taught by another… The institutional distribution of tasks between primary and secondary socialization varies with the complexity of the social distribution of knowledge”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 129-147

Peter L. Berger photo

“Social order is a human product, or more precisely, an ongoing human production.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 52

Peter L. Berger photo

“A society’s stock of knowledge is structured in terms of what is generally relevant and what is relevant only to specific roles… the social distribution of knowledge entails a dichotomization in terms of general and role-specific relevance… because of the division of labor, role-specific knowledge will grow at a faster rate than generally relevant and accessible knowledge… The increasing number and complexity of [the resulting] sub universes [of specialized knowledge] make them increasingly inaccessible to outsiders.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p.77-87

Peter L. Berger photo

“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.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 1 (1999; 13)

Peter L. Berger photo

“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.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 1 (1999; 13)

Peter L. Berger photo

“Life-expectancies of lower-class and upper-class [vary] …society determines how long and in what manner the individual organism shall live…”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

1991, p. 202
The Social Construction of Reality, 1966

Peter L. Berger photo

“An intrinsic problem, similar to the one we discussed in connexion with tradition in general, presents itself with the process of transmission of the symbolic universe from one generation to another. Socialization is never completely successful. Some individuals 'inhabit' the transmitted universe more definitely than others.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

1991; 124
The Social Construction of Reality, 1966