Based on my reading of the first three chapters of Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality, I can formulate several conclusions. First, the authors have formulated an explanation of everyday reality. According to them, this term represents a reality that people interpret and has subjective significance for them as a whole world. Notably, Berger and Luckman are not interested in intellectuals’ perceptions of every day; they turn to ordinary members of society. In this part of the reading, Berger and Luckman argue that consciousness is always directed toward objects and always presupposes them.
The authors argue that there are many realities because two systems of objects evoke different impressions in consciousness, and attention to these impressions is different. According to Berger and Lukman, the prototype of social interaction is the perception of other people in a face-to-face situation (Berger and Luckmann). It is in this situation that the properties of subjectivity are reproduced in their entirety. Berger and Lukman believe that both schemes of typification enter into continuous negotiation in face-to-face situations. The authors argue that the less the face-to-face principle is involved in typifying interactions, the more anonymous they can be.
In the third chapter, the authors take up the theme of language and knowledge in everyday life. Objectification is the manifestation of an object in the products of human action. The objective repository of a great variety of accumulated meanings is language, whose main socially meaningful features are the following: reciprocity, the ability to make the individual’s subjectivity understandable and stable; objectivity, subordination of the individual to its structures, providing the individual with the possibility of continuous objectification of his increasing experience. Language plays a large role in everyday life. Likewise, the biographical experience can become subjectively and objectively meaningful through language.
“The Sociological Imagination” is the title of a book by Charles Wright Mills that has become one of the major sociological bestsellers of the 20th and 21st centuries. In his work, the author describes the feeling of looking at an object simultaneously through one’s own eyes and those of an outsider. Mills says that an entire generation in the mid-twentieth century found themselves in this condition as applied to their whole way of life (Mills). In particular, a specifically sociological imagination consists of seeing behind one’s private troubles and misfortunes as political or social problems. What seemed to people to be their own dramatic experiences are parts of some larger phenomenon or process that require political intervention and resolution, not at the level of personal destiny. In this respect, sociology, as he defines it, is an anti-psychology.
Mills believed that to understand particular sociocultural realities, people’s attitudes, and behavior toward them, it is not enough for a sociologist to know the postulates of a theory to grasp its methodological principles. A sociologist must show unconventional thinking and a special interest in problems that seem natural to the average observer (Mills). This is when the familiar can take on an entirely different meaning.
The similarities in the opinions of the authors are obvious: they very similarly explain the term reality. The writers believe it can take different forms, depending on one’s perspective. The next similarity in these readings is that one cannot think mediocrely; a uniqueness of thought is required to explore certain issues. The difference is that Mills only calls for unconventional thinking to change reality, while Berger and Luckman argue for the possibility of transition from reality to another, best illustrated by a person’s waking state after sleep.
Works Cited
Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. “The social construction of reality.” Social Theory Re-Wired. Routledge, 2016.
Mills, C. Wright. The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press, 2000.