Peter berger what is sociology

Berger b: Nevertheless, in terms of intellectual framing and conceptual development, any discussion of Berger and the sociology of religion should — I think — begin with The Social Construction of Reality. Society is an objective reality. Emphasis in the original. World-building is a precarious endeavour, however. The following is the closest that The Sacred Canopy comes to giving a definition of religion:. The power of religion depends, in the last resort, upon the credibility of the banners it puts in the hands of men as they stand before death, or more accurately, as they walk inevitably towards it.

Berger Religion is, then, functionally speaking, a bulwark against the terror of chaos. I would argue that it is misleading to call Berger a sociological functionalist. In fact, it is the structural—functionalist tradition associated especially with Talcott Parsons that is the foil of The Social Construction of Reality Pfadenhauer Beckford Berger did not purport to offer a comprehensive theory of religion — constructionist or otherwise.

The first two attempt to explain the appeal of religion, that is why there is religion in the first place; the latter two tackle the questions why and how religion is successful. Starting with Durkheim, Berger applies the concept made famous in Suicide [] As is often the case with Berger, his point is not to be exegetical or particularly faithful to the original usage also changing the word from the commonly used French original, anomie.

Anomic suicide is the result of the psychological anxiety caused by this ultimately social source. Berger, however, uses the term in the phenomenological sense: anomy means terror in the face of disorder which threatens to make human existence meaningless for both individuals and societies alike Berger 22—3.

The human answer — again both on the level of consciousness and on the social level — to the constant threat of anomy is nomization, the imposition of meaningful order upon reality. This is, as with Weber, a much broader use of the term originally associated with the Christian problem of evil in a world created by an omnipotent and good God.

For Marx, alienation is the consequence of the exploitative nature of labour under capitalism, and he identified several forms of alienation see e. Ollman For Berger, 6 alienation is a specific feature of religious symbolic universes. In the broadest sense alienation in Berger refers to the process in which.

Alienated consciousness is undialectical consciousness. The essential difference between the socio-cultural world and the world of nature is obscured — namely, the difference that men have made the first but not the second. Plausibility structure. Religious worlds are precarious: On the one hand, there are many competing religions offering their version of the only truth out there. On the other hand, science challenges many strict interpretations of sacred texts. These religious worlds need to be constantly reaffirmed.

Plausibility structures are the social networks that maintain the plausibility of religious beliefs even when these beliefs are challenged by competing explanations. Plausibility is provided simply by belonging to a community of similar-minded people, and by rituals that strengthen the sense of belonging to these communities Berger 34—8; see Ammerman in this book.

Dobbelaere ; Bruce ; cf. Warner , so only a brief exposition will suffice here see Bruce in this book. He goes on:.

In modern Western history, of course, secularization manifests itself in the evacuation by the Christian Churches of areas previously under their control or influence — as in the separation of church and state, or in the expropriation of church lands, or in the emancipation of education from ecclesiastical authority.

Hammond The description of the process of differentiation is rather uncontroversial as such, and most sociologists of religion would agree that this indeed has been the case for much of Europe, at least.

The second type, subjective secularization, or the secularization of consciousness, refers to the loss of religious plausibility at the individual level. Berger points especially to psychology and psychotherapy as important sources of individual meaning-making in the modern world Berger and Luckmann —80; Berger —2.

The secularization of consciousness is dialectically connected to structural secularization, and cannot be properly understood in terms of simple mechanistic causality Berger For example, we might feel fright at seeing a person holding a gun, unless, of course, it turns out to be a police officer. Interactionists also recognize that language and body language reflect our values. One has only to learn a foreign tongue to know that not every English word can be easily translated into another language.

The same is true for gestures. The story line of a self-fulfilling prophecy appears in many literary works, perhaps most famously in the story of Oedipus. Oedipus is told by an oracle that he will murder his father and marry his mother. In going out of his way to avoid his fate, Oedipus inadvertently fulfills it.

As you can imagine, people employ many types of behaviors in day-to-day life. Currently, while reading this text, you are playing the role of a student. Sociologists use the term status to describe the responsibilities and benefits that a person experiences according to their rank and role in society. Some statuses are ascribed —those you do not select, such as son, elderly person, or female.

Others, called achieved statuses , are obtained by choice, such as a high school dropout, self-made millionaire, or nurse. As a daughter or son, you occupy a different status than as a neighbor or employee. One person can be associated with a multitude of roles and statuses. If too much is required of a single role, individuals can experience role strain. Consider the duties of a parent: cooking, cleaning, driving, problem-solving, acting as a source of moral guidance—the list goes on.

Similarly, a person can experience role conflict when one or more roles are contradictory. A parent who also has a full-time career can experience role conflict on a daily basis. When there is a deadline at the office but a sick child needs to be picked up from school, which comes first? When you are working toward a promotion but your children want you to come to their school play, which do you choose?

Being a college student can conflict with being an employee, being an athlete, or even being a friend. Our roles in life have a great effect on our decisions and who we become. All we can observe is behavior, or role performance. Role performance is how a person expresses his or her role. Sociologist Erving Goffman presented the idea that a person is like an actor on a stage. Each situation is a new scene, and individuals perform different roles depending on who is present Goffman Think about the way you behave around your coworkers versus the way you behave around your grandparents versus the way you behave with a blind date.

Thus far this has not happened and it is unlikely to happen anytime in the foreseeable future. While his memoirs were titled Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist , the term accidental could just as accurately be used to describe his role as a sociologist for quarters that traditionally would have had no use for sociology.

Peter Berger was born to a Jewish family in Vienna on March 17, While his family converted in , the same year that Nazi Germany took over Austria, their newly acquired Christianity offered them no protection, and they survived the Holocaust after spending World War II in British-run Palestine.

He attended college in New York, first at Wagner College and then at the New School, where he matriculated amid the great influx of European social scientists who fled to the U. He was reluctant, he later said, to preach the definition of Christian faith strictly according to the Lutheran Confessions. He served with the U. In he married Brigette Berger, a then a sociology student from an anti-Nazi family who he first met in Germany and later again in New York.

Brigette went on to become a prominent sociologist; their marriage only ended with her death in One I call methodological fetishism, which means that you only study things that can be quantified. Quantification is sometimes useful.

But things that are more complex are very hard to put in a survey. Some sociologists have decided that Japan is a very secular country. The other one is that sociology for many has become an ideological instrument, mostly advocating various countercultural or left-of-center causes.

If a science becomes simply advocacy, it ceases to be a science. Throughout his career Berger proved a prolific author of important texts on sociology, theology — and humor.