Peter L. Berger

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Peter Ludwig Berger (born March 17, 1929) is an Austrian-born American sociologist well known for his work, co-authored with Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1966).

Biography

Berger was born in Vienna, Austria and later emigrated to the United States shortly after World War II. In 1949 he graduated from Wagner College with a Bachelor of Arts. He continued his studies at The New School in New York (M.A. in 1950, Ph.D. 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; 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, and Boston College. Since 1981 Berger has been University Professor of Sociology and Theology at Boston University, and since 1985 also director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, which transformed, a few years ago, into the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs.^[1]

Thought

Berger is perhaps best known for his view that social reality is a form of consciousness. Central to Berger's work is the relationship between society and the individual. With Thomas Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality, Berger develops a sociological theory: 'Society as Objective Reality and as Subjective Reality'. His analysis of society as subjective reality describes the process by which an individual's conception of reality is produced by his or her interaction with social structures. He writes about how new human concepts or inventions become a part of our reality through the process of objectivation. Often this reality is then no longer recognized as a human creation, through a process Berger calls reification.^[2]

His conception of social structure revolving around the importance of language, "the most important sign system of human society," is similar to Hegel's conception of Geist.^[2]

Like most other sociologists of religion of his day, he mistakenly predicted the all-encompassing secularization of the world. This he has quite humorously admitted on a number of occasions, concluding that the data in fact proves otherwise. By the late 1980s, Berger publicly recognized that religion (both old and new) was not only still prevalent, but in many cases was more vibrantly practiced than in periods in the past, particularly in the United States.

He does, however, qualify these concessions. While recognizing that religion is still a powerful social force, he points to the fact that pluralism and the globalized world fundamentally change how the individual experiences faith, with the taken-for-granted character of religion often being replaced by an individual's search for a personal religious preference. Likewise, in The Desecularization of the World, he cites both Western academia and Western Europe itself as exceptions to the triumphant desecularization hypothesis: these cultures have remained highly secularized despite the resurgence of religion in the rest of the world.

Despite the rise of a ["new paradigm"] (http://zjshkx.com/Upload/Article/2008-1/warner.pdf) in the sociology of religion, which draws upon insights from rational choice theory in explaining the behavior of religious firms (churches) and consumers (individuals), Berger's thought has influenced many significant figures in the field of sociology of religion today, including his colleague at Boston University, Robert Hefner, and former students Michael Plekhon, James Davison Hunter, and Nancy Ammerman.

Works

Berger's influential sociological works include:

• The Noise of Solemn Assemblies (1961)
• Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (1963)
• The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966) with Thomas Luckmann, ISBN 0-385-05898-5
• The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967). Anchor Books 1990 paperback: ISBN 0-385-07305-4
• A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969). Anchor Books (in print): ISBN 0-385-06630-9, 1990 expanded edition (now out of print): ISBN 0-385-41592-3

More recently he has written broadly but with particular emphasis on the sociology of religion and capitalism:

• Sociology (1972) with Brigitte Berger. Basic Books. - Dutch translation: Sociologie (1972). Basisboeken, ISBN 90 263 2006 X
• The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (1973) with Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner. Random House, ISBN 0394484223
• Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change (1974)
• Facing Up to Modernity: Excursions in Society, Politics and Religion (1979)
• The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (1979)
• The Other Side of God: A Polarity in World Religions (editor, 1981). ISBN 0-385-17424-1
• The War Over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground (1983) with Brigitte Berger
• The Capitalist Revolution (1986) New York: Basic Books.
• The Capitalist Spirit: Toward a Religious Ethic of Wealth Creation (editor, 1990)
• A Far Glory: The Quest for Faith in an Age of Credulity (1992)
• Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (1997), ISBN 3110155621
• Four Faces of Global Culture (The National Interest, Fall 1997)
• The Limits of Social Cohesion: Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies: A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome (1998)
• The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (editor, et al., 1999). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, ISBN 0-8028-4691-2
• Peter Berger and the Study of Religion (edited by Linda Woodhead et al., 2001; includes a Postscript by Berger)
• Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World (2002) with Samuel P. Huntington. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195151466
• Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity (2003). Blackwell Publishing, ISBN 1-4051-0848-7
• In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic (2009) with Anton Zijderveld. HarperOne. ISBN 978-0061778162

Honors

Berger was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982.^[3] He is doctor honoris causa of Loyola University, Wagner College, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Geneva, and the University of Munich, and an honorary member of many scientific associations.

See also

• Sociology of knowledge
• Sociology of religion

References

R. Stephen Warner, "Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States." The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 98, No. 5. (Mar., 1993), pp. 1044-1093.

Further reading

• James D. Hunter, Stephen C. Ainley. Making Sense of Modern Times: Peter L. Berger and the Vision of Interpretive Sociology
• Robert Wuthnow. Cultural Analysis: The Work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas

External links

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• Description at Boston University Religious Faculty
• Peter Berger's blog
• Peter L. Berger Room
• Peter Berger Resources
• From Religion-Online
  • Protestantism and the Quest for Certainty
  • The Class Struggle in American Religion
  • Cakes for the Queen of Heaven: 2,500 Years of Religious Ecstasy
  • Protestantism and the Quest for Certainty
  • Epistemological Modesty: An Interview with Peter Berger
  • Reflections of an Ecclesiastical Expatriate
• Dialectical Social Science Conservative humanism of Berger circle compared to tradition of Western Marxism.