Peter L. Berger quotes - page 2
The social distribution of knowledge thus begins with the simple fact that I do not know everything known to my fellowmen, and vice versa, and culminates in exceedingly complex and esoteric systems of expertise. Knowledge of how the socially available stock of knowledge is distributed, at least in outline, is an important element of that same stock of knowledge.
Peter L. Berger
Man is biologically predestined to construct and to inhabit a world with others. This world becomes for him the dominant and definite reality. Its limits are set by nature, but, once constructed, this world acts back upon nature. In the dialectic between nature and the socially constructed world the human organism itself is transformed. In this same dialectic man produces reality and thereby produces himself.
Peter L. Berger
A sign [has the] explicit intention to serve as an index of subjective meanings... Language is capable of becoming the objective repository of vast accumulations of meaning and experience, which it can then preserve in time and transmit to following generations... Language also typifies experiences, allowing me to subsume them under broad categories in terms of which they have meaning not only to myself but also to my fellowmen.
Peter L. Berger
The individual... is not born a member of society. He is born with a predisposition towards sociality, and he becomes a member of society. In the life of every individual, therefore, there is a temporal sequence, in the course of which he is inducted into participation in the societal dialectic. The beginning point of this process is internalization : the immediate apprehension or interpretation of an objective event as expressing meaning, that is, as a manifestation of another's subjective processes which thereby becomes subjectively meaningful to myself.
Peter L. Berger
Society... directly penetrates the organism in its functioning, most importantly in respect to sexuality and nutrition. While both sexuality and nutrition are grounded in biological drives, these drives are extremely plastic in the human animal. Man is driven by his biological constitution to seek sexual release and nourishment. But his biological constitution does not tell him where he should seek sexual release and what he should eat.
Peter L. Berger
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
Perhaps some little boys consumed with curiosity to watch their maiden aunts in the bathroom later become inveterate sociologists. This is quite uninteresting. What interests us is the curiosity that grips any sociologist in front of a closed door behind which there are human voices.
Peter L. Berger
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
![A social world [is] a comprehensive and given reality confronting the individual in a manner analogous to the reality of the natural world... In early phases of socialization the child is quite incapable of distinguishing between the objectivity of natural phenomena and the objectivity of the social formations... The objective reality of institutions is not diminished if the individual does not understand their purpose or their mode of operation...He must ‘go out' and learn about them, just as he must learn about nature. (Peter L. Berger)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/05/peter-l-berger-child-945205.webp)
One may view the individual's everyday life in terms of the working away of a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and reconstructs his subjective reality... [for example] ‘Well, it's time for me to get to the station,' and ‘Fine, darling, have a good day at the office' implies an entire world within which these apparently simple propositions make sense... the exchange confirms the subjective reality of this world... the great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective reality... imagine the effect...of an exchange like this: ‘Well, it's time for me to get to the station,' ‘Fine, darling, don't forget to take along your gun.
Peter L. Berger
On this level of legitimation, the reflective integration of discrete institutional processes reaches its ultimate fulfilment. A whole world is created. All the lesser legitimating theories are viewed as special perspectives on phenomena that are aspects of this world. Institutional roles become modes of participation in a universe that transcends and includes the institutional order. In our previous example, the 'science of cousinhood' is only a part of a much wider body of theory, which, almost certainly, will contain a general theory of the cosmos and a general theory of man.
Peter L. Berger
