The sociology of knowledge

In the late 1970s, an acquaintance to whom I am forever grateful (Peter Gruen) recommended two books: Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge.

The sociology of knowledge – the idea that our ability to know the world is influenced by the social and cultural context in which we have conceptualized the world – was very appealing to me. I was already open to the idea that reality was not something I should take for granted. The sociology of knowledge provided me with another clue as to the nature of reality.

Social construction, at least as presented by Berger and Luckmann, is the application of the sociology of knowledge to everyday life, including how we come to have a sense of our selves. To say that something is socially constructed simply means that it’s not set in stone for eternity, but depends on shared social attitudes that prevail at a particular location in time and space. To say that normality or marriage, for example, are socially constructed means that being normal or placing a certain value on marriage is subject to change and thus open to question.

I have met the enemy and it’s not me

The sociology of knowledge helped me understand why some people are considered normal (and thus socially desirable) and others are not. This was personally meaningful to me. Once I left home to attend college, I started noticing ways in which I was not like other people. I had no interest in getting married or having children, for example (this at a time when postponing marriage was much less common than it is today). I was not competitive, ambitious, or career-oriented. I was not interested in consuming my way to happiness.

Once out of the student environment, I was content to live alone in a cabin in the woods on a pond with my dog. In fact, I found that idyllic.** My work colleagues tried to convince me that this was not normal and that I must change my ways or else. (Or else what? I wouldn’t be like them?) Insecure in my youthful convictions, I wrote furiously in my journal on the desirability of my solitary way of life.

After reading Berger and Luckmann, I felt much more comfortable with a life that failed to conform to social expectations. To quote Ian Hacking, I found social construction “a truly liberating idea.” It helped me realize that my so-called problems were not necessarily mine (see The problem is you).

Academic fashions

To be fair to Hacking, I should give the full context of “a truly liberating idea” (from his book with the aptly punctuated title The Social Construction of What?).

Social construction has in many contexts been a truly liberating idea, but that which on first hearing has liberated some has made all too many others smug, comfortable, and trendy in ways that have become merely orthodox. The phrase has become code. If you use it favorably, you deem yourself rather radical. If you trash the phrase, you declare that you are rational, reasonable, and respectable.

Berger and Luckmann’s book was published in 1966. Over the intervening years, social construction has changed in meaning and application and has attracted many critics. Criticism reached a high point in the science wars of the 1990s. Opponents asked questions such as: Are scientific theories true because they correspond to reality or are quarks a social construct? (See the superb series of lectures on the science wars by Steven L Goldman.)

Just as the overly broad and enthusiastic application of evolution, genetics, or neuroscience to human behavior can create a backlash (on neuroscience, see Alissa Quart’s op-ed on brain porn in the New York Times), the more outré elements of social construction brought disrepute to perfectly valid and valuable ideas. In the early 2000’s, when I tried to loan a copy of Berger and Luckmann to a graduate student friend, she told me “Oh, they don’t believe in that anymore.” I was disappointed to hear this, but unperturbed. Academic fashions come and go, but truly liberating ideas – those with extensive explanatory and emancipatory powers – win out in the end. (I hope I’m not being overly optimistic here.)

Embracing the abnormal self

I was born into, and have lived my life in, a social context that has created my sense of self — my personal identity, personality, subjectivity, sense of agency, the thoughts and feelings I have about myself, the assumptions I make about who I am. When Berger and Luckmann helped me recognize the contingency of this process – the understanding that things could easily have been quite different – I realized my self-concept was more flexible than I had assumed. My desire to deepen my understanding of the identity formation process – especially the option to reject labels that are not in my interest (such as abnormal) — is part of what motivates me to embark on this research project on the self.

** In the interests of not misrepresenting myself, I should point out that this period of my life (when I lived a Thoreau-like existence) was exceptional. It was the first time since high school that I didn’t have a steady boyfriend. During the first year of living in the woods, I had a roommate. The second year and a half I lived alone. In the third year, someone came to visit, didn’t leave, and we’ve been together ever since (making me, by today’s standards, statistically abnormal).

Related posts:
Reality shock
The problem is you

Image source: All about astronomy

References:

Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge

Ian Hacking, The social construction of what?

Alissa Quart, Neuroscience: Under Attack, New York Times, November 23, 2012