Sunday, January 03, 2010

Berger/Luckman Quotes

Was researching with Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality today. Here are some quotes:

"All human activity is subject to habilitualization" (53).

"Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habilitualized actions by types of actors" (54).

"... the institutionalizing process of reciprocal typification would occur even if two individuals began to interact de novo" (55).

If two strangers were to encounter each other for the first time in some somewhat isolated situation, "typifications will be produced quite quickly" (56)... "a social world will be in process of construction, containing within it the roots of an expanding institutional order" (57).

If they have children, these habituations and routines take on objectivity. "'There we go again' becomes 'This is how these things are done'" (59).

Externalization leads to objectivation to internalization. "only with the appearance of a new generation can one properly speak of a social world" (61) (would be interesting to pursue this in relation to early Christianity).

"The ediface of legitimations is built on language" (64). "... every institution has a body of transmitted recipe knowledge, that is, knowledge that supplies the institutionally appropriate rules of conduct" (65).

Experiences retained in consciousness need to congeal in recollection (sedimentation). This needs to be objectivated in a sign system, usually language (67).

"The past history of the society can be reinterpreted without necessarily upsetting the institutional order as a result" (69).

"... since human beings are frequently stupid, institutional meanings tend to become simplified in the process of transmission, so that the given collection of institutional 'formulae' can be readily learned and memorable by successive generations" (70).

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