Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) and Thomas Luckmann (1927–2016) were international sociologists who made vast contributions to the sociology of knowledge, driven primarily by their highly acclaimed book The Social Construction of Reality (1966/1967). Their “new” sociology of knowledge takes as its starting point experience and action. However, it is not a microsociology limited to everyday action orientation. For human activity does not take place only in an already ordered world, it also produces a “world of things” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1967, p. 18). A sociology of this kind examines the realization of social action—also in relation to its enabling conditions and unrealized alternatives. And, with the help of contrastively constructed ideal types, it observes and analyzes the resulting sociohistorical realities in their respective interrelatedness and ...