Yes, But Is It Socially Constructed?

Subject: Inadvertently reintroducing metaphysics?

Reality is not reality

I’d like to come back to this idea that a sociologist can only speak using words and idioms from the society under study. Otherwise, he runs the risk of inventing a hidden metaphysical layer.

Even the very title of the book suggests that reality, qua being socially constructed, is not real! The reader, upon digesting the title, starts the journey by being primed into a situation where she thinks her reality is about to be invalidated.

*“Of course! That is the whole point of writing the book”, most readers would reply. I think the heart of the matter is more subtle than that.

In fact, using those words in the title, they implicitly say that as socially constructed, the reality only has the validity ascribed to it by society. Then they embark on a journey where they excavate how the mechanism really works. How do we experience this construction? As more real. We excavate an understanding over and above social reality.

Surely the experiences and everyday life of the sociologist map fine onto the layers of the theory. But the sociologist is part and parcel of that community now.

Now, I do believe this awareness is actually a great part of sociology itself. Probably cautionary advice may surface later in the book. As such, students are probably being told that they will eventually themselves take up the role of legitimisers using theories consolidating the symbolic order of our scientific society.

In part 2, chapter 2, the book ramps up on the tumultuous battles revolving around “reality”. At this stage in the book, we have long since left the lower strata of their theory where reality was defined as the result of a dialectic between outputting objectivated signs (talking) and internalising them (listening)… basically.

They never defined their idea of “reality”, but it was always assumed that “reality” means what the members of a given society called “real”.

Once a legitimising strata enters the picture - an elite whose self-proclaimed job it is to protect the existing institutions - the word starts to be used in ways that seem different. Now it is a battle for reality.

Quote from part 2.2.3:

“Mediaeval Christendom … provides excellent illustrations of all three liquidating procedures. Open heresy had to be physically destroyed, whether it was embodied in an individual (say, a witch) or a collectivity (say, the Albigensian community).”

Let’s look at what is being discussed here. Time-travelling to, say, the 16th century, we see Catholics in France executing heretics, and we see Protestants in England doing the same.

Why? As a thought experiment, we can ask them…

“Because otherwise society will unravel. Either this is the true faith or society will break down.”

Actually, this is not far off from what I have seen in history books. A prevailing view amongst the ruling elite was that society depended on a unified truth.

Political reality vs objective reality

But do you notice the different notion of “reality” here? In Berger and Luckmann’s model, objectivated knowledge returns to us as language, which we, qua how language works, perceive as external reality. But the competing religious organisations’ competition for dominance? At best, we can call it a political reality.

When even contemporaries admit that the only reason to choose one over another is to guarantee stability (and preference), they implicitly admit that “truth” and “what is REALLY up in the heavens” does not factor in.

Likewise today. These battles for “reality” are less about “what is actually real” than about “don’t let the other team win”. And all participants are well aware of that circumstance. Common man’s political cynicism after decades with political spin on TV signals the same awareness: There is no “real”, only hard battles.

To some extent this is also what Berger and Luckmann document in their chapters on legitimation. E.g. 2.2.1:

“It is important to understand that legitimation has a cognitive as well as a normative element. In other words, legitimation is not just a matter of ‘values’. It always implies ‘knowledge’ as well.”

Only, they do not say how much is knowledge and how much is value or, indeed, what kind of knowledge is involved. We can guess, such as by saying that values are tied to ordinary knowledge from everyday life to form a new sensation, something that both feels real and has moral coordinates. The implicit theory then becomes: The brain fuses all parts together to form new sensations.

Summarising so far, “social reality” can mean either:

1. A cognitive mechanism concerning language that we are unaware of. What comes back to us as real really seems REAL. We don’t notice that we - society - has ultimately created that reality.
2. A plainly visible battle for the truth. A conflict between elites that is taking place in full public display about the proper understanding. Arguments are delivered, and sometimes brutality is applied to silence an opposition. In such a climate, people will likely step back in fear and say, “Whatever you think is the truth, fine with me.”

We see it in the debacle over public oaths which, for instance, Elizabeth I of England required of both Puritans and Catholics. Paralleling that with “Phlogiston theory must be true” or “These are the advantages of the hoe plough” is rather silly.

One is reality as a consequence of cognitive processes tied to language, or as we know it: Insight into matters that are knowable. The other is political reality - a way to wave a flag and surrender or raise a banner over your army and battle on.

I think it is fairly clear to anybody reading the book what Berger and Luckmann are trying to do here.

Look at it from the perspective of Marxism and other philosophies dabbling with “false consciousness” and other ways of saying that the people under scrutiny may have one idea about what is going on, but the social scientist is viewing the situation from a very different vantage point. Such methodologies viewpoint proved particularly unpopular under the Cold War.

Enter Berger and Luckmann, who don’t want to be labelled Marxists, but they DO want to arrive at a critical junction: The point where the institution (which the sociologist says exists in the form it has) enters the mind of a practitioner whose merit it becomes to keep the institution alive (by temporarily embodying its roles). That is, the point where macro-level understanding of society (the sociologist’s) meets micro-level everyday reality through roles (the butcher’s consciousness as he goes to work).

That way they can keep on discussing the REAL institution. The sociologist’s everyday reality consists in a (macro-level) map of a society’s institutions and structures, a map that nobody in that society would necessarily recognise.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY - p.134 - 2.2.3 - SOCIAL ORGANIZATION FOR UNIVERSE-MAINTENANCE

Reality is socially defined. But the definitions are always embodied, that is, concrete individuals and groups of individuals serve as definers of reality. To understand the state of the socially constructed universe at any given time, or its change over time, one must understand the social organization that permits the definers to do their defining. Put a little crudely, it is essential to keep pushing questions about the historically available conceptualizations of reality from the abstract ‘What?’ to the sociologically concrete ‘Says who?‘

This quote to me seems to indicate that they themselves only perceive one kind of reality: The first one mentioned - the one we are unaware takes place as a result of a dialectic between cognitive production and consumption.

Notice that they aren’t discussing how the society in question and, in particular, the legitimisers of that society define and defend a given institution. They are reserving liberty for the sociologist to say what the institution is about. If so, they are standing outside society while integrating their own stories into their own symbolic order.

They are not observing how a society invents and transforms its own institutions, at least not as their only project. They are inventing a metaphysics in which they reserve liberty for themselves to disregard what members of a society think they are doing.

It is an epistemological problem then. How can we compare the reality of the society with that of the sociologist? Both are merely legitimisations.

I’m sorry for all the emails!

And I am very sorry if this comes across as an attack on who you are becoming!

Wishing you well ♥︎

Nell

Subject: Re: Inadvertently reintroducing metaphysics?

Hi Nell.

People are starting to notice that my mind wanders to your emails. Some even asked if they could participate in the conversation. I think they like the philosophical shake-up.

Your question about the two kinds of reality made its rounds. I asked one of my friends, and before I knew it, we were five people debating.

I do recognise those warnings from early classes. Sociologists are very much aware that we are members of the societies we study.

I struggled so much with the text that I didn’t even notice that it may not have made sense the way I thought it was supposed to.

You propose two concepts of reality. Both are socially constructed, but one is internalised through the use of language, the other rammed down our throats by a legitimising class.

We agree here in class that Berger and Luckmann do try to juggle both kinds of reality while defending both using linguistic and phenomenological disciplines that are perhaps only suitable to the kind of reality that we internalise.

Your comment about the authors trying not to be Marxists fell on good ground here in class. You are becoming popular ❋smile, wink❋.

Subject: Visiting “reality” again

I’m sorry that I can’t let it go, but I have to ask you outright, and bear with me for the rather enigmatical nature of the question.

Can you offer me a definition of the word “reality” as it is used by Berger and Luckmann?

I am not talking about how they define it but how they use it.

Repeatedly, they remind us that reality is a social construct. Very well, one way or the other, it is socially constructed. Space-time physics is a social construction. Most people’s knowledge and vocabulary have little to do with the mathematical version anyway. Liberalism and Marxism are social constructs. Their underlying realities seem so real to all: The necessity of freedom (which Lenin advocated just as much as Jefferson) and the inevitability of class struggle under capitalism. And yet, not at all like the reality at the more familiar scale of everyday reality.

What is reality in day-to-day life? The undeniable existence of furniture? The mortgage on the house? Gender roles and their obviousness (just to name an institution).

The more interesting this reality becomes, the fewer hardline proponents it will have. Most people will bark at the proposition that 2+2=4 is just a social convention. Very few, on the other hand, will take gender roles as biological fact.