The Social Construction Of Reality Analysis

In “The Social Construction of Reality,” by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the authors performed a sociological analysis of the reality of everyday life. The goal of the article was to analyze everyday life not in a scientific way, but in an empirical fashion. An empirical analysis was wanted most likely because the authors wanted to observe and analyze the everyday life from the multiple perspectives that it exists in, and not just from a completely scientific and logical viewpoint. Right at the beginning of the article, the authors defined everyday life as the reality that is subjectively interpreted by men. Essentially, everyday life is whatever is meaningful and important to a person, and how they live through that everyday life
Everyday life being intersubjective not only brings the focus from one person to multiple, but also highlights the fact that the world, this reality, is shared with others, The shared reality is unavoidable, and eventually one person’s reality will intersect with another’s; their goals, ideals, and wants will virtually become one. At that point in time when everything intersects, many things like their feelings, facial expressions, attitude, and opinions, will also be shared. The authors pointed this out by stating that their here and now became the other person’s too. Even though their meanings and views of the world do not completely overlap each other’s, they still share an imminent reality. The overlapping realities leads to the idea of commutations. A commutation is when one thing or person is put in the place of another’s. The definition of commutation can apply to the perspectives of two people’s realities being switched. Both their perspectives and their realities overlap. The overlapping perspectives transforms the idea that was touched and hinted upon at the beginning of the article that everyday life is defined by people as a group. Society also functions in a similar way by which groups of people define everyday life, reality, and what is important together, as a
The construction of reality overlaps with multiple of the characteristics of a society. For example, there are many people living subjectively in their own “realities,” and when the individuals interact with each other, they have a shift in consciousness to the point where their realities combine, and their personal meanings of what everyday life is starts to overlap. Society can be seen as groups of people who came together and organized themselves based on their interests, and ideas of what is important in everyone’s everyday life. Also, the “typifications,” exist as social constructions, such as race and class, which also exists to organize people. Everything that was part of the main points of the article by Berger and Luckmann illustrates society and its social structure. This illustration seems to be true as the authors stated that “social structure is an essential element of the reality of everyday life,” (Berger and Luckmann