Abstract
The paper recalls my response to Berger’s and Luckmann’s book on reading it shortly after its initial publication. It seeks to convey why it was that I failed to make use of the book at that time, even though I recognised it as an outstanding contribution to my intended field of research, and how later I came to see that this may have been a lost opportunity. The story touches upon diverse important issues including the relationship between epistemology and the sociology of knowledge; the epistemic authority of the natural sciences; the relevance of causal accounting as topic and resource in sociology; the importance of Durkheim in the sociology of knowledge; and the great value of Berger’s and Luckmann’s book as a corrective to the undue individualism that has long been a feature of the social sciences in the English-speaking world. Even so, the paper is more recollection than analysis, and unreliable recollection at that, after many decades in which there has been time to forget, or even to reconstruct, a very great deal.
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Notes
It is indeed strikingly similar to the postulate of ‘symmetry’ eventually set out in Bloor’s (1976) ‘strong programme’ for the sociology of scientific knowledge.
This quote is condensed more than might be thought desirable, but the full quote runs two themes in parallel, and would generate an additional set of queries and gratuitous complexity. Besides, the idea floated in the full quote that the ‘man in the street’ would be found standing alongside the enraged philosopher with eyebrows raised seems wholly implausible to me, even a long time ago and in another country.
It has to be admitted that one or two of the authors themselves were not entirely free from this tendency.
Garfinkel seems neither to have enjoined avoidance of the study of the natural sciences nor to have offered precautionary deference to philosophers to avoid the rage of reason. But he did employ what might be considered another protective strategy. He provided a list of what ethnomethodological studies are not relevant to, a list so extensive that one might be tempted to infer that ethnomethodological studies only have relevance as phenomena for further ethnomethodological studies and otherwise leave things as they are (Garfinkel 1967: viii; see also 288). But this seems not only to have failed to deflect the rage of reason but to have stirred up the fury of science as well, to the extent that the field was eventually to suffer some slight damage. It has rightly been said that indifference to others can be more of an affront even than vigorous opposition to them.
Tom Burns, Head of Sociology at Edinburgh at this time, had previously hinted to me that I was missing something important in Schutz, and in this, as in much else, he proved to be right. But if I recall rightly it was Garfinkel who converted intention into action, leading to a return to Schutz and particularly his Collected Papers; Volume Two (1964). The links between Schutz and Garfinkel are documented in several sources including Psathas (2004), which also provides some background to the reception of Berger’s and Luckmann’s own book in the USA, although that is not its primary purpose. It seems clear from Psathas’ account that their characterisation of the ‘man in the street’ was a little too close to the sheep in the flock for the taste of many sociologists in the US.
Individualistic rational choice theory was of course irredeemably impoverished and beset with a number of fatal flaws although these flaws have by no means discouraged its use and it continues today unabated, warts and all. But odd as it may seem some theorists in this tradition did make, and continue to make, major contributions by identifying precisely what these flaws were, and why there was no way or eradicating them. For example, it was shown more than fifty years ago that in actual situations ‘complete information’ was never attainable, that it was impossible to calculate how much of the endless amount of ‘information’ potentially available it was rational to gather before an action was decided upon, and that even with ‘complete information’ rational individuals would not act collectively, as they observably did act, and arguably had to act, in all known societies (Simon 1957, 1978; Olson 1965).
The stark contrast between ‘the individual’ as described by rational choice theorists and ‘homo socius’ as described by Berger and Luckmann extends well beyond description and encompasses style as well. In comparison with the former, the latter are indeed refreshingly direct in how they describe human beings: “since human beings are frequently stupid, institutional meanings tend to become simplified in the process of transmission” (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 87).
Looking back now the loss seems a large one: I have the feeling that had I single-mindedly followed the three fundamental tenets of their book and avoided lengthy digressions into other forms of sociological theory, individualistic theory in particular, I could have arrived at the positions I have come to hold, whether in sociology of science or social theory, far more quickly and easily. But this feeling is surely the product of hindsight. Knowing the answer before one starts would indeed be helpful were it not impossible. And it needs also to be borne in mind that, at least in the English speaking world, individualism has gone from strength to strength in the social sciences over the last half century, even if for no good reason, and far from saving effort by ignoring it there has been a duty to follow its development and highlight its inadequacies, even in times when nobody wants to hear about them.
This is why the philosophical argument unfolded as descriptions of ‘what everyone knows’, which actually described what the authors’ believed that everyone believed. Unfortunately, the authors were not sufficiently numerous for their beliefs to self-validate here, but they could well have been right in most instances.
To me it was astounding that scholars so familiar with and appreciative of Durkheim would choose to cite The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) here, rather than The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912). Perhaps they were moved by pedagogic considerations to cite an accessible text, like those sociologists in the English speaking world who long gave saturation coverage to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) and neglected the more penetrating work included in Economy and Society (1922). Less plausibly, perhaps they were ranking method above fecundity, not always a good idea in my view. The Elementary Forms is indeed a truly appalling book if evaluated purely in terms of methodology, as also is The Protestant Ethic. The latter was the first work of Weber’s I read, and such were its methodological failings, magnified I later learned by an unsatisfactory first translation, that it was some time before I read any more Weber and realised what riches were there.
It could be that I am wrong about their general aversion to causal hypotheses. I have omitted discussion of social psychology here, in which the author’s had a strong interest despite the causal flavour of important parts of that field, as well as their own discussion of socialisation, wherein possible counter-examples to my suggestion exist. With regard to causality as topic, I think the case for my suggestion is stronger.
Despite the self-denying ordinance issued earlier, it is impossible to forego mention of the invaluable work of ethnomethodologists here.
Berger and Luckmann preferred not to make use of the term ‘lifeworld’ in their book, but they quote Schutz employing the term, or rather the near-untranslatable term ‘Lebenswelt,’ and of course ‘lifeworld’ is used routinely by Luckmann later (1973).
The initial reception of Habermas (1987) included criticism on both empirical and theoretical grounds. The former cited the ubiquitous existence of forms of action other than the instrumental and strategic forms within what Habermas identifies as ‘system,’ or else the ubiquitous existence therein of interactively constituted worker sub-cultures resistant to external ‘media-steered’ control. The latter argued that entities recognisable as persisting systems simply could not be constituted entirely from instrumental and strategic action and accordingly would never be encountered. Both forms of criticism implied faulty construction of macro entities on Habermas’ part (Baxter 1987). Of course, other forms of criticism were advanced at the same time of no relevance here, including rejections of an ethical stance which found it perfectly acceptable for human beings to spend most of their working lives in a miserable condition constituting the media-steered sub-systems of society as Habermas imagined them.
It is of course by no means impossible that ongoing changes will present challenges even to the fundamental claims of the book before very long. The rise of the internet raises the question of what face to face interaction actually consists in. The ‘social media’ that utilise it are already raising fundamental questions about social relationships. And the electronic trading of what are euphemistically referred to as ‘shares’ at higher and higher speeds may also encourage reflection on human ‘sociality’ and whether it can take different forms or exist at qualitatively different levels of intensity. At the same time, migrations of unprecedented magnitude and rapidity, as well as raising questions about how far the reality of everyday life is the ‘paramount reality,’ may prompt renewed interest in the precise relationship between knowledge and interaction, and ensure that reflection on this fundamental issue is well-informed empirically once it begins.
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Barnes, B. On The Social Construction of Reality: Reflections on a Missed Opportunity. Hum Stud 39, 113–125 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9389-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9389-1