The Social Construction of Reality

Summary

The 1966 classic that brought the idea of ‘social construction’ into the social sciences, ranked fifth among the twentieth century’s most important sociology books by the International Sociological Association. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann recast the sociology of knowledge, the study of how what counts as knowledge in a society is produced and sustained.

Rationale

Its central loop puts in classic form what we keep seeing: we make culture, it hardens into an apparent reality, and we absorb it back as simply how things are.