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Identity as a problem in the sociology of knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Peter Berger
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European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , May 1966 , pp. 105 - 115
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Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1966

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References

(1) On the “diffusion” of Meadian social psychology among American sociologists, cf. Strauss, Anselm (ed.), George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. viiGoogle Scholar sqq. For a critique of this Meadian “establishment”, from a psychoanalytically oriented viewpoint, cf. Wrong, Dennis, “The Over-Socialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology”, Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Review, XXXIX (1962), pp. 53 sqq.Google Scholar

(2) Among American sociologists, the sociology of knowledge has remained rather narrowly associated with its conception by Karl Mannheim, who served as its principal “translator” from the context of German Geisteswissenschaft to that of English-speaking social science. The writings of Max Scheler on Wissenssoziologie (the term was coined by him) remain untranslated today. American sociologists have also, in the main, remained unaffected by the development of the sociology of knowledge in the work of Alfred Schütz, not to mention recent contributions in the positivistic tradition (mainly by sociologists writing in German) and by Marxists (mainly in France). For the Mannheim-oriented reception of the sociology of knowledge in America, cf. Merton, Robert, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1957), pp. 439Google Scholar sqq., and Parsons, Talcott, “An Approach to the Sociology of Knowledge”, Transactions of the Fourth World Congress of Sociology (Louvain, International Sociological Association, 1959)Google Scholar. For a conception of the sub-discipline more in the line of Scheler than of Mannheim (and with which the present writer would not associate himself fully, either), cf. Stark, Werner, The Sociology of Knowledge (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1958).Google Scholar

(3) Cf. Merton, , op. cit. pp. 225Google Scholar sqq.; Sherif, Muzafer and Sherif, Carolyn, An Outline of Social Psychology (New York, Harper, 1956)Google Scholar; Shibutani, Tamotsu, “Reference Groups and Social Control”, in Rose, Arnold (ed.), Human Behavior and Social Processes (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1962), pp. 128 sqq.Google Scholar

(4) This understanding of the scope of the sociology of knowledge, a much broader one than that of the Mannheim-oriented approach, has been strongly influenced by the work of Alfred Schütz. Cf. Schütz, Alfred, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Vienna, Springer, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Problem of Social Reality (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1962)Google Scholar; Studies in Social Theory (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1964).Google Scholar

(5) This dialectic between self and society can also be formulated in Marxian terms. Cf., for example, Gabel, Joseph, La fausse conscience (Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1962)Google Scholar, and Sartre, Jean-Paul, Search for a Method (New York, Knopf, 1963)Google Scholar. For an attempt at integrating certain Marxian categories within a non-Marxian sociology of knowledge, cf. Berger, Peter and Pullberg, Stanley, “Reification and the Sociological Critique of Consciousness”, History and Theory, IV (1965).Google Scholar

(6) On the social structuring of conduct, cf. Gehlen, Arnold, Urmensch und Spätkultur (Bonn, Athenaeum, 1956)Google Scholar, where Gehlen proposes a biologically grounded theory of social institutions. On this very suggestive theory, which to date has remained practically unknown to American sociologists, also cf. Gehlen, Arnold, Anthropologische Forschung (Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1961)Google Scholar, and Studien zur Anthropologic und Soziologie (Neuwied/Rhein Luchterhand, 1963).Google Scholar

(7) Thomas well-known dictum on the “real consequences” of social definition was presumably intended, and has been generally understood as intending, to say that once a “reality” has been defined, people will act as if it were indeed so. To this important proposition must be added an understanding of the realizing (that is, reality-producing) potency of social definition. This social-psychological import of Thomas' “basic theorem” was developed by Merton, , op. cit. pp. 421Google Scholar sqq. The sociology of knowledge, as this paper tries to indicate, would extend this notion of the social construction of “reality” even further.

(8) Cf. Schutz, , Problem of Social Reality, pp. 207 sqq.Google Scholar

(9) Cf. ibid. pp. 3 sqq.

(10) Cf. ibid. pp. 287 sqq. Also, cf. Cassirer, Ernst, An Essay on Man (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1962), pp. 109Google Scholar sqq. The problem of language and “reality”, neglected by American sociologists, has been extensively discussed in American cultural anthropology, vide the influence of Edward Sapir and the controversy over the so-called “Whorf hypothesis”. It has been a central problem for sociologists and cultural anthropologists in France ever since the Durkheim school. Cf. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, La pensée sauvage (Paris, Plon, 1962).Google Scholar

(11) On the maintenance of “reality” by means of the “conversational apparatus”, cf. Berger, Peter and Kellner, Hansfried, “Le mariage et la construction de la realite”, Diogène, XLVI (1964), pp. 3 sqq.Google Scholar

(12) One may say that the Durkheimian theory of “collective consciousness” is the positive side of the theory of anomie. The locus classicus of this is, of course, Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. For important developments of this (all of great relevance for the sociology of knowledge), cf. Granet, Marcel, La pensée chinoise (Paris, Albin Michel, 1950)Google Scholar; Halbwachs, Maurice, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris, P.U.F., 1952)Google Scholar; Mauss, Marcel, Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris, P.U.F., 1960).Google Scholar

(13) The fullest evidence on the “objectivity” of the child's language learning is to be found in the work of Jean Piaget.

(14) The fixation of the sociology of knowledge on the theoretical level of consciousness is well expressed in the subtitle of the previously cited work by Stark—“An Essay in Aid of a Deeper Understanding of the History of Ideas”. The present writer would consider Schutz's work as essential for arriving at a broader conception of the sub-discipline. For a broader approach based on Marxian presuppositions, cf. Lefebvre, Henri, Critique de la vie quotidienne (Paris, L'Arche, 1958–1961)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the possibility of using Pareto for a critique of pre-theoretical consciousness in society, cf. Berger, Brigitte, Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology as a Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge (Unpublished doctoral dissertation—Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, 1964).Google Scholar

(15) This problem is, of course, dealt with by Marx in his well-known conception of sub- and super-structure. The present writer would argue that, at least in Marx's early writings (as in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844), the relationship between the two is clearly a dialectic one. In later Marxism, the dialectic is lost in a mechanistic understanding of sub- and super-structure in which the latter becomes a mere epiphenomenon (Lenin—a “reflection”) of the former. On this “reification” of Marxism in Communist ideology (perhaps one of the great ironies in the history of ideas), cf., for example, Gabel, Joseph, Formen der, Entfremdung (Frankfurt, Fischer, 1964), pp. 53Google Scholar sqq. Probably the most important work, within the Marxian tradition, which has tried to recapture the original dialectic in dealing with this problem is Lukács, Georg' Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein (1923)Google Scholar, now virtually unobtainable in German, but available in an excellent French translation—Histoire et conscience de classe (Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1960).Google Scholar

(16) The overarching dialectic of sociation indicated here can be analysed in terras of three “moments”—externalization, objectivation and internalization. The dialectic is lost whenever one of these “moments” is excluded from social theory. Cf, Berger, and Pullberg, , loc. cit.Google Scholar

(17) For indications of the intriguing possibilities of such a “socio-somatics”, cf. Georg Simmel's discussion of the “sociology of the senses”, in his Soziologie (Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1958), pp. 483Google Scholar sqq. Also, cf. Mauss' essay on the “techniques of the body”, in his op. cit. pp. 365 sqq.

(18) It is not intended here to propose a “sociologistic” view of reality as nothing but a social construction. Within the sociology of knowledge, however, it is possible to bracket the final epistemological questions.

(19) On the sociology-of-knowledge implications of diagnostic typologies, cf. Freidson, Eliot, The Sociology of Medicine (Oxford, Blackwell, 1963), pp. 124 sqq.Google Scholar

(20) For a critique of the contemporary concept of “mental illness”, coming from within psychiatry itself, cf. Szasz, Thomas, The Myth of Mental Illness (New York, Hosber-Harper, 1961).Google Scholar

(21) Cf. Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City, Doubleday, 1966).Google Scholar