Peter L. Berger
and Thomas Luckmann
The Social Construction
of Reality
A Treatise in the Sociology
of Knowledge
Penguin Books
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 STZ. England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd. 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario. Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902. NSMC, Auckland. New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth. Middlesex. England
First published in the USA 1966
Published in Great Britain by Allen Lane
The Penguin Press 1967
Published in Penguin University Books 1971
Reprinted in Peregrine Books 1979
Reprinted in Pelican Books 1984
Reprinted in Penguin Books 1991
10 9 8 7 6
Copyright © Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, 1966
All rights reserved
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St lves plc
Set in Monotype Plantin
Except in the United States of America. this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Contents
PREFACE 7
INTRODUCTION · The Problem of the Sociology
of Knowledge I I
ONE · THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE
IN EVERYDAY LIFE 3I
1. The Reality of Everyday Life 33
2. Social Interaction in Everyday Life 43
3· Language and Knowledge in Everyday Life 49
TWO · SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY 63
1. Institutionalization 65
Organism and Activity 65
Origins of Institutionalization 70
Sedimentation and Tradition 85
Roles 89
Scope and Modes of Institutionalization 97
2. Legitimation 1IO
Origins of Symbolic Universes I 10
Conceptual Machineries of Universe-Maintenance 122
Social Organizationfor Universe-Maintenance 134
Part Two
Society as
Objective Reality
1 . Institutionalization
Organism and Activity
Man occupies a peculiar position in the animal kingdom.1
Unlike the other higher mammals, he has no species-specific
environment,2 no environment firmly structured by his own
instinctual organization. There is no man-world in the sense
that one may speak of a dog-world or a horse-world. Despite
an area ofindividual learning and accumulation, the individual
dog or the individual horse has a largely fixed relationship to
its environment, which it shares with all other members ofits
respective species. One obvious implication ofthis is that dogs
and horses, as compared with man, are much more restricted
to a specific geographical distribution. The specificity of
these animals' environment, however, is much more than a
geographical delimitation. It refers to the biologically fixed
character of their relationship to the environment, even if
geographical variation is introduced. In this sense, all nonhuman
animals, as species and as individuals, live in closed
worlds whose structures are predetermined by the biological
equipment of the several animal species.
By contrast, man's relationship to his environment is characterized
by world-openness.3 Not only has man succeeded in
establishing himself over the greater part ofthe earth's surface,
his relationship to the surrounding environment is everywhere
very imperfectly structured by his own biological constitution.
The latter, to be sure, permits man to engage in different activities.
But the fact that he continued to live a nomadic existence
in one place and turned to agriculture in another cannot
be explained in terms of biological processes. This does not
mean, of course, that there are no biologically determined
limitations to man's relations with his environment; his
species-specific sensory and motor equipment imposes obvious
limitations onhis range ofpossibilities. The peculiarity ofman's
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
biological constitution lies rather in its instinctual component.
Man's instinctual organization may be described as underdeveloped,
compared with that of the other higher mammals.
Man does have drives, of course. But these drives are highly
unspecialized and undirected. This means that the human
organism is capable of applying its constitutionally given
equipment to a very wide and, in addition, constantly variable
and varying range of activities. This peculiarity of the human
organism is grounded in its ontogenetic development.' Indeed,
if one looks at the matter in terms of organismic development,
it is possible to say that the foetal period in the human being
extends through about the first year after birth.5 Important
organismic developments, which in the animal are completed
in the mother's body, take place in the human infant after its
separation from the womb. At this time, however, the human
infant is not only in the outside world, but interrelating with
it in a number of complex ways.
The human organism is thus still developing biologically
while already standing in a relationship to its environment. In
other words, the process of becoming man takes place in an
interrelationship with an environment. This statement gains
significance if one reflects that this environment is both a
natural and a human one. That is, the developing human being
not only interrelates with a particular natural environment,
but with a specific cultural and social order, which is mediated
to him by the significant others who have charge ofhim.6 Not
only is the survival of the human infant dependent upon certain
social arrangements, the direction of his organismic
development is socially determined. From the moment of
birth, man's organismic development, and indeed a large part
of his biological being as such, are subjected to continuing
socially determined interference.
Despite the obvious physiological limits to the range ofpossible
and different ways of becoming man in this double
environmentalinterrelationship,thehuman organism manifests
an immense plasticity in its response to the environmental
forces at work on it. This is particularly clear when cine observes
the flexibility of man's biological constitution as it is
subjected to a variety ofsocio-cultural determinations. It is an
ethnological commonplace thatthewaysofbecoming and being
66
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
human are as numerous as man's cultures. Humanness is
socio-culturally variable. In other words, there is no human
nature in the sense of a biologically fixed substratum determining
the variability of socio-cultural formations. There is
only human nature in the sense of anthropological constants
(for example, world-openness and plasticity of instinctual
structure) that delimit and permit man's socio-cultural forinations.
But the specific shape into which this humanness is
moulded is determined by those socio-cultural formations and
is relative to their numerous variations. While it is possible to
say that man has a nature, it is more significant to say that
man constructs his own nature, or more simply, that man
produces himself.7
The plasticity of the human organism and its susceptibility
to socially determined interference is best illustrated by the
ethnological evidence concerning sexuality.8 While man possesses
sexual drives that are comparable to those of the other
higher mammals, human sexuality is characterized by a very
high degree of pliability. It is not only relatively independent
of temporal rhythms, it is pliable both in the objects towards
which it may be directed and in its modalities of expression.
Ethnological evidence shows that, in sexual matters, man is
capable of almost anything. One may stimulate one's sexual
imagination to a pitch of feverish lust, but it is unlikely that
one can conjure up any image that will not correspond to what
in some other culture is an established norm, or at least an
occurrence to be taken in stride. If the term 'normality' is to
refer either to what is anthropologically fundamental or to
what is culturally universal, then neither it nor its antonym
can be meaningfully applied to the varying forms of human
sexuality. At the same time, of course, human sexuality is
directed, sometimes rigidly structured, in every particular
culture. Every culture has a distinctive sexual configuration,
with its own specialized patterns ofsexual conduct and its own
'anthropological' assumptions in the sexual area. The empirical
relativity of these configurations, their immense variety and
luxurious inventiveness, indicate that they are the product of
man's own socio-cultural formations rather than of a biologically
fixed human nature.9
The period during which the human organism develops
THE SociAL CoNSTRUCTION OF REALITY
towards its completion in interrelationship with its environment
is also the period during which the human selfis formed.
The formation of the self, then, must also be understood in
relation to both the ongoing organismic development and the
social process in which the natural .and the human environment
are mediated through the significant others.10 The
genetic presuppositions for the self are, of course, given at
birth. But the self, as it is experienced later as a subjectively
and objectively recognizable identity, is not. The same social
processes that determine the completion of the organism produce
the self in its particular, culturally relative form. The
character of the self as a social product is not limited to the
particular configuration the individual identifies as himself
(for instance, as 'a man', in the particular way in which this
identity is defined and formed in the culture in question), but
to the comprehensive psychological equipment that serves as
an appendage to the particular configuration (for instance,
'manly' emotions, attitudes and even somatic reactions). It
goes without saying, then, that the organism and, even more,
the self cannot be adequately understood apart from the
particular social context in which they were shaped.
The common development of the human organism and the
human self in a socially determined environment is related to
the peculiarly human relationship between organism and self.
This relationship is an eccentric one.11 On the one hand, man
is a body, in the same way that this may be said of every other
animal organism. On the other hand, man has a body. That is,
man experiences himself as an entity that is not identical with
his body, but that, on the contrary, has that body at its disposal.
In other words, man's experience of himself always
hovers in a balance between being and having a body, a
balance that must be redressed again and again. This eccentricity
of man's experience of his own body has certain consequences
for the analysis of human activity as conduct in the
material environment and as externalization of subjective
meanings. An adequate understanding of any human phenomenonwillhaveto
take both theseaspectsintoconsideration,for
reasons that are grounded in fundamental anthropologicalfacts.
It should be clear from the foregoing that the statement that
man produces himselfin no way implies some sort of Prome-
68
SociETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
thean vision ofthe solitary individual.12 Man's self-production
is always, and of necessity, a social enterprise. Men together
produce a human environment, with the totality of its sociocultural
and psychological formations. None of these formations
may be understood as products of man's biological
constitution, which, as indicated, provides only the outer
limits for human productive activity. Just as it is impossible
for man to develop as man in isolation, so it is impossible for
man in isolation to produce a human environment. Solitary
human being is being on the animal level (which, of course,
man shares with other animals). As soon as one observes
phenomena that are specifically human, one enters the realm
of the social. Man's specific humanity and his sociality are
inextricably intertwined. Homo sapiens is always, and in the
same measure, homo sociusP .
The human organism lacks the necessary biological means
to provide stability for human conduct. Human existence, if it
were thrown back on its organismic resources by themselves,
would be existence in some sort of chaos. Such chaos is, however,
empirically unavailable, even though one may theoretically
conceive of it. Empirically, human existence takes
place in a context of order, direction, stability. The question
then arises : From what does the empirically existing stability
of human order derive? An answer may be given on two levels.
One may first point to the obvious fact that a given social
order precedes any individual organismic development. That
is, world-openness, while intrinsic to man's biological makeup,
is always pre-empted by social order. One may say that the
biologically intrinsic world-openness of human existence is
always, and indeed must be, transformed by social order into
a relative world-closedness. While this reclosure can never
approximate the closedness ofanimal existence, ifonly because
of its humanly produced and thus 'artificial' character, it is
nevertheless capable, most of the time, of providing direction
and stability for the greater part of human conduct. The
question may then be pushed to another level. One may ask
in what manner social order itself arises.
The most general answer to this question is that social order
is a human product, or, more precisely, an ongoing human
production. It is produced by man in the course ofhis ongoing
69
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
externalization. Social orderis not biologicallygiven orderived
from any biological data in its empirical manifestations. Social
order, needless to add, is also not given in man's natural
�nvironm�n�, thoug� particular features of this may be factors
�n deter�g certam fea�es of a social order (for example,
Its economic or technological arrangements). Social order is
not part of the 'nature of things', and it cannot be derived
from the 'law
� �fnature'.14 Social order exists only as a product
of�um� actiVIty. No other ontological status may be ascribed
to 1t Without hopelessly obfuscating its empirical manifestations.
Bo� � its g�nesis
.
(social order is the result of past
human a
.
ctivity) and It
�
eXIstence in any instant oftime (social
order eXIsts only and ID so far as human activity continues to
produce it) it is a human product.
While the social products of human externalization have a
ch�acter suigeneris as against both their organismic and their
envrronmental context, it is important to stress that externali�a�on
as s
.
uch i
.
s an anthropological necessity.15 Human being
IS tmposs1�le ID a close� sphere of quiescent interiority.
H�an bemg must ongomgly externalize itself in activity.
Thi
�
anthropological necessity is grounded in man's biological
eqwp�e?t.11 Th
.
e inherent instability of the human organism
makes It tmperative that man him�elf provide a stable environment
for his conduct. Man himself must specialize and direct
his dri��· These biological facts serve as a necessary presupposition
for the production ofsocial order. In other words
although no existing social order can be derived from bio�
logical data, the necessity for social order as such stems from
man's biological equipment.
.
To ?Dderstand the causes, other than those posited by the
btologt�al
.
constants, for the emergence, maintenance and
transmission of a social order one must undertake an analysis
that eventuates in a theory of institutionalization.
On"gins of Institutionalization
All �uman activity is subject to habitualization. Any action
that ts repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which
70
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
can then be reproduced with an economy ofeffort and which,
ipso facto, is apprehended by its performer as that pattern.
Habitualization further implies that the action in question
may be performed again in the future in the same manner and
with the same economical effort. This is true of non-social as
well as of social activity. Even the solitary individual on the
proverbial desert island habitualizes his activity. When he
wakes up in the morning andresumeshis attempts to construct
a canoe out ofmatchsticks, he may mumble to himself, 'There
I go again', as he starts on step one of an operating procedure
consisting of, say, ten steps. In other words, even solitary
man has at least the company of his operating procedures.
Habitualized actions, of course, retain their meaningful
character for the individual although the meanings involved
become embedded as routines in his general stock of knowledge,
taken for granted by him and at hand for his projects
into the future.17 Habitualization carries with it the important
psychological gain that choices are narrowed. While in theory
there may be a hundred ways to go about the project of
building a canoe out of matchsticks, habitualization narrows
these down to one. This frees the individual from the burden
of 'all those decisions', providing a psychological relief that
has its basis in man's undirected instinctual structure. Habitualization
provides the direction and the specialization of
activity that is lacking in man's biological equipment, thus
relieving the accumulation of tensions that result from undirected
drives.18 And by providing a stable background in
which human activity may proceed with a minimum of
decision-making most of the time, it frees energy for such
decisions as may be necessary on certain occasions. In other
words, the background of habitualized activity opens up a
foreground for deliberation and innovation.19
In terms ofthe meanings bestowed bymanuponhisactivity,
hab!tualization makes it unnecessary for each situation to be
defined anew, step by step.20 A large variety of situations may
be subsumed under its predefinitions. The activity to be
undertaken in these situations can then be anticipated. Even
alternatives of conduct can be assigned standard weights.
These processes of habitualization precede any institutionalization,
indeed can be made to apply to a hypothetical
71
THE SoCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
solitary individual detached from any social interaction. The
fact that even such a solitary individual, assuming that he has
been formed as a self (as we would have to assume in the case
of our matchstick�canoe builder), will habitualize his activity
in accordance with biographical experience ofa world ofsocial
institutions preceding his solitude need not concern us at the
moment. Empirically, the more important part of the habitu�
alization of human activity is coextensive with the latter's
institutionalization. The question then becomes how do
institutions arise.
Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal
typification of habitualized actions by types of actors. Put
differently, any such typification is an institution.21 What must
be stressed is the reciprocity of institutional typifications and
the typicality of not only the actions but also the actors in
institutions. The typifications of habitualized actions that
constitute institutions are always shared ones. They are avail�
able to all members of the particular social group in question,
and the institution itself typifies individual actors as well as
individual actions. The institution posits that actions of type
X will be performed by actors of type X. For example, the
institution of the law posits that heads shall be chopped off in
specific ways under specific circumstances, and that specific
types of individuals shall do the chopping (executioners, say,
or members of an impure caste, or virgins under a certain age,
or those who have been designated by an oracle).
Institutions further imply historicity and control. Recipro�
cal typifications ofactions are built up in the course ofa shared
history. They cannot be created instantaneously. Institutions
always have a history, of which they are the products. It is
impossible to understand an institution adequately without an
understanding of the historical process in which it was produced.
Institutions also, by the very fact of their existence,
control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of
conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the many
other directions that would theoretically be possible. It is
important to stress that this controlling character is inherent
in institutionalization as such, prior to or apart from any
mechanisms of sanctions specifically set up to support an institution.
These mechanisms (the sum -<>f which constitute
72
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
what is generally called a system ofsocial control) do, ofcourse,
exist in many institutions and in all the agglomerations of
institutions that we call societies. Their controlling efficacy,
however, is of a secondary or supplementary kind. As we shall
see again later, the primary social control is given in the existence
of an institution as such. To say that a segment of
human activity has been institutionalized is already to say
that this segment of human activity has been subsumed under
social control. Additional control mechanisms are required
only in so far as the processes of institutionalization are less
than completely successful. Thus, for instance, the law may
provide that anyone who breaks the incest taboo will have his
head chopped off. This provision may be necessary because
there have been cases when individuals offended against the
taboo. It is unlikely that this sanction will have to be invoked
cqntinuously (unless the institution delineate� by the incest
taboo is itself in the course of disintegration, a special case
that we need not elaborate here). It makes little ::.ense, therefore,
to say that human sexuality is socially controlled by
beheading certain individuals. Rather, human sexuality is
socially controlled by its institutionalization in the course of
the particular history in question. One may add, of course,
that the incest taboo itself is nothing but the negative side of
an assemblage of typifications, which define in the first place
which sexual conduct is incestuous and which is not.
In actual experience institutions generally manifest themselves
in collectivities containing considerable numbers of
people. It is theoretically important, however, to emphasize
that the institutionalizing process of reciprocal typification
would occur even if two individuals began to interact de novo.
Institutionalization is incipient in every social situation continuing
in time. Let us assume that two persons from entirely
different social worlds begin to interact. By saying 'persons'
we presuppose that the two individuals have formed selves,
something that could, of course, have occurred only in a social
process. We are thus for the moment excluding the cases of
Adam and Eve, or of two 'feral' children meeting in a clearing
of a primeval jungle. But we are assuming that the two individuals
arrive at their meeting place from social worlds that have
been historically produced in segregation from each other, and
73
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION; OF REALITY
that the interaction therefore takes place in a situation that has
not been institutionally defined for either of the participants.
It may be possible to imagine a Man Friday joining our
matchstick-canoe builder on his desert island, and to imagine
the former as a Papuan and the latter as an American. In that
case, however, it is likely that the American will have read
.
or
at least have heard about the story ofRobinson Crusoe, whtch
will introduce a measure of predefinition of the situation at
least for him. Let us, then, simply call our two persons A and
B.
As A and B interact, in whate,ver manner, typifications will
. be produced quite quickly. A watches B perform. He attributes
motives to B's actions and, seeing the actions recur,
typifies the motives as recurrent. As B goes on perform_ing, A
is soon able to say to himself, 'Aha, there he goes agam.' At
the same time, A may assume that B is doing the same thing
with regard to him. From the begin�ng, both A and !J
assume this reciprocity of typification. In the course of thetr
interaction these typifications will be expressed in specific
patterns of conduct. That is, A and B will begin to play roles
vis-a-vis each other. This will occur even if each continues to
perform actions different from those of the other. The possibility
of taking the role of the other will appear with regard to
the same actions performed by both. That is, A will inwardly
appropriate B's reiterated roles and m�ke the� the mo?e
.
ls for
his own role-playing. For example, B s role m the act1v1ty of
preparing food is not only typified as such by A, but �nters as
a constitutive element into A's own food-preparauon role.
Thus a collection of reciprocally typified actions will emerge,
habitualized for each in roles, some ofwhich will be performed
separately and some in common.22 While this reciprocal typification
is not yet institutionalization (since, there only bemg
two individuals, there is no possibility of a typology of actors),
it is clear that institutionalization is already present in nucleo.
At this stage one may ask what gains accrue to the two individuals
from this development. The most important gain is
that each will be able to predict the other's actions. Concomitantly,
the interaction of both becomes predicta_bl
,
e. T�e
'There he goes again' becomes a 'There we go agam . '!_'his
relieves both individuals of a considerable amount of tens10n.
74
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
They save! time and effort, not only in whatever external tasks
they might be engaged in separately or jointly, but in terms of
their respective psychological economies. Their life together
is now defined by a widening sphere of taken-for-granted
routines. Many actions are possible on a low level of attention.
Each. action of one is no longer a source of astonishment and
potential danger to the other. Instead, much of what goes on
takes on the triviality of what, to both, will be everyday life.
This means that the two individuals are constructing a background,
in the sense discussed before, which will serve to
stabilize both their separate actions and their interaction. The
construction of this background of routine in tum makes
possible a division of labour bet)¥een them, opening the way
for innovations, which demand a higher level ofattention. The
division of labour and the innovations will lead to new habitualizations,
further widening the background common to
both individuals. In other words, a social world will be in
process of construction, containing within it the roots of an
expanding institutional order.
Generally, all actions repeated once or more tend to be
habitualized to some degree, just as all actions observed by
another necessarily involve some typification on his part.
However, for the kind of reciprocal typification just described
to occur there must be a continuing social situation in which
the habitualized actions of two or more individuals interlock.
Which actions are likely to be reciprocally typified in this
manner?
The general answer is, those actions that are relevant to both
A and B within their common situation. The areas likely to be
relevant in this way will, ofcourse, vary in different situations.
Some will be those facing A and B in terms of their previous
biographies, others may be the result of the natural, pre-social
circumstances of the situation. What will in all cases have to
be habitualized is the comm-unication process between A and
B. Labour, sexuality and territoriality are other likely foci of
typification and habitualization. In these various areas the
situation ofA and B is paradigmatic ofthe institutionalization
occurring in larger societies.
Let us push our paradigm one step further and imagine that
A and B have children. At this point the situation changes
75
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
qualitatively. The appearance of a third party changes the
character of the ongoing social interaction between A and B,
and it will change even further as additional individuals continue
to be added.23 The institutional world, which existed in
statu nascendi in the original situation of A and B, is now
passed on to others. In this process institutionalization perfects
itself. The habitualizations and typifications undertaken in the
common life of A and B, formations that until this point still
had the quality of ad hoc conceptions of two individuals, now
become historical institutions. With the acquisition of historicity,
these formations also acquire another crucial quality, or,
more accurately, perfect a quality that was incipient as soon as
A and B began the reciprocal typification of their conduct :
this quality is objectivity. This means that the institutions
that have now been crystallized (for instance, the institution
of paternity as it is encountered by the children) are experienced
as existing over and beyond the individuals who
'happen to' embody them at the moment. In other words, the
institutions are now experienced as possessing a reality oftheir
own, a reality that confronts the individual as an external and
coercive fact.24
As long as the nascent institutions are constructed and maintained
only in the interaction of A and B, their objectivity
remains tenuous, easily changeable, almost playful, even while
they attain a measure of objectivity by the mere fact of their
formation. To put this a little differently, the routinized
background of A's and B's activity remains fairly accessible to
deliberate intervention by A and B. Although the routines,
once established, carry within them a tendency to persist, the
possibility of changing them or even abolishing them remains
at hand in consciousness. A and B alone are responsible for
having constructed this world. A and B remain capable of
changing or abolishing it. What is more, since they themselves
have shaped this world in the course of a shared biography
which they can remember, the world thus shaped appears
fully transparent to them. They understand the world that
they themselves have made. All this changes in the process of
transmission to the new generation. The objectivity of the
institutional world 'thickens' and 'hardens', not only for the
children, but (by a mirror effect) for the parents as well. The
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
'There we go again' now becomes 'This is how these things
are done'. A world so regarded attains a firmness in consciousness
; it becomes real in an ever more massive way and it
can no longer be changed so readily. For the children,
especially in the early phase of their socialization into it, it
becomes the world. For the parents, it loses its playful quality
and becomes 'serious'. For the children, the parentally transmitted
world is not fully transparent. Since they had no part
in shaping it, it confronts them as a given reality that, like
nature, is opaque in places at least.
Only at this point does it become possible to speak ofa social
world at all, in the sense of a comprehensive and given reality
confronting the individual in a !Danner analogous to the reality
of the natural world. Only in this way, as an objective world,
can the social formations be transmitted to a new generation.
In the early phases of socialization the child is quite incapable
of distinguishing between the objectivity of natural phenomena
and the objectivity of the social formations.25 To take
the most important item of socialization, language appears to
the child as inherent in the nature of things, and he cannot
grasp the notion of its conventionality. A thing is what it is
called, and it could not be called anything else. All institutions
appear in the same way, as given, unalterable and self-evident.
Even in our empirically unlikely example of parents having
constructed an institutional world de novo, the objectivity of
this world would be increased for them by the socialization of
their children, because the objectivity experienced by the
children would reflect back upon their own experience of this
world. Empirically, of course, the institutional world transmitted
by most parents already has the character of historical
and objective reality. The process of transmission simply
strengthens the parents' sense of reality, if only because, to
put it crudely, if one says, 'This is how these things are done',
often enough one believes it oneself.26
An institutional world, then, is experienced as an objective
reality. It has a history that antedates the individual's birth
and is not accessible to his biographical recollection. It was
there before he was born, and it will be there after his death.
This history itself, as the tradition of the existing institutions,
has the character of objectivity. The individual's biography is
77
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
apprehended as an episode located within the objective history
of the society. The institutions, as historical and objective
facticities, confront the individual as undeniable facts. The
institutions are there, external to him, persistent in their
reality, whether he likes it or not. He cannot wish them away.
They resist his attempts to change or evade them. They have
coercive power over him, both in themselves, by the sheer
force of their facticity, and through the control mechanisms
that are usually attached to the most important of them. The
objective reality of institutions is not diminished if the individual
does not understand their purpose or their mode ofoperation.
He may experience large sectors of the social world as
incomprehensible, perhaps oppressive in their opaqueness,
but real none the less. Since institutionsexistas external reality,
the individual cannot understand them by introspection. He
must 'go out' and learn about them, just as he must to learn
about nature. This remains true even though the social world,
as a humanly produced reality, is potentially understandable
in a way not possible in the case of the natural world.27
It is important to keep in mind that the objectivity of the
institutional world, however massive it may appear to the
individual, is a humanly produced, constructed objectivity.
The process by which the externalized products of human
activity attain the character of objectivity is objectivation.28
The institutional world is objectivated human activity, and so
is every single institution. In other words, despite the objectivity
that marks the social world in human experience, it does
not thereby acquire an ontological status apart from the
human activity that produced it. The paradox that man is
capable of producing a world that he then experiences as
something other than a human product will concern us later
on. At the moment, it is important to emphasize that the
relationship between man, the producer, and the social world,
his product, is and remains a dialectical one. That is, man (not,
of course, in isolation but in his collectivities) and his social
world interact with each other. The product acts back upon
the producer. Externalization and objectivation are moments
in a continuing dialectical process. The third moment in this
process, which is internalization (by which the objectivated
social world is retrojected into consciousness in the course of
SociETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
socialization), will occupy us in considerable detail later on. It
is already possible, however, to see the fundamental relationship
of these three dialectical moments in social reality. Each
of them corresponds to an essential characterization of the
social world. Society is a human product. Society is an objective
reality. Man is a socialproduct. It may also already be evident
that an analysis of the social world that leaves out any one of
these three moments will be distortive.29 One may further add
that only with the transmission of the social world to a new
generation (that is, internalization as effectuated in socialization)
does the fundamental social dialectic appear in its totality.
To repeat, only with the appearance of a new generation can
one properly speak of a social world.
At the same point, the institutional world requires legitimation,
that is, ways by which it can be 'explained' and justified.
This is not because it appears less real. As we have seen,
the reality of the social world gains in massivity in the course
of its transmission. This reality, however, is a historical one,
which comes to the new generation as a tradition rather than
as a biographical memory. In our paradigmatic example, A
and B, the original creators of the social world, can always
reconstruct the circumstances under which their world and
any part of it was established. That is, they can arrive at the
meaning of an institution by exercising their powers of recollection.
A's and B's children are in an altogether different
situation. Their knowledge of the institutional history is by
way of 'hearsay'. The original meaning of the institutions is
inaccessible to them in terms of memory. It, therefore, becomes
necessary to interpret this meaning to them in various
legitimating formulas. These will have to be consistent and
comprehensive in terms of the institutional order, if they are
to carry conviction to the new generation. The same story, so
to speak, must be told to all the children. It follows that the
expanding institutional order develops a corresponding canopy
of legitimations, stretching over it a protective cover of both
cognitive and normative interpretation. These legitimations
are learned by the new generation during the same process
that socializes them into the institutional order. This, again,
will occupy us in greater detail further on.
The development of specific mechanisms of social controls
79
THE SoCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
also becomes necessary with the historicization and objectivation
of institutions. Deviance from the institutionally 'programmed'
courses of action becomes likely once the institutions
have become realities divorced from their original
relevance in the concrete social processes from which they
arose. To put this more simply, it is more likely that one will
deviate from programmes set up for one by others than from
programmes that one has helped establish oneself. The new
generation posits a problem of compliance, and its socialization
into the institutional order requires the establishment of
sanctions. The institutions must and do claim authority over
the individual, independently of the subjective meanings he
may attach to any particular situation. The priority of the
institutional definitions of situations must be consistently
maintained over individual temptations at redefinition. The
children must be 'taught to behave' and, once taught, must be
'kept in line'. So, of course, must the adults. The more conduct
is institutionalized, the more predictable and thus the
more controlled it becomes. If socialization into the institutions
has been effective, outright coercive measures can be
applied economically and selectively. Most of the time, conduct
will occur 'spontaneously' within the institutionally set
channels. The more, on the level ofmeaning, conduct is taken
for granted, the more possible alternatives to the institutional
'programmes' will recede, and the more predictable and controlled
conduct will be.
In principle, institutionalization may take place in any area
of collectively relevant conduct. In actual fact, sets of institutionalization
processes take place concurrently. There is no a
pr-iori reason for assuming that these processes will necessarily
'hang together' functionally, let alone as a logically consistent
system. To return once more to our paradigmatic example,
slightly changing the fictitious situation, let us assume this
time, not a buddingfamilyofparents and children, but apiquant
triangle of a male A, a bisexual female B, and a Lesbian C.
We need not belabour the point that the sexual relevances of
these three individuals will not coincide. Relevance A-B is
not shared by C. The habitualizations engendered as a result
of relevance A-B need bear no relationship to those engendered
by relevances B-C and C-A. There is, after all, no
So
SociETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
reason why two processes oferotic habitualization, one heterosexual
and one Lesbian, cannot take place side by side without
functionally integrating with each other or with a third habitualization
based on a shared interest in, say, the growing of
flowers (or whatever other enterprise might be jointly relevant
to an active heterosexual male and an active Lesbian). In
other words, three processes of habitualization or incipient
institutionalization may occur without their being functionally
or logically integrated as social phenomena. The same reasoning
holds if A, B and C are posited as collectivities rather than
individuals, regardless of what content their relevances might
have. Also, functional or logical integration cannot be assumed
a priori when habitualization or institutionalization processes
are limited to the same individuals or collectivities, rather than
to the discrete ones assumed in our example.
Nevertheless, the empirical fact remains that institutions do
tend to 'hang together'. If this phenomenon is not to be taken
for granted, it must be explained. How can this be done? First,
one may argue that some relevances will be common to all
members of a collectivity. On the other hand, many areas of
conduct will be relevant only to certain types. The latter involves
an incipient differentiation, at least in the way in which
these types are assigned some relatively stable meaning. This
assignment may be based on pre-social differences, such as sex,
or on differences brought about in the course of social interaction
such as those engendered by the division of labour.
For e�ample, only women may be concerned with fertility
magic and only hunters may engage in cave painting. Or, only
the old men may perform the rain ceremonial and only
weapon-makers may sleep with their maternal cousiils. In
terms of their external social functionality, these several areas
of conduct need not be integrated into one cohesive system.
They can continue to coexist on the basis of segregated performances.
But while performances can be segregated, meanings
tend towards at least minimal consistency. As the
individual reflects about the successive moments of his
experience, he tries to fit their meanings into a consist�nt
biographical framework. This tendency increa�es
.
as the
.
Individual
shares with others his meanings and their biographical
integration. It is possible that this tendency to integrate
81
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
meanings is based on a psychological need, which may in turn
be physiologically grounded (that is, that there may be a
built-in 'need' for cohesion in the psycho-physiological constitution
of man). Our argument, however, does not rest on
such anthropological assumptions, but rather on the analysis
of meaningful reciprocity in processes of institutionalization.
It follows that great care is required in any statements one
makes about the 'logic' of institutions. The logic does not
reside in the institutions and their external functionalities, but
in the way these . are treated in reflection about them. Put
differently, reflective consciousness superimposes the quality
of logic on the institutional order.30
Language provides the fundamental superimposition of
logic on the objectivated social world. The edifice of legitima?ons
is built upon language and uses language as its principal
Instrumentality. The 'logic' thus attributed to the institutional
order is part of the socially available stock of knowledge
and taken for granted as such. Since the well-socialized
individual 'knows' that his social world is a consistent whole,
he will be constrained to explain both its functioning and malfunctioning
in terms of this 'knowledge'. It is very easy, as a
result, for the observer of any society to assume that its
institutions do indeed function and integrate as they are
'supposed to'.31
De facto, then, institutions are integrated. But their integration
is not a functional imperative for the social processes
that produce them ; it is rather brought about in a derivative
fashion. Individuals perform discrete institutionalized actions
within the context of their biography. This biography is a
reflected-upon whole in which the discrete actions are thought
of, not as isolated events, but as related parts in a subjectively
meaningful universe whose meanings are not specific to the
in?ividual, but socially articulated and shared. Only by way of
thi� detour of socially shared universes of meaning do we
arnve at the need for institutional integration.
This has far-reaching implications for any analysis of social
phenomena. If the integration of an institutional order can be
understood only in terms of the 'knowledge' that its members
have ofit, it follows that the analysis of such 'knowledge' will
be essential for an analysis of the institutional order in ques-
82
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
tion. It is important to stress that this does not exclusively or
even primarily involve a preoccupation with complex theoretical
systems serving as legitimations for the institutional
order. Theories also have to be taken into account, of course.
But theoretical knowledge is only a small and by no means the
most important part of what passes for knowledge in a society.
Theoretically sophisticated legitimations appear at particular
moments of an institutional history. The primary knowledge
about the institutional order is knowledge on the pretheoretical
level. It is the sum total of 'what everybody
knows' about a social world, an assemblage of maxims, morals,
proverbial nuggets of wisdom, values and beliefs, myths,
and so forth, the theoretical integration of which requires
considerable intellectual fortitude in itself, as the long line
of heroic integrators from Homer to the latest sociological
system-builders testifies. On the pre-theoretical level, however,
every institution has a body of transmitted recipe
knowledge, that is, knowledge that supplies the institutionally
appropriate rules of conduct.32
Such knowledge constitutes the motivating dynamics of
institutionalized conduct. It defines the institutionalized areas
of conduct and designates all situations falling within them. It
defines and constructs the roles to be played in the context of
the institutions in question. Ipsofacto, it controls and predicts
all such conduct. Since this knowledge is socially objectivated
as knowledge, that is, as a body ofgenerally valid truths about
reality, any radical deviance from the institutional order
appears as a departure from reality. Such deviance may be
designated as moral depravity, mental disease, or just plain
ignorance. While these fine distinctions will have obvious
consequences for the treatment of the deviant, they all share
an inferior cognitive status within the particular social world.
In this way, the particular social world becomes the world
tout court. What is taken for granted as knowledge in the
society comes to be coextensive with the knowable, or at any
rate provides the framework within which anything not yet
known will come to be known in the future. This is the knowledge
that is learned in the course of socialization and that
mediates the internalization within individual consciousness of
the objectivated structures ofthe social world. Knowledge, in
THE SoCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
this sense, is at the heart of the fundamental dialectic of
society. It 'programmes' the channels in which externalization
produces an objective world. It objectifies this world through
language and the cognitive apparatus based on language, that
is, it orders it into objects to be apprehended as reality.33 It is
internalized again as objectively valid truth in the course of
socialization. Knowledge about society is thus a realization in
the double sense of the word, in the sense ofapprehending the
objectivated social reality, and in the sense of ongoingly
producing this reality.
For example, in the course of the division of labour a body
ofknowledge is developed that refers to the particular activities
involved. In its linguistic basis, this knowledge is already indispensable
to the institutional 'programming' of these economic
activities. There will be, say, a vocabulary designating the
various modes of hunting, the weapons to be employed, the
animals that serve as prey, and so on. There will further be a
collection of recipes that must be learned if one is to hunt
correctly. This knowledge serves as a channelling, controlling
force in itself, an indispensable ingredient of the institutionalization
of this area of conduct. As the institution of
hunting is crystallized and persists in time, the same body of
knowledge serves as an objective (and, incidentally, empirically
verifiable) description of it. A whole segment of the social
world is objectified by this knowledge. There will be an
objective 'science' of hunting, corresponding to the objective
reality of the hunting economy. The point need not be belaboured
that here 'empirical verification' and 'science' are not
understood in the sense of modern scientific canons, but
rather in the sense of knowledge that may be borne out in
experience and that can subsequently become systematically
organized as a body of knowledge.
Again, the same body of knowledge is transmitted to the
next generation. It is learned as objective truth in the course
of socialization and thus internalized as subjective reality.
This reality in turn has power to shape the individual. It will
produce a specific type of person, namely the hunter, whose
identity and biography as a hunter have meaning only in a
universe constituted by the aforementioned body ofknowledge
as a whole (say, in a hunters' society) or in part (say, in our
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
own society, in which hunters come together in a sub-universe
oftheir own). In other words, no part ofthe institutionalization
of hunting can exist without the particular knowledge that has
been socially produced and objectivated with reference to this
activity. To hunt and to be a hunter imply existence in a
social world defined and controlled by this body ofknowledge.
Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to any area of institutionalized
conduct.
Sedimentation and Tradition
Only a small part of the totality of human experiences is
retained in consciousness. The experiences that are so retained
become sedimented, that is, they congeal in recollection as
recognizable and memorable entities.34 Unless such sedimentation
took place the individual could not make sense of
his biography. Intersubjective sedimentation also takes place
when several individuals share a common biography, experiences
of which become incorporated in a common stock of
knowledge. Intersubjective sedimentation can be called truly
social only when it has been objectivated in a sign system of
one kind or another, that is, when the possibility of reiterated
objectification of the shared experiences arises. Only then is it
likely that these experiences will be transmitted from one
generation to the next, and from one collectivity to another.
Theoretically, common activity, without a sign system, could
be the basis for transmission. Empirically, this is improbable.
An objectively available sign system bestows a status of
incipient anonymity on the sedimented experiences by detaching
them from their original context of concrete individual
biographies and making them generally available to all who
share, or may share in the future, in the sign system in question.
The experiences thus become readily transmittable.
In principle, any sign system would do. Normally, ofcourse,
the decisive sign system is linguistic. Language objectivates
the shared experiences and makes them available to all within
the linguistic community, thus becoming both the basis and
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OP REALITY
the instrument of the collective stock of knowledge. Furthermore,
language provides the means for objectifying new
experiences, allowing their incorporation into the already
existingstock ofknowledge, and it is the most important means
by which the objectivated and objectified sedimentations are
transmitted in the tradition of the collectivity in question.
For example, only some members of a hunting society have
the experience of losing their weapons and being forced to
fight a wild animal with their bare hands. This frightening
experience, with whatever lessons in bravery, cunning and
skill it yields, is firmly sedimented in ·the consciousness of the
individuals who went through it. If the experience is shared
by several individuals, it will be sedimented intersubjectively,
may perhaps even form a profound bond between t?ese
individuals. As this experience is designated and transnutted
linguistically, however, it becomes accessible and, perhaps,
strongly relevant to individuals who have never gone through
it. The linguistic designation (which, in a hunting society, we
may imagine to be very precise and elaborate indeed - say,
'lone big kill, with one hand, of male rhinoceros', 'lone big
kill, with two hands, of female rhinoceros', and so forth)
abstracts the experience from its individual biographical
occurrences. It becomes an objective possibility for everyone,
or at any rate for everyone within a certain typ� (sa�, f�ly
initiated hunters) ; that is, it becomes anonymous m prmople
even ifit is still associated with the feats ofspecific individuals.
Even to those who do not anticipate the experience in their
own future biography (say, women forbidden to hunt), it may
be relevant in a derived manner (say, in terms of the desirability
of a future husband) ; in any case it is part of the common
stock ofknowledge. The objectification of the experience
in the language (that is, its transformation
.
int� a gener�ly
available object of knowledge) then allows 1ts mcorporatton
into a larger body of tradition by way of moral instruction,
inspirational poetry, religious allegory .and whatnot. Both
.
the
experience in the narrower sense and 1ts appendage o� wtder
significations can then be taught to every new generatton, or
even diffused to an altogether different collectivity (say, an
agricultural society that may attach quite different meanings
to the whole business).
86
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
Language becomes the depository of a large aggregate of
collective sedimentations, which can be acquired monothetically,
that is, as cohesive wholes and without reconstructing
their original process offormation.86
Since the actual origin of
the sedimentations has become unimportant, the tradition
might invent quite a different origin without thereby threatening
what has been objectivated. In other words, legitimations
can succeed each other, from time to time bestowing new
meanings on the sedimented experiences of the collectivity in
question. The past history of the society can be reinterpreted
without necessarily upsetting the institutional order as a
result. For instance, in the above example, the 'big kill' may
come to be legitimated as a deed of divine figures and any
human repetition of it as an imitation of the mythological
prototype.
This process underlines all objectivated sedimentations, not
only institutionalized actions. It may refer, for instance, to the
transmission of typifications of others not directly relevant to
specific institutions. For example, others are typified as 'tall'
or 'short', 'fat' or 'thin', 'bright' or 'dull', without any particular
institutional implications being attached to these typifications.
The process, ofcourse, also applies to the transmission
of sedimented meanings that meet the previously given
specification of institutions. The transmission of the meaning
of an institution is based on the social recognition of that
institution as a 'permanent' solution to a 'permanent' problem
of the given collectivity. Therefore, potential actors ofinstitutionalized
actions must be systematically acquainted with these
meanings. This necessitates some form of 'educational' process.
The institutional meanings must be impressed powerfully
and unforgettably upon the consciousness of the individual.
Since human beings are frequently sluggish and forgetful,
there must also be procedures by which these meanings can be
reimpressed and rememorized, if necessary by coercive and
generally unpleasant means. Furthermore, since human beings
are frequently stupid, instituticnal meanings tend to
become simplified in the process of transmission, so that the
given collection of institutional 'formulae' can be readily
learned and memorized by successive generations. The 'formula'
character of institutional meanings ensures their
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
memorability. We have here on the level of sedimented
meanings the same processes ofroutinization and trivialization
that we have already noted in the discussion ofinstitutionalization.
Again, the stylized form in which heroic feats enter a
tradition is a useful illustration.
The objectivated meanings ofinstitutional activity are conceived
ofas 'knowledge' and transmitted as such. Some ofthis
'knowledge' is deemed relevant to all, some only to certain
types. All transmission requires some sort of social apparatus.
That is, some types are designated as transmitters, other types
as recipients of the traditional 'knowledge'. The specific
character ofthis apparatus will, ofcourse, vary from society to
society. There will also be typified procedures for the passage
of the tradition from the knowers to the non-knowers. For
example, the technical, magical and moral lore ofhunting may
be transmitted by maternal uncles to nephews ofa certain age,
by means of specified procedures of initiation. The typology
of knowers and non-knowers, like the 'knowledge' that is
supposed to pass between them, is a matter of social definition;
both 'knowing' and 'not knowing' refer to what is
socially defined as reality, and not to some extra-social criteria
of cognitive validity. To put this crudely, maternal uncles do
not transmit this particular stock of knowledge because they
know it, but they know it (that is, are defined as knowers)
because they are maternal uncles. If an institutionally designated
maternal uncle, for particular reasons, turns out to be
incapable of transmitting the knowledge in question, he is no
longer a maternal uncle in the full sense of the word, and,
indeed, institutional recognition of this status may be withdrawn
from him.
Depending on the social span of relevance of a certain type
of 'knowledge' and its complexity and importance in a particular
collectivity, the 'knowledge' may have to be reaffirmed
through symbolic objects (such as fetishes and military emblems),
and/or symbolic actions (such as religious or military
ritual). In other words, physical objects and actions may be
called upon as mnemotechnic aids. All transmission ofinstitutional
meanings obviously implies control and legitimation
procedures. These are attached to the institutions themselves
and administered by the transmitting personnel. It may be
88
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
stressed again here that no a priori consistency, let alone
functionality, may be presumed as existing between different
institutions and the forms of the transmission of knowledge
pertaining to them. The problem of logical coherence arises
first on the level of legitimation (where there may be conflict
or competition between different legitimations and their
administrative personnel), and secondly on the level ofsocialization
(where there may be practical difficulties in the internalization
of successive or competing institutional meanings).
To return to a previous example, there is no a priori reason
why institutional meanings that originated in a hunting society
should not be diffused to an agricultural society. What is more,
these meanings may, to an outside observer, appear to have
dubious 'functionality' in the first society at the time of
diffusion and no 'functionality' at all in the second. The difficulties
that may arise here are connected with the theoretical
activities of the legitimators and the practical ones of the
'educators' in the new.society. The theoreticians have to satisfy
themselves that a hunting goddess is a plausible denizen in an
agrarian pantheon and the pedagogues have a problem explaining
her mythological activities to children who have never
seen a hunt. Legitimating theoreticians tend to have logical
aspirations and children tend to be recalcitrant. This, however,is
not a problem ofabstractlogicortechnicalfunctionality,
but rather of ingenuity on the one hand and credulity on the
other - a rather different proposition.
Roles
As we have seen, the origins ofany institutional order lie in the
typification of one's own and others' performances. This implies
that one shares with 9thers specific goals and interlocking
phases of performance, and, further, that not only specific
actions but forms of action are typified. That is, there will be
the recognition not only of a particular actor performing an
action oftype X, but oftype-X action as being performable by
any actor to whom the relevance structure in question can be
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
plausibly imputed. For example, one may recognize one's
brother-in-law engaged in thrashing one's insolent offspring
and understand that this particular action is only one instance
of a form of action appropriate to other pairs of uncles and
nephews, indeed, is a generally available pattern in a matrilocal
society. Only ifthe latter typification prevails will this incident
follow a socially taken-for-granted course, with the father discreetly
withdrawing from the scene so as not to disturb the
legitimate exercise of avuncular authority.
The typification of forms of action requires that these have
an objective sense, which in turn requires a linguistic objectification.
That is, there will be a vocabulary referring to these
forms ofaction (such as 'nephew-thrashing', which will belong
to a much larger linguistic structuring of kinship and its
various rights and obligations). In principle, then, an action
and its sense can be apprehended apart from individual performances
ofit and the variable subjective processes associated
with them. Both self and other can be apprehended as performers
of objective, generally known actions, which are recurrent
and repeatable by any actor of the appropriate type.
This has very important consequences for self-experience.
In the course of action there is an identification of the self
with the objective sense of the action; the action that is going
on determines, for that moment, the self-apprehension of the
actor, and does so in the objective sense that has been socially
ascribed to the action. Although there continues to be a
margina! awareness of the body and other aspects of the self
not directly involved in the action, the actor, for that moment,
apprehends himself essentially in identification with the
socially objectivated action ('I am now thrashing my nephew'
-a taken-for-granted episode in the routine of everyday life).
Mter the action has taken place there is a further important
consequence, as the actor reflects about his action. Now a part
· of the self is objectified as the performer of this action, with
the whole self again becoming relatively disidentifi.ed from the
performed action. That is, it becomes possible to conceive of
the self as having been only partially involved in the action
(after all, the man in our example is other things besides being
a nephew-thrasher). It is not difficult to see that, as
these objectifications accumulate ('nephew-thrasher', �sisterSOCIETY
AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
supporter', 'initiate-warrior', 'rain-dance virtuoso', and so
forth), an entire sector of self-consciousness is structured in
terms of these objectifications. In other words, a segment of
the self is objectified in terms of the socially available
typifications. This segment is the truly 'social self', which is
subjectively experienced as distinct from and even confronting
the self in its totality.36 This important phenomenon,
which allows an internal 'conversation' between the different
segments of the self, will be taken up again later when we
look at the process by which the socially constructed world is
internalized in individual consciousness. For the moment,
what is important is the relationship of the phenomenon to
the objectively available typifications of conduct.
In sum, the actor identifies with the socially objectivated
typifications of conduct in actu, but re-establishes .distance
from them as he reflects about his conduct afterwards. This
distance between the actor and his action can be retained in
consciousness and projected to future repetitions ofthe actions.
In this way both acting selfand acting others are apprehended
not as unique individuals, but as types. By definition, these
types are interchangeable.
We can properly begin to speak of roles when this kind of
typification occurs in the context of an objectified stock of
knowledge common to a collectivity of actors. Roles are types
of actors in such a context.37 It can readily be seen that the
construction of role typologies is a necessary correlate of the
institutionalization of conduct. Institutions are embodied in
individual experience by means of roles. The roles, objectified
linguistically, are an essential ingredient of the objectively
available world of any society. By playing roles, the individual
participates in a social world. By internalizing these roles, the
same world becomes subjectively real to him.
In the common stock of knowledge there are standards of
role performance that are accessible to all members of a
society, or at least to those who are potential performers ofthe
roles in question. This general accessibility is itselfpart ofthe
same stock ofknowledge; not only are the standards of role X
generally known, but it is known that these standards are
known. Consequently every putative actor of role X can be
held responsible for abiding by the standards, which can be
91
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
taught as part of the institutional tradition and used to verify
the credentials of all performers and, by the same token, serve
as controls.
The origins of roles lie in the same fundamental process of
habitualization and objectivation as the origins of institutions.
Roles appear as soon as a common stock of knowledge containing
reciprocal typifications of conduct is in process of
formation, a process that, as we have seen, is endemic to social
interaction and prior to instiwtionalization proper. The question
as to which roles become institutionalized is identical
with the question as to which areas of conduct are affected by
institutionalization, and may be answered the same way. All
institutionalized conduct involves roles. Thus roles share in
the controlling character of institutionalization. As soon as
actors are typified as role performers, their conduct is ipsofacto
susceptible to enforcement. Compliance and non-compliance
with socially defined role standards cease to be optional,
though, of course, the severity of sanctions may vary from
case to case.
The roles represent the institutional order.38 This representation
takes place on two levels. First, performance of the role
represents itself. For instance, to engage in judging is to represent
the role of judge. The judging individual is not acting
'on his own', but qua judge. Second, the role represents an
entire institutional nexus of conduct. The role of judge stands
in relationship to other roles, the totality of which comprises
the institution of law. The judge acts as the representative of
this institution. Only through such representation in performed
roles can the institution manifest itself in actual experience.
The institution, with its assemblage of'programmed'
actions, is like the unwritten libretto ofa drama. The realization
of the drama depends upon the reiterated performances of its
prescribed roles by living actors. The actors embody the roles
and actualize the drama by representing it on the given stage.
Neither drama nor institution exist empirically apart from this
recurrent realization. To say, then, that roles represent institutions
is to say that roles make it possible for institutions to
exist, ever again, as a real presence in the experience of living
individuals.
Institutions are also represented in other ways. Their lin-
92
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
guistic objectifications, from their simple verbal designations
to their incorporation in highly complex symbolizations of
reality, also represent them (that is, make them present) in
experience. And they may be symbolically represented by
physical objects, both natural and artificial. All these representations,
however, become 'dead' (that is, bereft of subjective
reality) unless they are ongoingly 'brought to life' in actual
human conduct. The representation of an institution in and
by roles is thus the representation par excellence, on which all
other representations are dependent. For example, the institution
of law is, of course, also represented by legal language,
codes of law, theories of jurisprudence and, finally, by the
ultimate legitimations of the institution and its norms in
ethical, religious or mythological systems of thought. Such
man-made phenomena as the awesome paraphernalia that
frequently accompany the administration of law, and such
natural ones as the clap of thunder that may be taken as the
divine verdict in a trial by ordeal and may eventually even
become a symbol of ultimate justice, further represent the
institution. All these representations, however, derive their
continuing significance an� even intelligibility from their
utilization in human conduct, which here, ofcourse, is conduct
typified in the institutional roles of the law.
When individuals begin to reflect upon these matters they
face the problem of binding the various representations together
in a cohesive whole that will make sense.39 Any concrete
role performance refers to the objective sense ofthe institution,
and thus to the other complementary role performances, and
to the sense of the institution as a whole. While the problem of
integrating the various representations so involved is solved
primarily on the level of legitimation, it is also dealt with in
terms of certain roles. All roles represent the institutional
order in the aforementioned sense. Some roles, however,
symbolically represent that order in its totality more than
others. Such roles are ofgreat strategic importance in a society,
since they represent not only this or that institution, but the
integration of all institutions in a meaningful world. Ipsofacto,
of course these roles help in maintaining such integration in' .
the consciousness and conduct of the members of the soc1ety,
that is, they have a special relationship to the legitimating
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THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
apparatus of the society. Some roles have no functions other
than this symbolic representation of the institutional order as
an integrated totality, others take on this function from time
to time in addition to the less exalted functions they routinely
perform. The judge, for instance, may, on occasion in some. '
particularly important case, represent the total integration of
society in this way. The monarch does so all the time and
indeed, in a constitutional monarchy, may have no othe;
function than as a 'living symbol' for all levels of the society,
do�n to the man in the street. Historically, roles that symbolically
represent the total institutional order have been most
commonly located in political and religious institutions.40
More important for our immediate considerations is the
character of roles as mediators of specific sectors of the common
stock of knowledge. By virtue of the roles he plays the
individual is inducted into specific areas ofsocially objectivated
knowledge, not only in the narrower cognitive sense but also. '
m the sense of the 'knowledge' of norms, values and even
emotions. To be a judge obviously involves a knowledge of
the Iaw and probably also knowledge of a much wider range of
human affairs that are legally relevant. It also involves, howev�r,
'knowle�ge' of the val
.
ues and attitudes deemed appropnate
for a Judge, extendmg as far as those proverbially
deemed appropriate for a judge's wife. The judge must also
have appropriate 'knowledge' in the domain of the emotions :
he will have to know, for example, when to restrain his feelings
of compassion, to mention a not unimportant psychological
prerequisite for this role. In this way, each role opens an
entrance into a specific sector of the society's total stock of
knowledge. To learn a role it is not enough to acquire the
routines immediately necessary for its 'outward' performance.
One must also be initiated into the various cognitive and even
affective layers of the body of knowledge that is directly and
indirectly appropriate to this role.
This implies a social distribution ofknowledge.41 A society's
stock of knowledge is structured in terms of what is generally
relevant and what is relevant only to specific roles. This is true
of even very simple social situations, such as our previous
example of a social situation produced by the ongoing interaction
of a man, a bisexual woman and a Lesbian. Here some
94
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
knowledge is relevant to all three individuals (for instance,
knowledge of the procedures necessary to keep this company
econoxnically afloat), while other knowledge is relevant only to
two of the individuals (the savoir-faire of Lesbian or, in the
other case, of heterosexual seduction). In other words, the
social distribution of knowledge entails a dichotomization in
terms of general and role-specific relevance.
Given the historical accumulation ofknowledge in a society,
we can assume that, because of the division of labour, rolespecific
knowledge will grow at a faster rate than generally
relevant and accessible knowledge. The multiplication of
specific tasks brought about by the division of labour requires
standardized solutions that can be readily learned and transInitted.
These in turn require specialized knowledge of certain
situations, and of the means/ends relationships in terms of
which the situations are socially defined. In other words,
specialists will arise, each ofwhom will have to know whatever
is deemed necessary for the fulfilment of his particular task.
To accumulate role-specific knowledge a society must be so
organized that certain individuals can concentrate on their
specialities. If in a hunting society certain individuals are to
become specialists as swordsmiths, there will have to be provisions
to excuse them from the hunting activities that are
incumbent on all other adult males. Specialized knowledge of
a more elusive kind, such as the knowledge of mystagogues
and other intellectuals, requires sixnilar social organization. In
all these cases the specialists become administrators of the
sectors of the stock of knowledge that have been socially
assigned to them.
At the same time, an important part of generally relevant
knowledge is the typology of specialists. While the specialists
are defined as individuals who know their specialities, everyone
must know who the specialists are in case their specialities
are needed. The man in the street is not expected to knoN the
intricacies of the magic of inducing fertility or casting evil
spells. What he must know, however, is which magicians to
call upon if the need for either of these services arises. A
typology of experts (what contemporary social workers call a
referral guide) is thus part ofthe generally relevant and acces:.
sible stock ofknowledge, while the knowledge that constitutes
95
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
expertise is not. The practical difficulties that may arise in
certa�n societies (for instance, when there are competing
cotenes ofexperts, or when specialization has become so complicated
that the layman gets confused) need not concern us
at the moment.
It is thus possible to analyse the relationship between roles
and knowledge from two vantage points. Looked at from the
per�pe�tive of the institutional order, the roles appear as
msutut10nal representations and mediations of the institutionally
objectivated aggregates of knowledge. Looked at from
the perspective of the several roles, each role carries with it a
socially defined appendage of knowledge. Both perspectives,
of course, point to the same global phenomenon, which is the
essential dialectic of society. The first perspective can be
�u��ed up in the proposition that society exists only as
IDdlVtduals are conscious of it, the second in the proposition
that individual consciousness is socially determined. Narrowing
this to the matter ofroles, we can say that, on the one hand,
the institutional order is real only in so far as it is realized in
performed roles and that, on the other hand, roles are representative
of aninstitutional order that defines their character
(including their appendages of knowledge) and from which
they derive their objective sense.
The analysis ofroles is ofparticular importance to the sociology
of knowledge because it reveals the mediations between
the macroscopic universes ofmeaning objectivated in a society
and the ways by which these universes are subjectively real to
individuals. Thus it is possible, for example, to analyse the
macroscopic social roots of a religious world view in certain
collectivities (classes, say, or ethnic groups, or intellectual
coteries), and also to analyse tl- , manner in which this world
view is manifested in the consciousness of an individual. The
two analyses can be brought together only if one inquires into
the ways in which the individual, in his total social activity,
relates to the collectivity in question. Such an inquiry will, of
necessity, be an exercise in role analysis.42
SociETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
Scope and Modes of Institutionalization
So far we have discussed institutionalization in terms of essential
features that may be taken as sociological constants.
Obviously we cannot in this treatise give even an overview of
the countless variations in the historical manifestations and
combinations ofthese constants - a task that could be achieved
only by writing a universal history from the point of view of
sociological theory. There are, however, a number ofhistorical
variations in the character of institutions that are so important
for concrete sociological analyses that they should be at least
briefly discussed. Our focus will, of course, continue to be on
the relationship between institutions and knowledge.
In investigating any concrete institutional order, one may
ask the following question : What is the scope ofinstitutionalization
within the totality ofsocial actions in a given collectivity?·
In other words, how large is the sector of institutionalized
activity as compared with the sector that is left uninstitutionalized?43
Clearly there is historical variability in this
matter, with different societies allowing more or less room for
uninstitutionalized actions. An important general consideration
is what factors determine a wider as against a narrower
scope of institutionalization.
Very formally, the scope of instituuunalization depends on
the generality of the relevance structures. If many or most
relevance structures in a society are generally shared, the scope
of institutionalization will be wide. If only few relevance
structures are generally shared, the scope of institutionalization
will be narrow. In the latter case, there is the further
possibility that the institutional order will be highly fragmented,
as certain relevance structures are shared by groups
within the society but not by the society as a whole.
It may be heuristically useful to think here in terms ofidealtypical
extremes. It is possible to conceive of a society in
which institutionalization is total. In such a society, all problems
are common, all solutions to these problems are socially
objectivated and all social actions are institutionalized. The
institutional order embraces the totality of social life, which
97
THE SociAL CoNSTRUCTION oF REALITY
resembles the continuous performance of a complex, highly
stylized liturgy. There is no role-specific distribution o f
knowledge, or nearly none, since all roles are performed within
situations of equal relevance to all the actors. This heuristic
model of a totally institutionalized society (a fit topic for
nightmares, it might be remarked in passing) can be slightly
modified by conceiving that all social actions are institutionalized,
but not only around common problems. While the
style oflife such a society would impose on its members would
be equally rigid, there would be a greater degree ofrole-specific
distribution of knowledge. A number of liturgies would be
going on at the same time, so to speak. Needless to say, neither
the model of institutional totality nor its modification can be
found in history. Actual societies can, however, be considered
in terms oftheir approximation to this extreme type. It is then
possible to say that primitive societies approximate the type
to a much higher degree than civilized ones.44 It may even be
said that in the development ofarchaic civilizations there is a
progressive movement away from this type.45
The opposite extreme would be a society in which there is
only one common problem, and institutionalization occurs
only with respect to actions concerned with this problem. In
such a society there would be almost no common stock of
knowledge. Almost all knowledge would be role-specific. In
terms of macroscopic societies, even approximations of this
type are historically unavailable. But certain approximations
can be found in smaller social formations - for example, in
libertarian colonies where common concerns are limited to
economic arrangements, or in military expeditions consisting
of a number oftribal or ethnic units whose only common problem
is the waging of the war.
Apart from stimulating sociological fantasies, such heuristic
fictions are useful only in so far as they help to clarify the conditions
that favour approximations to them. The most general
condition is the degree ofdivision oflabour, with the concomitant
differentiation ofinstitutions.48 Any society in which there
is increasing division of labour is moving away from the first
extreme type described above. Another general condition,
closely related to the previous one, is availability of an
economic surplus, which makes it possible for certain indiviSOCIETY
AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
duals or groups to engage in specialized activities not directly
concerned with subsistence.47 These specialized activities, as
we have seen, lead to specialization and segmentation in the
common stock of knowledge. And the latter makes possible
knowledge subjectively detached from any social relevance,
that is, 'pure theory'.48 This means that certain individuals are
(to return to a previous example) freed from hunting not only
to forge weapons but also to fabricate myths. Thus we have
the 'theoretical life', with its luxurious proliferation of
specialized bodies of knowledge, administered by specialists
whose social prestige may actually depend upon their inability
to do anything except theorize - which leads to a number of
analytic problems to which we shall return later.
Institutionalization is not, however, an irreversible process,
despite the fact that institutions, once formed, have a tendency
to persist.49 For a variety of historical reasons, the scope of
institutionalized actions may diminish ; de-institutionalization
may take place in certain areas of social life.50 For example, the
private sphere that has emerged in modern industrial society
is considerably de-institutionalized as compared to the public
sphere.51
A further question, with respect to which institutional
orders will vary historically, is : What is the relationship of the
various institutions to each other, on the levels of performance
and meaning?52 In the first extreme type discussed above,
there is a unity of institutional performances and meanings in
each subjective biography. The entire social stock of knowledge
is actualized in every individual biography. Everybody
does everything and knows everything. The problem of the
integration ofmeanings (that is, of the meaningful relationship
of the various institutions) is an exclusively subjective one.
The objective sense of the institutional order presents itself to
each individual as given and generally known, socially taken
for granted as such. If there is any problein at all, it is because
of subjective difficulties the individual may have internalizing
the socially agreed-upon meanings.
With increasing deviance from this heuristic model (that is,
of course, with all actual societies, though not to the same
degree) there will be important modifications in the givenness
of the institutional meanings. The first two of these we have
99
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
already indicated : a segmentation of the institutional order�
with only certain types of individuals performing certain
actions, and, following that, a social distribution ofknowledge,
with role-specific knowledge coming to be reserved to certain
types. With these developments, however, a new configuration
appears on the level ofmeaning. There will now be an objective
problem with respect to an encompassing integration of
meanings within the entire society. This is an altogether
different problem from the merely subjective one of harmonizing
the sense one makes of one's biography with the
sense ascribed to it by society. The difference is as great as
that between producing propaganda that will convince others
and producing memoirs that will convince oneself.
In our example of the man/woman/Lesbian triangle we
went to some lengths to show that it cannot be assumed a
priori that different processes of institutionalization will 'hang
together'. The relevance structure that is shared by the man
and the woman (A-B) does not have to be integrated with the
one shared by the woman and the Lesbian (B-C), or with the
one shared by the Lesbian and the man (C-A). Discrete
institutional processes can continue to coexist without overall
integration. We then argued that the empirical fact that institutions
do hang together, despite the impossibility ofassuming
this a priori, can be accounted for only in reference to the
reflective consciousness of individuals who impose a certain
logic upon their experience of the several institutions. We can
now push this argument one step further by assuming that one
of our three individuals (let us assume that it is the man, A)
becomes dissatisfied with the lack ofsymmetry in the situation.
This does not imply that the relevances in which he shares
(A-B and C-A) have changed for him. It is rather the relevance
in which he has not previously shared (B-C) that now
bothers him. This may be because it interferes with his own
interests (C spends too much time lllaking love with B and
neglects her flower-arranging activities with him), or it may be
that he has theoretical ambitions. In any case, he wants to
unite the three discrete relevances and their concomitant
habitualization processes into a cohesive, meaningful whole A-B-C.
How can he do this?
Let us imagine him a religious genius. One day he presents
IOO
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
the other two with a new mythology. The world was created in
two stages, the dry land by the creator god copulating with his
sister, the sea in an act of mutual masturbation by the latter
and a twin goddess. And when the world was thus made, the
creator god joined the twin goddess in the great flower dance,
and in this way there came to be flora and fauna on the face of
the dry land. The existing triangulation of heterosexuality,
Lesbianism and flower cultivation is thus nothing less than a
human imitation of the archetypal actions of the gods. Not
bad? The reader with some background in comparative mythology
will have no difficulty finding historical parallels to
this cosmogonic vignette. Our man may have more difficulty
getting the others to accept his theory. He will have a problem
of propaganda. If, however, we assume that B and C have also
had practical difficulties in keeping their various projects going,
or (less likely) that they are inspired by A's vision of the
cosmos, there is a good chance that he will be able to put his
scheme over. Once he has succeeded and all three individuals
'know' that their several actions work together for the great
society (which is A-B-C), this 'knowledge' will influence
what goes on in the situation. For instance, C may be more
amenable to budgeting her time in an equitable way between
her two major enterprises.
If this extension of our example seems far-fetched, we can
bring it closer to home by imagining a secularization process
in the consciousness of our religious genius. Mythology no
longer seems plausible. The situation has tQ be explained by
social science. This, of course, is very easy. lc is evident (to
our religious genius turned social scientist, that is) that the
two sorts of sexual activity going on in the situation express
deep-seated psychological needs of the participants. · He
'knows' that to frustrate these needs will lead to 'disfunctional'
tensions. On the other hand, it is a fact that our trio sell their
flowers for coconuts on the other end of the island. That
settles it. Behaviour patterns A-B and B-C are functional in
terms of the 'personality system', while C-A is functional in
terms of the economic sector of the 'social system'. A-B-C is
nothing but the rational outcome of functional integration on
the intersystemic level. Again, if A is successful in propagandizing
his two girls with this theory, their 'knowledge'
101
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
of the functional imperatives involved in their situation will
have certain controlling consequences for their conduct.
Mutatis mutandis, the same argument will hold if we transpose
it from the face-to-face idyll of our example to the
macro-social level. The segmentation ofthe institutional order
and the concomitant distribution ofknowledge will lead to the
problem ofproviding integrative meanings thatwill encompass
the society and provide an overall context of objective sense
for the individual's fragmented social experience and knowledge.
Furthermore, there will be not only the problem of
overall meaningful integration, but also aproblem oflegitimating
the institutional activities of one type of actor vis-a-vis
other types. We may assume that there is a universe ofmeaning
that bestows objective sense on the activities of warriors,
farmers, traders and exorcists. This does not mean that there
will be no conflict of interests between these types of actors.
Even within the common universe of meaning, the exorcists
may have a problem of 'explaining' some of their activities to
the warriors, and so forth. The methods of such legitimation
again vary historically.53
Another consequence of institutional segmentation is the
possibility of socially segregated sub-universes of meaning.
These result from accentuations of role specialization to the
point where role-specific knowledge becomes altogether esoteric
as against the common stock of knowledge. Such subuniverses
ofmeaning may or may not be submerged from the
common view. In certain cases, not only are the cognitive
contents of the sub-universe esoteric, but even the existence
of the sub-universe and of the collectivity that sustains it may
be a secret. Sub-universes of meaning may be socially structured
by various criteria - sex, age, occupation, religious
inclination, aesthetic taste, and so on. The chance of subuniverses
appearing, of course, increases steadily with progressive
division of labour and econ01nic surplus. A society
with a subsistence economy can have cognitive segregation
between men and women, or between old and young warriors,
as in the 'secret societies' common in Mrica and among
American Indians. It may still be able to afford the esoteric
existence of a few priests and magicians. Full-blown subuniverses
ofmeaning, such as characterized,say, Hindu castes,
10.2
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
the Chinese literary bureaucracy or the priestly coteries of
ancient Egypt, require much more developed solutions of the
economic problem.
Like all social edifices of meaning, the sub-universes must
be 'carried' by a particular collectivity,54 that is, by the group
that ongoingly produ.::es the meanings in question and within
which these meanings have objective reality. Conflict or
competition may exist between such groups. On the simplest
level, there may be conflict over the allocation of surplus
resources to the specialists in question, for example, over
exemption from productive labour. Who is to be officially
exempt, all medicine men, or only those who perform services
in the household of the chief? Or, who is to receive a fixed
stipend from the authorities, those who cure the sick with
herbs or those who do it by going into a trance? Such social
conflicts are readily translated into conflicts between rival
schools of thought, each seeking to establish itself and to discredit
if not liquidate the competitive body of knowledge. In
contemporary society, we continue to have such conflicts
(socio-economic as well as cognitive) between orthodox medicine
and such rivals as chiropractice, homeopathy or Christian
Science. In advanced industrial societies, with their immense
economic surplus allowing large numbers of individuals to
devote themselves full-time to even the obscurest pursuits,
pluralistic competition between sub-universes of meaning of
every conceivable sort becomes the normal state of affairs.55
With the establishment of sub-universes of meaning a
variety ofperspectives on the total society emerges, each viewing
the latter from the angle of one sub-universe. The chiropractor
has a different angle on society than the medical
school professor, the poet than the business man,the Jew than
the Gentile, and so on. It goes without saying that this multiplication
of perspectives greatly increases the problem of
establishing a stable symbolic canopy for the entire society.
Each perspective, with whatever appendages of theories or
even Weltanschauungen, will be related to the concrete social
interests of the group that holds it. This does not mean, however,
that the various perspectives, let alone the theories or
We/tanschauungen, are nothing but mechanical reflections of
the social interests. Especially on the theoretical level it is
103
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
quite possible for knowledge to attain a great deal of detachment
from the biographical and social interests ofthe knower.
Thus there may be tangible social reasons why Jews have become
preoccupied with certain scientific enterprises, but it is
impossible to predict scientific positions in terms oftheir being
held by Jews or non-Jews. In other words, the scientific universe
of meaning is capable of attaining a good deal of autonomy
as against its own social base. Theoretically, though in
practice there will be great variations, this holds with any body
of knowledge, even with cognitive perspectives on society.
What is more, a body of knowledge, once it is raised to the
level of a relatively autonomous sub-universe ofmeaning, has
the capacity to act back upon the collectivity that has produced
it. For instance, Jews may become social scientists because
they have special problems in society as Jews. But once they
have been initiated into the social-scientific universe of discourse,
they may not only look upon society from an angle
that is no longer distinctively Jewish, but even their social
activities as Jews may change as a result of their newly
acquired social-scientific perspectives. The extent of such
detachment of knowledge from its existential origins depends
upon a considerable number of historical variables (such as
the urgency of the social interests involved, the degree of
theoretical refinement of the knowledge in question, the social
relevance or irrelevance of the latter, and others). The
important principle for our general considerations is that the
relationship between knowledge and its social base is a dialectical
one, that is, knowledge is a social product and knowledge
is a factor in social change.66 This principle of the dialectic
between social production and the objectivated world that is
its product has already been explicated ; it is especially
important to keep it in mind in any analysis of concrete
subuniverses of meaning.
The increasing number and complexity of sub-universes
make them increasingly inaccessible to outsiders. They become
esoteric enclaves, 'hermetically sealed' (in the sense
classically associated with the Hermetic corpus of secret lore)
to all but those who have been properly initiated into their
mysteries. The increasing autonomy of sub-universes makes
for special problems of legitimation 'Vis-a-vis both outsiders
104
SociETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
and insiders. The outsiders have to be kept out, sometimes
even kept ignorant of the existence of the sub-universe. If,
however, they are not so ignorant, and if the sub-universe
requires various special privileges and recognitions from the
larger society, there is the problem ofkeeping out the outsiders
and at the same time having them acknowledge the legitimacy
of this procedure. This is done through various techniques of
intimidation, rational and irrational propaganda (appealing to
the outsiders' interests and to their emotions), mystification
and, generally, the manipulation of prestige symbols. The
insiders, on the other hand, have to be kept in. This requires
the development of both practical and theoretical procedures
by which the temptation to escape from the sub-universe can
be checked. We shall look at some of the details of this double
problem oflegitimation later. An illustration may serve for the
moment. It is not enough to set up an esoteric sub-universe of
medicine. The lay public must be convinced that this is right
and beneficial, and the medical fraternity must be held to the
standards of the suq-universe. Thus the general population is
intimidated by images of the physical doom that follows
'going against doctor's advice' ; it is persuaded not to do so by
the pragmatic benefits of compliance, and by its own horror of
illness and death. To underline its authority the medical profession
shrouds itself in the age-old symbols of power and
mystery, from outlandish costume to incomprehensible language,
all ofwhich, ofcourse, are legitimated to the public and
to itself in pragmatic terms. Meanwhile the fully accredited
inhabitants of the . medical world are kept from 'quackery'
(that is, from stepping outside the medical sub-universe in
thought or action) not only by the powerful external controls
available to the profession, but by a whole body of professional
knowledge that offers them 'scientific proof' of the folly
and even wickedness of such deviance. In other words, an
entire legitimating machinery is at work so that laymen will
remain laymen, and doctors doctors, and (if at all possible)
that both will do so happily.
Special problems arise as a result of differential rates of
change of institutions and sub.ulliverses.�'>7 This makes more
difficult both the overall legitimation ofthe institutional order
and the specific legitimations of particular institutions or sub-
105
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
�verses. A feudal society with a modern army, a landed
artstocracy having to exist under conditions of industrial
capitalism, a traditional religion forced to cope with the
popularization of a scientific world view, the coexistence in
one society of the theory of relativity and astrology - our
contemporary experience is so full of examples of this sort
that it is unnecessary to belabour the point. Suffice it to say
that, under such conditions, the work of the several legitimators
becomes especially strenuous.
A final question ofgreat theoretical interest arisingfrom the
historical variability of institutionalization has to do with the
manner in which the institutional order is objectified : To
what extent is an institutional order, or any part of it, apprehended
as a non-human facticity? This is the question of the
reification of social reality.ss
Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if
they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly suprahuman
terms. Another way of saying this is that reification is
the apprehension of the products of human activity as zf they
were something other than human products - such as facts of
nature, results ofcosmic laws, or manifestations ofdivine will.
Reificati�n implies that man is capable of forgetting his own
authorship of the human world, and, further, that the dialectic
between man, the producer, and his products is lost to consciousness.
The reified world is, by definition, a dehumanized
w�rld. It is experienced by man as a strange facticity, an opus
a/zenum over which he has no control rather than as the opus
proprium of his own productive activity.
It will be clear from our previous discussion of objectivation
that, as soon as an objective social world is established the
possibility ofreification is never far away.58 The objectivicyof
the �ocial w�rld means that it confronts man as something
outside of htmself. The decisive question is whether he still
retains the awareness that, however objectivated, the social
world was made by men - and, therefore, can be remade by
them. In other words, reification can be described as an extreme
step in the process ofobjectivation, whereby the objectivated
world loses its comprehensibility as a human enterprise
and becomes fixated as a non-hum.aJl. non-humanizable, inert
facticity.80 Typically, the real relationship between man and
Io6
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
his world is reversed in consciousness. Man, the producer of a
world, is apprehended as its product, and human activity a� an
epiphenomenon of non-human processes. Human meanmgs
are no longer understood as world-producing but as being, in
their turn, products of the 'nature of things'. I
.
t must be emphasized
that reification is a modality of consciousness, more
precisely, a modality of man's objectification of the human
world. Even while apprehending the world in reified terms,
man continues to produce it. That is, man is capable paradoxically
of producing a reality that denies him.61
Reification is possible on both the pre-theoretical and theoretical
levels of consciousness. Complex theoretical systems
can be described as reifications, though presumably they have
their roots in pre-theoretical reifications established i� t?is or
that social situation. Thus it would be an error to ltmtt the
concept of reification to the mental
.
constructions of int
.
ellectuals.
Reification exists in the consciOusness of the man tn the
street and indeed, the latter presence is more practically
significant: It would also be a mistake to look at reification as
a perversion of an originally non-reified apprehension of the
social world, a sort of cognitive fall from grace. On the contrary,
the available ethnological and psychological evi�e�ce
seems to indicate the opposite, namely, that the origtnal
apprehension of the social w_orld is hi�hlr re�ed both
phylogenetically and ontogeneucally.12 This Imph
.
es that a�
apprehension of reification as a modality of consciOusness IS
dependent upon an at least relative de-reification
.
of c
.
onsciousness,
which is a comparatively late development tn history and
in any individual biography.
.
Both the institutional order as a whole and segments of It
may be apprehended in reified terms. For example, the entire
order of society may be conceived of as of a microcosm reflecting
the macrocosm of the total universe as made by the gods.
Whatever happens 'here below' is but a pale reflection ofwhat
takes place 'up above'.ea Particular insti�tions may � app�ehended
in similar ways. The basic 'recrpe' for the reificauon
of institutions is to bestow on them an ontological status independent
of human activi� and signification.
.
specific
reifications are variations on this general theme. Marnage, for
instance, may be reified as an imitation of divine acts of
107
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
creativity, as a universal mandate ofnatural laws, as the necessary
consequence of biological or psychological forces, or, for
that matter, as a functional imperative of the social system.
What all these reifications have in common is their obfuscation
of marriage as an ongoing human production. As can be
readily seen in this example, the reification may occur both
theoretically and pre-theoretically. Thus the mystagogue can
concoct a highly sophisticated theory reaching out from the
concrete human event to the farthest corners of the divine
cosmos, but an illiterate peasant couple being married may
apprehend the event with a similarly reifying shudder ofmetaphysical
dread. Through reification, the world of institutions
appears to merge with the world of nature. It becomes necessity
and fate, and is lived through as such, happily or unhappily
as the case may be.
Roles may be reified in the same manner as institutions. The
sector ofself-consciousness that has been objectified in the role
is then also apprehended as an inevitable fate, for which the
individual may disclaim responsibility. The paradigmatic
formula for this kind of reification is the statement 'I have no
choice in the matter, I have to act this way because of my
position' - as husband, father, general, archbishop, chairman
of the board, gangster or hangman, as the case may be. This
means that the reification of roles narrows the subjective distance
that the individual may establish between himself and
his role-playing. The distance implied in all objectification
remains, of course, but the distance brought about by disidentification
shrinks to the vanishing point. Finally, identity
itself (the total self, if one prefers) may be reified, both one's
own and that of others. There is then a total identification of
the individual with his socially assigned typifications. He is
apprehended as nothing but that type. This apprehension may
be positively or negatively accented in terms of values or emotions.
The identification of 'Jew' may be equally reifying for
the anti-Semite and the Jew himself, except that the latter will
accent the identification positively and the former negatively.
Both reifications bestow an ontological and total status on a
typification that is humanly produced and that, even as it is
internalized, objectifies but a segment ofthe self.64 Once more,
such reifications may range from the pre-theoretical level of
108
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
'what everybody knows about Jews' to the most complex
theories of Jewishness as a manifestation of biology ('Jewish
blood'), psychology ('the Jewish soul') or metaphysics ('the
mystery of Israel').
The analysis ofreification is important because it serves as a
standing corrective to the reifying propensities of theoretical
thought in general and sociological thought in particular. It is
particularly important for the sociology of knowledge, because
it prevents it from falling into an undialectical conception of
the relationship between what men do and what they think.
The historical and empirical application of the sociology of
knowledge must take special note of the social circumstances
that favour de-reification - such as the overall collapse of
institutional orders, the contact between previously segregated
societies, and the important phenomenon of social marginality.85
These problems, however, exceed the framework of
our present considerations.
109