Reality and Religious Studies: The Social Construction of Reality

What do you do when you are in over your head? How do you face being out of your depth? 

I over prepare. I worry away at something, pulling it this way and that, planning out as many eventualities as possible, and take in as much information as I can find. I read a lot (I know, you are shocked!). In school I could come across as an over-achiever but what many didn't know was that this was born out of anxiety. 

So I had a long list of books, meant to prepare me for Religious Studies, as I wen into my second year of undergrad. I knew math. I knew physics. I knew chemistry. These were firm ground beneath my feet. I did not know history, philosophy, sociology, textual studies, world religions, or ancient languages. These were shifting sand. So I picked up the books and read. 

One of those books was The Social Construction of Reality. 

This is a book which re-frames the task of the sociology of knowledge as an analysis of the social construction of reality. That is, it explores how people go about making sense of, explaining, giving meaning to, and creating our everyday reality. For now I will say that if this is a topic of interest to you, you should read the book. For other comments on the content of this book, see below. 

You may wonder how this book has made it into this series. Three ways: Life lessons, deeper understanding, and new eyes for books. 

First, I learned a life lesson as a result of reading this book.  I was woefully unprepared for studies in religion. My papers were sub-par in terms of writing skill and style, not to mention grammar, and my background knowledge was lacking. But I was reading way more than was assigned and I put that work into my papers. The Social Construction of Reality was one of the first books I referenced in a paper that was nowhere in sight as far as the course was concerned. When I got my paper back, covered in red pen so I knew how poorly it was written, I found an underlined comment praising me for having read this book, applying it to this course, and making a good argument. I got an A-. The Professor asked to meet with me. 

I learned that there were people at the university who paid attention to students who read above-grade and who rewarded students for such efforts. I think it is pretty normal, as a teacher, to have an eye out for students who are willing to put in extra work and show potential for further studies. I was one of those students. This lesson would help me many times in years to come as it proved to be true not only at the University of Alberta but also at Regent College, where I studied to be a pastor. I also learned, far less helpfully, that I could get by without improving my writing if I simply improved my research. I regret that lesson, but there it is. 

Second, the content of this book was crucial in my own worldview development and understanding of culture. I want to quote a longer passage that was key for me: 

"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 formations. But the specific shape into which this humanness is molded 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." (pg. 49)

To simplify: The way we go about everyday existence is shaped by people and it, in turns, shapes the people within it. This is obvious when we simplify it, but working out the consequences and thinking deeply about how this is so becomes less obvious the more we think about it. From this opening point, Berger and Luckmann go on to explore habitualization and institutionalization, the growth and place of tradition, roles, and legitimating narratives, and more. They outline a sociology that helped me understand biblical concepts of, and my own experience of, sin, the world, and the church. 

This brings me to the third formative impact of this book: new eyes for books. This was the first academic book I read which had such a broad impact on my life and thinking. As such, it opened up for me the world of academic reading. It made me realize that here to was an arena in which I could find voices of substance and import whose work was worth considering deeply. Again, this may be obvious for some of us, but it was by no means obvious to me as a 2nd year university student. I was caught in away of thinking that puts school books into a box whose only purpose is passing a test. (Remember when I commented, in my first post, about loathing the reading I had in school? Yeah, that was my problem, not the books I was assigned nor the teachers I had). Berger and Luckmann broke open that box and, ever afterwards, I have looked at school books, assigned or for research, as books worthy of discerning and careful reading. 

I am, therefore, grateful to Berger and Luckmann for all three of the ways this book has formed me. I also thoroughly enjoyed rereading it this year. 

Note: This post is part of a series which I began here. To see all the posts in the series click the label at the bottom of this post "20yrs40bks".