Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann

Phenomenology

Wrote The Social Construction of Reality. Were students of Alfred Schutz.

Studies the process whereby knowledge is created.

Reification: the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms

Typifications: Categories into which objects and people are placed, such as “Europeans”, “readers of the New York Times” or “business competitors”. “The reality of everyday life contains typificatory schemes in terms of which others are apprehended and ‘dealt with’ in face-to-face encounters.

Habitualization: Any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be reproduced with an economy of effort and which, ipso facto, is apprehended by its performer as that pattern.

Institutionalization: occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors….Any such typification is an institution….The institution posits that actions of type X will be performed by actors of type X….Institutions further imply historicity and control.

Argued that learning is a three part process:

Externalization: acting on the world and/or putting something out into the world that could be reacted to.

Objectification: assigning a meaning to the act.

Internalization: bringing the meaning into ones Stock of Knowledge.

Stock of Knowledge: In short, all the stuff we know. Arranged in a very special way. Has to be structured in such a way that stored information can be retreived. As it is taken in knowledge is classified and typified so that it will come forth later, at the right time when it is needed.

Zones of Relevance: Stocks of Knowledge structured to meet the needs of the moment. Graphic equalizer of knowledge.

The three parts of the learning process are all constantly in motion changing the stocks of knowledge and the zones of relevance from second to second. This process is the self for Berger and Luckman.

Society is a multitude of selves doing this.

Duree’: Uninterrupted stream of consciousness. In order to talk, Schutz argues, we must stop the flow to look back on what we have thought inorder to form what we will say. Do you agree?

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