Pierre Bourdieu and Social Construction of Reality Essay

experienceableness            Berger and Luckmann in their set aside, amicable Construction of adult male did not only seriously dealt with some(prenominal) sociological themes, they similarly attempted to set up a b atomic number 18-ass humor of the sociology of knowledge. They provided an entree to Schutz and kindly phenomenology and established a sup poseal background for later treats, peculiarly in the fields of sociology of religion and industrialization. However, the roughly daring familiarizeation of the actors in this book was the consolidation of the devil major theoretical postures in the study of the man and his clubhouse physical objectivism and subjectivism to arrive at a new sociology of knowledge.            The favorable wrench of cosmos entails the counterbalance major effort at elaborate the inter tattle and combat-ready kinship mingled with man and his community, a field nevertheless polarized by the antithetical postures of the objectivist and subjectivist schools of thought. time on the mavin hand, objectivism h honest-to-gods that persons comprehension of sincereism is delimitate by the forces of the union imposed upon the unmarried, notwithstanding his consciousness or will, in this respect, loving incidents atomic number 18 seen as subjects that determine the conduct and re lookations of singulars in contrast, subjectivism, in line with Max Weber cerebrateing, holds that the object of cognition is the subjective meaning Byzantine of deed (quoted in Berger & Luckmann, 1966).Berger and Luckmann posited that twain(prenominal) stances should not be seen as antonymous or mutually exclusive. They explain that two judgements make love into play in the construction of hearty frankness. Their position is aptly conveyed in the statement Society is a benignant exposeput. Society is an mark cosmos. Man is a cordial product.            Although, Berger and Luckmann ar ren testifyed for their locomote in this field, capital of South Dakota Bourdieu pile be regarded as the most prolific reason on the subject of societal pragmatism. His pretend on the understanding of loving reality is wide, diverse and at the same sentence convergent. The purpose of this paper is to examine Berger and Luckmanns hearty construction of reality from a Bourdieu perspective, to determine if Bourdieu strengthens and expands Berger and Luckmanns theory of societal reality or addresses the topic from a different theoretical position.            Berger and Luckmann on sociable Construction of Reality            For Berger and Luckmann, albeit man and his familiarity some(prenominal) take the position of product and producer interchangeably, the birth between t he two is not causal, mechanistic or unidirectional, it is, fit to them, dialectic. Dialectic, in the sense that favorable reality is defined by the unending relationship between man and his nightclub. In explanating this theory, the author took re wrangle to the abstract arsenals of habitualisation, Externalisation, typification, Objectivation, institutionalisation, and legitimation.These concepts in effect follow how society, which was the product of man, became the producer of man. The basic understanding that runs by means of these concepts is that the society is the product or ongoing product of man, however, through inbredization of the norms of the produced society, as it is passed from one generation to the other, actions and perceptions of reality pay off limited and restrained by these societal norms, until they be execute established as facts that defines realities. The next question that will research our attention is how does man produces the society and in tur n, man becomes the product of the society.            From Berger and Luckmann viewpoint, habitualisation is the first spirit in the creation of the society. They assert that actions often quantify repeated become cast into a pattern. That is, as undividedistics act, they organise perceptions and actions into a recollective pattern that can be reproduced with tokenish efforts, therefrom such pattern of actions deliver been habitualised. Albeit, habitualised actions still retain their single meanings and character, they atomic number 18 lost everyplace time, as the meanings become embedded in the respective(prenominal)s general stock of knowledge and gum olibanum taken for granted in present and future projects.The authors call forth that habitualisation holds positive advantages for an individual. For one, it frees the individual from the burden of choice, for while there superpower be a hundred slipway of carrying out a pr oject, habitualisation narrows these down to one and thus providing a background in which human beings activities may be carried out with minimal decision making. Furthermore, the meanings embedded meanings of habitualised activities makes it needless for all(prenominal) post to be defined individually, since complex and diverse situations can be subsumed under habitualised predefinitions, such that activities can be anticipated and alternatives assigned standard weights.            Habitualisation precedes and gives have a bun in the oven to institutionalisation. According to Berger and Luckmann, Institutionalisation occurs whenever there is a multiplicative inverse typification of habitualised actions by types of actors, though what should be stressed is the reciprocity of institutional typifications and the typicality of not only the actions bargonly overly the actors in institutions. Furthering this rivalry, they suggest that typification of habitualised actions that build up institutions be always sh atomic number 18d habitualisations that ar available to the members of a extra complaisant group, though not only individual actions, but as well the actors argon typified in such institutions.            However, institunalisation is effected through history. The authors apportion that the reciprocal typification actions that constitute institutions are built up in the course of a shared history. They stress that 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 go in which it was produced (Berger and Luckmann, 1966 p.54). Moreover, it was emphasised that institutions generally manifest in collectivities with considerable number of population and by their very existence, control and define human condu cts by setting up predefined patterns of conducts, which im collapse individual actions in a item direction, as against the numerous directions that is possible theoretically.To adequately conceptualise how society is created through habitualisation and institunalisation and how these come to define human actions and perceptions, the authors created an imaginary situation of a society created by the funda psychical interaction between two individuals A and B thusIf A and B altogether are responsible for having constructed this origination. A and B remain fit of changing or abolishing it. What is more, since they themselves have shaped this world in the course of a shared life 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 purposeness of the institutional world thickens and hardens, not only for the children, b ut (by a mirror effect) for the parents as well.The thither 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 great way and it can no womb-to-tomb 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 arch quality and becomes serious. For the children, the parentally convey world is not fully transparent. Since they had no part in shaping it, it confronts them as a given reality that, like nature, is shadowy in places at least (Berger and Luckmann, 1966 p.59)            In the example above, the child becomes incompetent of distinguishing between the objectivity of the infixed world and the objectivity of social formations. Using the language as an example, a thing is what it is called the child is incapable of comprehension beyond this le vel. It is argued that it is only at this stage that we can now spill the beans of a social world, in a complete sense. This is the period when individuals now come to see societal realities like the facts of the natural world, and it is in this manner that social formations transmitted from one generation to the other.            Pierre Bourdieu on Social Reality            Bourdieu, undeniably offered a more all-encompassing treatise on social knowledge and social realities, however, the underlying ideology that unifies the work of Berger and Luckmann, and Bourdieu is that bought works seek to admit the differences and so doing merge the subjective and objective conceptions in sociology. Both works suggest that the differences and antimony between the structuralist view of the society that seeks out invisible relational patterns in operation(p) behind the control of individuals and the con structivist viewpoint that probes the commonsensible perceptions and actions of the individual (Wacquant, 2006 p.6) are artificial and unnecessary, and thus sought to reconcile both approaches to examine the society.            In line with Berger and Luckmann contention, Bourdieu too believes that the society is the product of mans habituated actions and that the externalisations of these habituations repay the objectivity of societal realities. However, Bourdieu deploys more extensive conceptual models to explain his contention, thus, he did not only strengthened Berger and Luckmanns understandings of social knowledge, he further expands the r to each one of their theory.The conceptual arsenals deployed by Bourdieu in explaining social knowledge and social reality include the feels of figure, hood, field, and doxa. These are intertwined and interrelated in a dynamic fashion, so that each fully explains social knowledge only in relat ion with the others. Thus a brief interrogative sentence of these concepts is pertinent in highlighting Bourdieu stance on social knowledge.            Habitus, though considered an old philosophical notion originating in the thoughts of Aristotle, was retrieved, grow and popularised by Bourdieu in the 1960s. The term is utilise to describe the externalisation of internality and the internalisation of outwardness i.e. it is a formation of durable and permutable dispositions through which an individual judges, perceives and acts in the social world (Wacquant, 2006, 2002). The author contends thatThese unconscious schemata are acquired through lasting exposure to crabby social conditions and conditionings, via the internalization of external constraints and possibilities. This government agency that they are shared by people subjected to similar experiences even as each person has a unique individual variant of the common matrix (this is why individuals of like nationality, class, gender, etc., spontaneously feel at home with one another). It implies also that these systems of dispositions are malleable, since they inscribe into the body the evolving influence of the social milieu, but inwardly the limits set by primary (or earlier) experiences, since it is chassis itself which at every moment filters such influence (Wacquant, 2006 p.7)            From the above, it is discernible that while societal realities defines the actions and perceptions of individuals, this occurs within the cognitive realm of the individual, to some extent, as the flesh tend to act as a mediator between past experiences and present situations, a reason why Bourdieu refers to it as structured, by the patterned social forces that produced it in the first place, and structuring, since it defines and gives coherence to an individuals activities across the different segments of living (Bourdie u, 1977). This fact was adequately illustrated in the study of the skinflint and his body, a study Bourdieu carried out in his childhood village of Barn (Bourdieu, 2004).            Since this system of disposition acquired by individual over time and property influences perception, judgement and action, it also infers that the system of disposition acquired by an individual will depend on his position in the society. Bourdieu called this neat. He differentiate between economic swell subsuming corporeal and financial assets cultural capital comprising stingy emblematic goods, skills and titles and social capital consisting of resources increase by an individual by rectitude of membership of a group.The fourth come apart of capital not commonly mentioned is the emblematic capital, which is slightly different from the three mentioned above. exemplary capital is taken to represent capital that is available to an individual on la nd on honor, prestige and recognition. It is basically derived from culturally classificatory modes, a war hero, for instance, is extremely regarded. However, while the other three species of capital mentioned earlier do have symbolic values, symbolic capital cannot be reborn to other forms of capital. For Bourdieu, the position of any individual or institution and the disposition poised is defined by the overall passel of capital and the composition of the capital possessed.            While habitus and capital determines individuals social knowledge, Bourdieu extends this concept further with the notion of fields. This is based on the contention that the dissimilar spheres of life, art, science, religion, the economy, the law, politics, etc., tend to form distinct microcosms empower with their own rules, regularities, and forms of authority (Wacquant, 2006 p.8) making up the various fields.Field is describe as a structured space of positions that imposes its specific determinations upon all those who enter it. It infers, therefore, that a field structures action and perception within from without, just as habitus defines figure from within. The field channels and directs individual actions by providing an array of options and alternatives with the associated costs and benefits, but the individual still acts within the scope of his habitus. Thus, It takes the run into of disposition and position, the correspondence (or disjuncture) between mental structures and social structures, to generate workout (Bourdieu, 1989, quoted in Wacquant, 2006 p.8).            It is thus clear that both Burger and Luckman, and Bourdieu adequately stressed the fact that social reality is neither the sole product of structural dictates of the society nor that of intentional pursuit of goals as canvassed in objectivism and subjectivism, but the product of the dialectical relationship o f both. Again, although the work of Bourdieu extends this argument further, as can be seen in his work on class, tastes and classification (Bourdieu,1984), the whole argument still boils down to the fact that the interrelationship of structures and cognition influence mans social knowledge, perception of objective reality and practice. Both arguments can be seen to reason along the same line, with that of Bourdieu strengthening and expanding the strive of that of Burger and Luckman.            This similarity between these two approaches to social knowledge is explicitly presented in habitualization of Burger and Luckman and habitus of Bourdieu. In the former, the authors contend that as humanity act, their actions and perceptions are organized into coherent patterns. For Burger and Luckman, it is through this habitualization that individuals construct social meanings, over time. corresponding meanings can be deduced from Bourdieus habi tus, which also contend that by exposure to veritable societal conditions and conditioning, individuals begin to create an internal inventory of meanings that later serve as the basis of practice. Such similarities can also be extended to include Bourdieus concept of field which can be likened to institutions conceived by Burger and Luckman. Both concepts could easily be converged to mean that, while human practice is influenced internally by organized patterns of actions or perceptions, this influence is moulded by the factors prevalent in the immediate society of the individual.            Unfortunately, similarities between both authors cannot be extended further. Burger and Luckmans idea tend to infer that structures and actions influence action in sequence that is, individual actions are institunalized, producing the society, and henceforth, the societal structure totally influences practice. In contrast, Bourdieu deploys an arsenal of conceptual tools in explaining the relationship between structure and action. He uses capital to indicate how the social position of individual influences practice, he also extends the concept of habitus (action) and field (structure) further than the shallow meanings ascribed to these by Burger and Luckman.Unlike the later, Bourdieu could be said to effectively bridge the divide between subjectivism and objectivism, when he indicated that neither habitus nor field is capable of unilaterally determining social action, at any finicky time. He argued that it takes the concourse of habitus and capital (social position), and the correspondence (or disjuncture) between mental structures and social structures to generate social action. What this means is that to explain any social event or pattern, one moldiness inseparably dissect both the social constitution of the individual and the makeup of the particular social structure within which he operates as well as the particular condit ions under which they come to encounter and take advantage upon each other (Bourdieu 1989).            One can also find another order of Bourdieu going deeper and diverse than Burger and Luckman, in his An Invitation to reflexive pronoun Sociology (1992) where Bourdieu insisted that sociologist must at all times be present to the effects that their own internalized structures and meanings can have on their studies. He argued that this could distort or prejudice their objectivity (Bourdieu, 1992). Here again, it becomes apparent that Bourdieu delves deeper and provides a give understanding of social knowledge than did Burger and Luckman, although this does not take away from the fact that both authors seek to achieve the same thing the bridging of the antimony between the subjective and objective views, with the primary differences lying in the skill and substance of each authors views.ReferencesBourdieu, Pierre (2004). The peasant a nd His Body. Ethnography, 5(4) 579599.. (1990). Language and Symbolic Power. Edited and with an introduction by John          Thompson.. (1989). Social blank shell and Symbolic Power. Sociological Theory 7-1 (June) 18- 26. (1984). Distinction A Social retrospect of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge,    MA Harvard University Press..  (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge Cambridge University      Press.Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.         kale University of Chicago Press.Berger, L.  Peter and Thomas Luckmann (1966) The Social Construction of Reality A   Treatise its the Sociology of Knowledge. garden City, New York Anchor Books,           pp. 51-55, 59-61.Wacquant, Loc (2006).Pierre Bourdieu. In Rob Stones (ed.). Key Contemporary            Thinker s. capital of the United Kingdom and New York Macmillan.. (2002). The Sociological Life of Pierre Bourdieu. International Sociology, 17(4)          549556.