Peter L. Berger facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Peter L. Berger
|
|
|---|---|
Berger in 2010
|
|
| Born |
Peter Ludwig Berger
March 17, 1929 Vienna, Austria
|
| Died | June 27, 2017 (aged 88) Brookline, Massachusetts, US
|
| Alma mater |
|
|
Notable work
|
The Social Construction of Reality (1966) Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (1963) A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969) |
| Spouse(s) |
Brigitte Kellner
(m. 1959; died 2015) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral students |
|
| Other notable students | Chaim I. Waxman |
| Influences |
|
Peter Ludwig Berger (17 March 1929 – 27 June 2017) was an Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and theoretical contributions to sociological theory.
Berger is arguably best known for his book, co-authored with Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1966), which is considered one of the most influential texts in the sociology of knowledge and played a central role in the development of social constructionism. In 1998 the International Sociological Association named this book as the fifth most-influential book written in the field of sociology during the 20th century. In addition to this book, some of the other books that Berger has written include: Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (1963); A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969); and The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967).
Berger spent most of his career teaching at The New School for Social Research, at Rutgers University, and at Boston University. Before retiring, Berger had been at Boston University since 1981 and was the director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture.
Biography
Family life
Peter Ludwig Berger was born on March 17, 1929, in Vienna, Austria, to George William and Jelka (Loew) Berger, who were Jewish converts to Christianity. He emigrated to the United States shortly after World War II in 1946 at the age of 17 and in 1952 he became a naturalized citizen. He died on June 27, 2017, in his Brookline, Massachusetts, home after a prolonged illness.
On September 28, 1959, he married Brigitte Kellner, herself an eminent sociologist who was on the faculty at Wellesley College and Boston University where she was the chair of the sociology department at both schools. Brigitte was born in Eastern Germany in 1928. She moved to the United States in the mid-1950s. She was a sociologist who focused on the sociology of the family, arguing that the nuclear family was one of the main causes of modernization. Although she studied traditional families, she supported same-sex relationships. She was on the faculties of Hunter College of the City University of New York, Long Island University, Wellesley College, and Boston University. Additionally, she was author of Societies in Change (1971), The Homeless Mind (1974), The War over the Family (1984), and The Family in the Modern Age (2002). Brigitte Kellner Berger died May 28, 2015.
They had two sons, Thomas Ulrich Berger and Michael George Berger. Thomas is himself a scholar of international relations, now a Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and author of War, Guilt and World Politics After World War II (2012) and Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (2003).
Education and career
After the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938, Berger and his family emigrated to Palestine, then under British rule. He attended a British High school, St. Luke's. Following the German bombings of Haifa, he was evacuated to Mount Carmel, where he developed his life-long interest in religion. In 1947 Berger and his family emigrated again, this time to the United States, where they settled in New York City. Berger attended Wagner College for his Bachelor of Arts and received his MA and PhD from the New School for Social Research in New York in 1954. Berger, in his memoir, described himself as an "accidental sociologist", enrolling here in an effort to learn about American society and help become a Lutheran minister, and learning under Alfred Schütz. In 1955 and 1956 he worked at the Evangelische Akademie in Bad Boll, West Germany. From 1956 to 1958 Berger was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; from 1958 to 1963 he was an associate professor at Hartford Theological Seminary. The next stations in his career were professorships at the New School for Social Research, Rutgers University, and Boston College. Since 1981 Berger was the University Professor of Sociology and Theology at Boston University. He retired from BU in 2009. In 1985 he founded the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, which later transformed into the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA), and is now part of the Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies. He remained the Director of CURA from 1985 to 2010.
The original Peter L. Berger Papers are deposited in the Social Science Archive Konstanz.
CURA
Berger founded the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University in 1985. It is a world-center for research, education, and public scholarship on religion and world affairs. Some of the questions it attempts to answer are: How do religion and values affect political, economic, and public ethical developments around the world? Defying earlier forecasts, why have religious actors and ideas become more rather than less globally powerful in recent years? and In a world of increasing religious and ethical diversity, what are the implications of the revival of public religion for citizenship, democracy, and civil coexistence? CURA has over 140 projects in 40 countries.
Religious views
Berger was a moderate Christian Lutheran conservative whose work in theology, secularization, and modernity at times has challenged the views of contemporary mainstream sociology which tends to lean away from any right-wing political thinking. Ultimately, however, Berger's approach to sociology was humanist with special emphasis on "value-free" analysis.
Influences
Berger's work was notably influenced by Max Weber. Weber focused on the empirical realities of rationality as a characteristic of action and rationalization. In comparison, Berger proposed the usage of the word 'options' rather than freedom as an empirical concept. Therefore, much of the empirical work of Berger and Weber have revolved around the relationship between modern rationalization and options for social action. Weber argued that rationalism can mean a variety of things at the subjective level of consciousness and at the objective level of social institutions. The connection between Berger's analysis of the sociology of religion in modern society and Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism aligns. Weber saw capitalism as a result of the Protestant secularization of work ethic and morality in amassing wealth, which Berger integrates into his analysis about the effects of losing the non-secular foundations for belief about life's ultimate meaning.
Berger's own experiences teaching in North Carolina in the 1950s showed the shocking American prejudice of that era's Southern culture and influenced his humanistic perspective as a way to reveal the ideological forces from which it stemmed.
Honors
Berger was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982. He was doctor honoris causa of Loyola University, Wagner College, the College of the Holy Cross, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Geneva, and the University of Munich, and an honorary member of many scientific associations.
In 2010, he was awarded the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize by the University of Tübingen.
Works
- The Precarious Vision: A Sociologist Looks at Social Fictions and Christian Faith (1961)
- The Noise of Solemn Assemblies (1961)
- Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (1963)
- The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966) with Thomas Luckmann
- The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)
- A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969)
- Movement and Revolution (1970) with Richard John Neuhaus
- Sociology (1972) with Brigitte Berger. Basic Books. – Dutch translation: Sociologie (1972). Basisboeken
- The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (1973) with Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner. Random House
- Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change (1974)
- Facing Up to Modernity: Excursions in Society, Politics and Religion (1979)
- The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (1979)
- Sociology Reinterpreted, (with Hansfried Kellner) (1981)
- The Other Side of God: A Polarity in World Religions (editor, 1981)
- The War Over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground (1983) with Brigitte Berger
- The Capitalist Revolution (1986) New York: Basic Books
- The Capitalist Spirit: Toward a Religious Ethic of Wealth Creation (editor, 1990)
- A Far Glory: The Quest for Faith in an Age of Credulity (1992)
- Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (1997)
- Four Faces of Global Culture (The National Interest, Fall 1997)
- The Limits of Social Cohesion: Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies: A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome (1998)
- The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (editor, et al., 1999)
- Peter Berger and the Study of Religion (edited by Linda Woodhead et al., 2001; includes a Postscript by Berger)
- Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World (2002) with Samuel P. Huntington. Oxford University Press
- Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity (2003). Blackwell Publishing
- Religious America, Secular Europe? (with Grace Davie and Effie Fokas) (2008)
- In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic (2009) with Anton Zijderveld. HarperOne
- Dialogue Between Religious Traditions in an Age of Relativity (2011) Mohr Siebeck
- The Many Altars of Modernity. Towards a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age (2014)
- Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore (2011) Prometheus Books
See also
In Spanish: Peter L. Berger para niños
