5. Social constructionism (vis-à-vis religion.)

a. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966.)

b. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967.)

i. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann.

ii. Introduced the term “social construction” to the social sciences.

iii. Argues that “social order is a human product, or more precisely, an ongoing human production.”

i. “Society is a dialectic phenomenon in that it is a human product, and nothing but a human product, that yet continuously acts back upon its producer.”

ii. “Culture must be continuously produced and reproduced by man. Its structures are, therefore, inherently precarious and predestined to change.”

iii. “Religion has been the historically most widespread and effective instrumentality of legitimation…Religion legitimates so effectively because it relates the precarious reality constructions of empirical societies with ultimate reality.”

iv. “The inherently precarious…constructions of human activity are thus given the semblance of ultimate security and permanence…Their empirical tenuousness is transformed into an overpowering stability as they are understood as but manifestations of the underlying structure of the universe.”