AS A SOCIOLOGIST OF RELIGION THE
INTELLECTUAL PORTRAIT OF PETER L.
BERGER
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Keywords (Original Language):
| Author Name | University of Author |
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Abstract (2. Language):
The sociology, which aims to understand the human and society, is a
discipline that makes easier to understand new situation and the process
which people have to face in the modern age. Many components accepted as
“taken for granted” in the traditional period are investigated with the
experiences of modernization and secularization. The choices are given
importance in religious understandings and a pluralist understanding of
world emerged. Whereas the founder sociologists think that the religion will
disappear in the modern period, it hasn’t come true and the sociology of
religion, as a junction point with religion and sociology, began to enhance its
importance in the modern age. In his university years and first academic
career, Berger aimed to be a well‐known Lutheran theologian; but in the next
years he directed his studies to the field of sociology of religion. Peter Berger
is one of the most important sociologists of religion with his intellectual
transformation and tens of books. In this paper, we’ll try to trace the places
he grew in, his school years, intellectual sources / persons he benefited and
his academic adventure. So, in this paper we purpose to present his
intellectual portrait in the light of his biography and main arguments.
Even though he is from Viennese, he was born in Trieste, Italy on March 17,
1929 because he had some relatives of his mother there. He moved to US with
his family via Palestine. He stayed in Palestine for eight years and joined
many courses related to Presbyterian and Anglican churches. He studied on
different churches of Christianity and then decided to adopt Lutheranism. In
1946 he moved to New York with his family. Because he decided to be a wellknown
Lutheran theologian, he enrolled to the department of theology in Wagner College. After his graduation, he noticed that it is necessary for him
to understand American society to be a famous theologian in the future, so
he enrolled to the department of sociology in New School for Social Research
for master. In these years, he met Thomas Luckmann and they became very
close friends and co‐writers. Berger and Luckmann were affected by his
professors Albert Solomon, Carl Mayer and especially Alfred Schutz. Because
Berger liked very much to interest in the human and society, he certainly
decided to go forward with sociology. He finished his Phd. dissertation in
1952 entitled “The Baha’i Movement: A Contribution to the Sociology of
Religion”. This book includes Berger’s first deep sociological analyses related
to the sociology of religion. From 1956 to 1963 he studied as an academician
at Women’s College of the University of North Carolina and Hartford
Theological Seminary. Then he began to study in New School as an
association professor in 1963. This date is very important for Berger.
Because from now on he has written many important papers and books
which have made Berger a very famous sociologist at worldwide.
He wrote a book entitled Invitation to Sociology (1963) which gained a
reputation in the field of sociology. This book was one of the best‐selling
books written by a sociologist until that day and it was translated to many
languages. He wrote also one of the famous books Social Construction of
Reality (1966) with his best colleague Thomas Luckmann. They developed a
phenomenological perspective in the sociology of knowledge with
inspiration from their professor Alfred Schutz. They produced a dialectical
cycle which includes three phases: externalization, objectivation, and
internalization. They summarized this cycle as “society is a human product,
society is an objective reality, and man is a social product.”
Peter Berger, is a remarkable thinker of the present day, said that the religion
will disappear in the future because he was an advocate of the theory of
secularization at the first career years. However, especially after 1990s, he
has needed to refresh his sociological opinions because of the spiritual
situation at the world and has produced contrary opinions. When we
investigate the reasons of his transformation, we see that Berger himself
explains shortly that this is a journey of change, not a change of mentality.
According to him, modernity hasn’t invariably caused the secularization but
has caused pluralism, which has destroyed uniformity of the conventional
life and has obligated people to choose. Berger, the sociologist of modernity,
has tried to explain the modern world in the frame of modernity, secularity,
and pluralism. He began to study at Rutgers University as a professor in
1970. In these years he wrote many important books like The Homeless Mind:Modernisation and Consciousness (1973), Pyramids of Sacrifice (1974), Facing
up to Modernity (1977).
In 1981 he began to study at Boston University which is a more famous
university. He founded The Institute for the Study of Economic Culture which
examines the relationship between economic development and sociocultural
change in Boston University with his collaborators in 1985. He went
on writing and published many books: Modernity, Pluralism and the Crisis of
Meaning (with Thomas Luckmann, 1995), The Desecularization of the World:
Resurgent Religion and World Politics (editor, 1999), Questions of Faith: A
Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity (2003), Religious America, Secular
Europe? (with Grace Davie and Effie Fokas, 2008), In Praise of Doubt: How to
Have Convictions without Becoming a Fanatic (with Anton Zijderveld, 2010),
Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist ‐How to Explain the World Without
Becoming a Bore‐ (2011), The Many Altars of Modernity: Towards a Paradigm
for Religion in a Pluralist Age (2014). As a result Berger has made remarkable
contribution to the sociology and sociology of religion and he is going on to
write weekly in American Interest about America, Europe, Middle East and
also Turkey with many important thinkers like Mead and Fukuyama.
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Abstract (Original Language):
İnsanı ve toplumu anlamayı kendisine hedef edinen sosyoloji, insanoğlunun son
birkaç asra kadar karşılaşmadığı fakat modern çağla birlikle yüzleşmek zorunda
kaldığı yeni durumu ve süreçleri anlamamızı kolaylaştıran bir disiplindir.
Modernite ve sekülerleşme tecrübeleriyle birlikte geleneksel dönemlerde
“olduğu gibi kabul edilen” pek çok şey sorguya tabi tutulmuş, hemen her şeyde
olduğu gibi dini anlayışlarda da tercihlerin hakim olduğu çoğulcu bir dünya
anlayışı ortaya çıkmıştır. Kurucu sosyologların modern dönemlerde neredeyse
hiç alan açmadığı din, onların öngörülerinin aksine yeni sahalar bulmuş,
sosyoloji ve dinin kavşak noktası olan din sosyolojisi, pek çok düşünürün önemli
görüşler ortaya attığı bir disiplin haline gelmiştir. Lutheryan bir teolog olma
amacıyla başladığı üniversite yılları ve ilk akademik çalışmaları, ilerleyen
yıllarda din sosyolojisine doğru evrilen Peter Berger, geçirmiş olduğu
entelektüel dönüşümü ve yazmış olduğu onlarca eseriyle bu alana hatırı sayılır
katkılarda bulunan sosyologların başında gelmektedir. Berger’in doğup
büyüdüğü yerlerden öğrenim yıllarına, fikri anlamda beslendiği kaynaklar ve
kişilerden akademik serüvenine dair pek çok unsuru bir araya getirmeye çalışan
bu makale, yaşam öyküsü ve sosyolojik görüşleri ışığında onun entelektüel bir
portresini sunmayı amaçlamaktadır.
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