ABSTRACT
The notion of the social construction of reality is here reinterpreted in neo-Marxist, or "critical", or "post-structuralist" terms, and it is radically altered in this translation. The book "classic" was published and attracted widespread attention during what, as is now clear, was a very narrow window of opportunity for a reconstruction of sociology. In 1966, when the book came out, there was broad dissatisfaction with what had been the long hegemony of structural-functionalism in theory and a narrow positivism in the day-to-day practice of most sociologists. Especially younger people in the discipline were looking for something new, something that would transcend the aridity of both Parsonian scholasticism and the endless refinements of quantitative techniques. Something new was indeed about to engulf sociology, but it was not the marriage of Weber and Schutz celebrated in The Social Construction of Reality. Finally, the author leaves it to others to pass judgment on the "classic" quality of The Social Construction of Reality.
