ABSTRACT
In The Homeless Mind, Berger used borrowed concepts such as package and carrier to manage ideas that would have been more conveniently served by conventional usage. In the United States especially, but in other Western industrialized democracies, as well, the distance in wealth and income between members of the capitalist class and just about all others has grown enormously, and continues to accelerate. The first and by far most important point for the sociology of knowledge is that our cognitive content and style of consciousness are products of what Marxists sometimes refer to as material practice. Berger wants to make clear that componentiality, at least in the United States, is not experienced and internalized purely and without extrinsic adornment. Modernity, once that conceptually elusive and uncertainly defined state has been achieved, brings material abundance for many, but it is often accompanied by a profound sense of isolation and meaninglessness.
