ABSTRACT
Berger and Luckmann wrote The Social Construction of Reality at a time when both were interested in the sociology of religion. They thus worked somewhat in the spirit of the classic social theorists, who derived much of their theoretical positions from assessments of, or reaction to, religion. Berger and Luckmann both felt that religion continued as an important force in modern life. While the social products of human externalization have a character sui generis as against both their organismic and their environmental context, it is important to stress that externalization as such is an anthropological necessity. Human being is impossible in a closed sphere of quiescent interiority. Human being must ongoingly externalize itself in activity. Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors. The only way of knowing a socially constructed world is knowing it from within.
