Bourdieu’s theory and the social constructivism of berger and luckmann

Abstract

The paper compares Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological approach with the one developed by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The aim of the paper is to identify the complementarities and incongruences of these approaches. The main similarity consists in the intention to “dialectically” overcome/bridge the gap between “objectivism” and “subjectivism” in social theory. Another parallel includes a negative attitude towards the relativistic tendencies of postmodernism. These authors share the thematization of: the body as a locus of social influences, the centrality of language in social life, the social functions of knowledge, and the importance of power in social relations. Differences in theorizing are attributed to the different intellectual, theoretical, and socio-cultural contexts in which these scientists operated. The divergences of these theoretical approaches become evident when one examines the different meaning and significance attached to the concepts of individuation, structure, action, habitus and habitualization, structure of relevance and relation of common-sense and scientific knowledge. Finally, there is a visible difference in political views: Bourdieu was a critic “from the left,” while Berger and Luckmann were self-proclaimed liberal conservatives.