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Marriage and the Construction of Reality

An Exercise in the Microsociology of Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Peter Berger  and
Hansfried Kellner
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Ever since Durkheim it has been a commonplace of family sociology that marriage serves as a protection against anomie for the individual. Interesting and pragmatically useful though this insight is, it is but the negative side of a phenomenon of much broader significance. If one speaks of anomic states, then one ought properly to investigate also the nomic processes that, by their absence, lead to the aforementioned states. If, consequently, one finds a negative correlation between marriage and anomie, then one should be led to inquire into the character of marriage as a nomos-building instrumentality, that is, of marriage as a social arrangement that creates for the individual the sort of order in which he can experience his life as making sense. It is our intention here to discuss marriage in these terms. While this could evidently be done in a macrosociological perspective, dealing with marriage as a major social institution related to other broad structures of society, our focus will be microsociological, dealing primarily with the social processes affecting the individuals in any specific marriage, although, of course, the larger framework of these processes will have to be understood. In what sense this discussion can be described as microsociology of knowledge will hopefully become clearer in the course of it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 12 , Issue 46 , June 1964 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © 1964 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 The present article has come out of a larger project on which the authors have been engaged in collaboration with three colleagues in sociology and philosophy. The project is to produce a systematic treatise that will integrate a number of now separate theoretical strands in the sociology of knowledge.

2 Cf. especially Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tuebingen, Mohr, 1956); Id., Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tuebingen, Mohr, 1951); George H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1934); Alfred Schutz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Vienna, Springer, 1960); Id., Collected Papers, I (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1962); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris, Gallimard, 1945); Id., La structure du comportement (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1953).

3 Cf. Schutz, Aufbau, pp. 202-220; Id., Collected Papers, I, pp. 3-27, 283-286.

4 Cf. Schutz, Collected Papers, I, pp. 207-228.

5 Cf. especially Jean Piaget, The Construction of Reality in the Child (New York, Basic Books, 1954).

6 Cf. Mead, op. cit., pp. 135-226.

7 Cf. Schutz, Aufbau, pp. 181-195.

8 Cf. Arnold Gehlen, Die Seele im technischen Zeitalter (Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1957) pp. 57-69; Id., Anthropologische Forschung (Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1961), pp. 69-77, 127-140; Helmut Schelsky, Soziologie der Sexualitaet (Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1955), pp. 102-133. Also, cf. Thomas Luckmann, "On Religion in Modern Society," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Spring 1963, 147-162.

9 In these considerations we have been influenced by certain presuppositions of Marxian anthropology, as well as by the anthropological work of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen. We are indebted to Thomas Luckmann for the clarification of the social-psychological significance of the private sphere.

10 Cf. Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales, Family, Socialization and Interaction Process (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1955), pp. 3-34, 353-396.

11 Cf. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (New York, Knopf, 1962), pp. 339-410.

12 Cf. Kurt Wolff (ed.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1950), pp. 118-144.

13 Cf. Schutz, Aufbau, pp. 29-36, 149-153.

14 Cf. Schutz, Aufbau, pp. 186-192, 202-210.

15 David Riesman's well-known concept of "other-direction" would also be applicable here.

16 Cf. Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1952), especially pp. 146-177; Also, cf. Peter Berger, Invitation to Sociology—A Humanistic Perspective (Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday-Anchor, 1963) pp. 54-65.

17 Cf. Schutz, Collected Papers, I, pp. 72-73, 79-82.

18 The phenomena here discussed could also be formulated effectively in terms of the Marxian categories of reification and false consciousness. Jean-Paul Sartre's recent work, especially Critique de la raison dialectique, seeks to integrate these categories within a phenomenological analysis of human conduct. Also, cf. Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne (Paris, l'Arche, 1958-1961).

19 Cf. Renate Mayntz, Die moderne Familie (Stuttgart, Enke, 1955); Helmut Schelsky, Wandlungen der deutschen Familie in der Gegenwart (Stuttgart, Enke, 1955); Maximilien Sorre (ed.), Sociologie comparée de la famille contemporaine (Paris, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1955); Ruth Anshen (ed.), The Family—Its Function and Destiny (New York, Harper, 1959); Norman Bell and Ezra Vogel, A Modern Introduction to the Family (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1960).

20 Cf. Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1949), pp. 233-250.

21 In these as well as the following references to empirical studies we naturally make no attempt at comprehensiveness. References are given as repre sentative of a much larger body of materials. Cf. Paul Glick, American Families (New York, Wiley, 1957), p. 54. Also, cf. Id., "The Family Cycle," American Sociological Review, April 1947, 164-174. Also, cf. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1956 and 1958; Current Population Reports, Series P-20, No. 96 (Nov. 1959).

22 Cf. David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 29-40; Frederick Elkin, The Child and Society (New York, Random House, 1960), passim.

23 Cf. references given above under Note 21.

24 Cf. W. Lloyd Warner and Paul Lunt, The Social Life of a Modern Community (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1941), pp. 436-440; August Hollingshead, "Cultural Factors in the Selection of Marriage Mates," American Sociological Review, October 1950, 619-627. Also, cf. Ernest Burgess and Paul Wallin, "Homogamy in Social Characteristics," American Journal of Sociology, September 1943, 109-124.

25 Cf. Gerhard Lenski, The Religious Factor (Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, 1961), pp. 48-50.

26 Cf. Leonard Cottrell, "Roles in Marital Adjustment," Publications of the American Sociological Society, 1933, 27:107-115; Willard Waller and Reuben Hill, The Family—A Dynamic Interpretation (New York, Dryden, 1951), pp. 253-271; Morris Zelditch, "Role Differentiation in the Nuclear Family," in Parsons and Bales, op. cit., pp. 307-352. For a general discussion of role interaction in small groups, cf. especially George Homans, The Human Group (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1950).

27 Cf. Waller and Hill, op. cit., pp. 253-271, for an excellent summation of such data.

28 Cf. Dennison Nash and Peter Berger, "The Family, the Child and the Religious Revival in Suburbia," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Fall 1962, 85-93.

29 Cf. Bureau of the Census, op. cit.

30 Cf. Talcott Parsons, "Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States," American Sociological Review, December 1942, 604-616; Paul Glick, "First Marriages and Remarriages," American Sociological Review, December 1949, 726-734; William Goode, After Divorce (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1956), pp. 269-285.