Berger, Peter L. & Luckman, Thomas (1966) Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin Books.

Society determines the presence but not the nature of ideas. -  20

human knowledge is given in society as an a priori to individual experience, providing the latter with its order of meaning. This order, although it is relative to a particular socio-historical situation, appears to the individual as the natural way of looking at the world. Scheler called this ‘relative-natural worldview’ of a society. – 20

Weber observes: ‘Both for the sociology in the present sense, and for history, the object of cognition is the subjective meaning-complex of action. – 30

Every name implies a nomenclature, which in turn implies a designated social location. To be given an identity involves being assigned a specific place in the world. As this identity is subjectively appropriated by the child, so is the world to which this identity points. Subjective appropriation of identity and subjective appropriation of the social world are merely different aspects of the same process of internalization, mediated by the same significant others. – 152

two general types of reality maintenance – routine maintenance and crisis maintenance. The former is designed to maintain the internalized reality in everyday life, the latter in situations of crisis. – 168

It would, therefore, be a mistake to assume that only significant others serve to maintain subjective reality. But significant others occupy a central position in the economy of reality-maintenance. They are particularly important for the ongoing confirmation of that crucial element of reality we call identity. – 170

The significant others in the individual’s life are the principal agents for the maintenance of his subjective reality. Less significant others functions as a sort of chorus. – 170

The relation between the significant others and the ‘chorus’ in reality-maintenance is a dialectical one; that is, they interact with each other as well as with the subjective reality they serve to confirm. A solidly negative identification on the part of the wider milieu may eventually affect the identification offered by the significant others. – 171

the significant others may eventually have an effect on the wider milieu – a ‘loyal’ wife can be an asset in several ways as the individual seeks to get across a certain identity to his business associates. Reality-maintenance and reality-confirmation thus involve the totality of the individual’s social situation, though the significant others occupy a privileged position in these processes. – 171

language objectifies the world, transforming the panta rhei of experience into a cohesive order. In the establishment of this order language realizes a world, in the double sense of apprehending and producing it. Conversation is the actualizing of this realizing efficiency of language in the face-to-face situations of individual existence. In conversation the objectification of language become objects of individual consciousness. Thus the fundamental reality-maintaining fact is the continuing use of the same language to objectify unfolding biographical experience. In the widest sense, all who employ this same language are reality-maintaining others. – 173