14
The sociology of knowledge must concern itself with
everything that passes for ’knowledge’ in society
(Berger and Luckmann, 1966:26, 27).
The sociology of everyday life, of what is held to be
knowledge, not by intellectuals, but by everyman, in everyday
life about everyday life was for Berger and Luckmann the central
focus for the sociology of knowledge.
Not only knowledge, but society itself, and the individual’s
location in society (that i⅞ his identity), must be studied as
socially structured. The sociology of knowledge for them was
concerned with the social construction of reality.
The link with the early theory of Marx is manifest. Man is
bom into a society that exists over and against man and ’determines’
his consciousness initially. But that society was made by man.
Hence it can be transformed, modified.
Identity is a key element of subjective reality
and, like all subjective reality, stands in
dialectical relationship with society. Identity
is formed by social processes. Once crystallized,
it is maintained, modified, or even reshaped by
social relations. The social processes involved
in both the formation and maintenance of identity
are determined by the social structures. Conversely,
the identities produced by the interplay of organism,
individual consciousness and social structure react
upon the given social structure, maintaining it,
modifying it, or even reshaping it (Berger and Luckmann, 1966:194).
Society makes man.
Man makes society.
The point of sociological analysis is not only to interpret
society as the German philosophers did, but to understand and
explain it, in order to change it.
2.2 Identity as a problem in the sociology of knowledge
Theoretical literature specifically on identity within the
sociology of knowledge approach is to be found in the writing of
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