Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective

Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective is a book on sociology by Dr. Peter L. Berger, published in 1963. In Invitation to Sociology Berger sets out the intellectual parameters and calling of the scientific discipline of sociology. Many of the themes presented in this book were later developed in his 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality, coauthored with Thomas Luckmann.^[1]

Contents

Limits of sociology

In Invitation to Sociology, Berger addresses which types of questions sociologists may seek to answer (e.g., the consequences of religious belief) and those which they cannot address (e.g., the existence of God).^[2] Berger also argues that the various uses for sociology (e.g., policy planning, political polling) does not reflect the actual nature of the science, and that the people who use the information provided by sociologists "[have] nothing to do with the character of the information itself."^[3]

Humanistic approach

Berger argues for sociology to emphasis and orientating itself towards its humanistic aspects.^[4][5]

Quotes

We have as many lives as we have points of views.

—Invitation to Sociology (page 71).

At a certain age children are greatly intrigued by the possibility of locating themselves on a map. It appears strange that one's familiar life should actually have all occurred in an area delineated by a set of quite impersonal (and hitherto unfamiliar) coordinates on the surface of the map. The child's exclamations of 'I was there' and 'I am here right now' betray the astonishment that the place of last summer's vacation, a place marked in memory by such sharply personal events as the ownership of one's first dog or the secret assemblying of a collection of worms, should have specific latitudes and longitudes devised by strangers to one's dog, one's worms, and oneself. This locating of oneself in configurations conceived by strangers is one of the important aspects of what, perhaps euphemistically, is called 'growing up'. One participates in the real world of grown-ups by having an address. The child who only recently might have mailed a letter addressed 'To my Granddaddy' now informs a fellow worm-collector of his exact address – street, town, state and all – and finds his tentative allegiance to the grown-up world view dramatically legitimated by the arrival of the letter.

—Invitation to Sociology (page 81).

References