[Project.leer] More on culture- social/cultural constructionism

Some more culture readings (Ebony triggered all my old conversations with colleagues that I went back and pulled for all of you- so at least you know where I am coming from…). Peter Berger is one of the top three sociologists of the 20th century- along with Thomas Luckman wrote The Social Construction of Reality (1966, Luckmann was at the University of Frankfurt at the time) and laid the groundwork for social constructionism and is the one that is most often cited by the more post-modern and relativist parts of academia in support of some of more egregious statements (I have a pdf copy if you like to read it). I think it is up to something like 10,000 citations in google scholar, Interestingly- he was very empirical in outlook- especially for the 1960s and 70s- wrote much about the sociology of religion (even did a stint here at Baylor and worked with the late Sam Huntington from Harvard who wrote the piece on culture I sent out earlier- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Berger<https://en.wikipedia.org... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Luckmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Construction_of_Reality Was a bit of a hero of mine at one time- was a Lutheran minister and wrote on the sociology of religion- https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Canopy-Elements-Sociological-Religion/dp/03... Was also involved in peace talks following the end of the apartheid in South Africa- https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/interviews/a-discussion-with-peter-b... https://www.religion-online.org/author/peter-berger/ Unfortunately- that legacy hasn’t been good- they have since gone downhill for a variety of reasons that require beer going back to the relationship of Nelson Mandela’s party being Marxist in orientation and having a close relationship with Russia during the cold war- part of the reason his release was difficult to make the case for...and one of the reasons that Elon Musk is currently critical- remember he and his family are from South Africa. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/19/south-africa-russia-putin-ukraine-wa... At any rate- the reason he is important for us is his theory of social constructionism (or social-cultural constructionism is widely cited in the social construction of disability, of race, and of gender-and sometimes of mental illness- that each isn't real- but rather are social constructions of reality by society and culture. Thus, impairment replaces disability, ethnicity replaces race, and gender identification replaces biological sex. Many of us are pushing back on this- that disability is real, and many feminists are now pushing back that biological sex is real. The race construct is likely the one that deserves the most attention and there is a strong case that race is a social rather than biological construct. The replacements are distinctly relativistic and post-modern in nature- an appropriation that Berger rejected and resented up until his fairly recent death. This is a fascinating interview with Berger before his passing- especially the story about revolutionary’s showing up at the office wanting to “not construct reality but reconstruct it.” And in the US- his theory became part of the post-modern/neomarxist enterprise- completely different than the direction they were headed in- which was describe social-cultural reality from an empirical perspective. I read his autobiography and introduction to sociology last summer and have a pdf if anyone is interested. Mack https://youtu.be/Da1qN5QOSPM Mack D. Burke, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology Applied Behavior Analysis and Special Education Programs Behavioral Education & Assessment Research (BEAR Lab) School of Education, Baylor University