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The Social Construction of Our Everyday World

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The Social Construction of Our Everyday World
The social construction of our everyday world

According to Berger & Luckman social order is explained as a human product and an ongoing human production. It is shaped by an individual in the course of his or hers ongoing externalization. Social order is not biologically, given or derived from any biological data in its empirical manifestations. Social order is not provided in man 's natural environment although the specific characteristics of this may be factors in determining the characteristics of a social order. It has been said that man produces himself in no way that implies a kind of deviance against that traditional or moral of a solitary individual. An individual’s self-production is always, and of necessity, a social enterprise. Man together produces a human environment, with the totality of its socio-cultural and psychological formations. Social order is not part of the "nature of things," and it cannot be derived from the "laws of nature." Nevertheless social order exists only as a product of human activity. It is the result of past human activity and its existence in any given moment of time, it exists only and in so far as human activity continues to produce it. The Social Construction of Reality, Berger & Luckman suggests that all human activity is subject to habitualization. Any action that is repeated several times is thrown into a model, which can then be reproduced with an economy of effort and which, “ipso facto” is apprehended by its performer as that model. Berger & Luckman argue that habitualization also implies that the action in question may be performed again in the future in the same way and with the same economical effort.
Habitualization carries with it, an important psychological gain that choices are limited to one. This frees the individual from the burden of "all those decisions," providing a psychological relief that has its basis in man 's undirected instinctual structure. Habitualization provides the orientation



References: Niezen, R,. 1993. Traditional helping systems and social services among the James Bay cree. James Bay: Cree Board of health and social services of James Bay. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann [1966] The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise its the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, pp. 51-55, 59-61. Hutchings, C. Canada’s First Nations: A Legacy of Institutional Racism. Retrieved Oct 21, 2011, from http://www.tolerance.cz/courses/papers/hutchin.htm Niezen, R, (1993). Suicide as a form of ownership: Causes and Consequences Cluster suicides in Aboriginal communities.

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