A general and systematic account of the role of knowledge in society aimed to stimulate both critical discussion and empirical investigations.
The Social Construction of Reality is concerned with the sociology of “everything that passes for knowledge in society”. It focuses particularly on that “common-sense knowledge” which constitutes the reality of everyday life for the man in the street, with particular reference to the institutionalization of thoughts and symbolic exchanges through language.
The authors’ concern is to present an analysis of knowledge in everyday life in the context of a theory of society as a dialectical process between objective and subjective reality. Their development of a theory of institutions, legitimations and socializations has implications beyond the discipline of sociology, and their ‘humanistic’ approach has considerable relevance for other social scientists, historians, philosophers and anthropologists. Hence follows the importance that language, arts, communication, rhetoric and conversation have in the public sphere, even in the era of connected relationships and interlocutions from remote interchange.