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Peter L. Berger is arguably the best-known American sociologist living today. Since the 1960s he has been publishing books on many facets of the American social scene, and several are now considered classics. So it may be hard to believe Professor Berger’s description of himself as an "accidental sociologist." But that in fact accurately describes how he stumbled into sociology. In this witty, intellectually stimulating memoir, Berger explains not only how he became a social scientist, but the many adventures that this calling has led to.
Rather than writing an autobiography, he focuses on the main intellectual issues that motivated his work and the various people and situations he encountered in the course of his career. Full of memorable vignettes and colorful characters depicted in a lively narrative often laced with humor, Berger’s memoir conveys the excitement that a study of social life can bring. The first part of the book describes Berger’s initiation into sociology through the New School for Social Research, "a European enclave in the midst of Greenwich Village bohemia." Berger was first a student at the New School and later a young professor amidst a clique of like-minded individuals. There he published The Social Construction of Reality (with colleague Thomas Luckmann), one of his most successful books, followed by The Sacred Canopy on the sociology of religion, also still widely cited.
The book covers Berger’s experience as a "globe-trekking sociologist" including trips to Mexico, where he studied approaches to Third World poverty; to East Asia, where he discovered the potential of capitalism to improve social conditions; and to South Africa, where he chaired an international study group on the future of post-Apartheid society.
Berger then tells about his role as the director of a research center at Boston University. For over two decades he and his colleagues have been tackling such important issues as globalization, the secularization of Europe, and the ongoing dialectic between relativism and fundamentalism in contemporary culture.
What comes across throughout is Berger’s boundless curiosity with the many ways in which people interact in society. This book offers longtime Berger readers as well as newcomers to sociology proof that the sociologist’s attempt to explain the world is anything but boring.
From the Hardcover edition.
- Sales Rank: #1181840 in eBooks
- Published on: 2011-06-07
- Released on: 2011-06-07
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"Few writers have had as wide an impact on contemporary thinking about the sociology of modern society, culture, and religion as Peter Berger. Here now from this distinguished scholar is another wonderfully engaging book, filled with candid personal detail, compelling humor, and characteristic sophistication in its understanding of the complex world in which we live." --Robert Wuthnow, department chair of Sociology at Princeton University
"Peter Berger's memoir, a journey in ideas, is an inspired reading of our times. His many gifts as thinker and writer are on splendid display. He recounts how as a sociologically minded analyst of religion, he abandoned one of the central pieties of both European and American sociology, namely, secularization theory, and developed an enduring research agenda. His tireless work as an intellectual engaged in public issues has led to new and better understandings of the social forces of religion and economic development throughout the world. Peter Berger is that rare person whose commanding intellect is matched by his enormous generosity to generations of students and colleagues who recognize in him the true spirit of intellectual inquiry. Social scientists have a great deal to learn from him and his skillful 'art of mistrust' at the core of his approach to social reality. As he concludes, 'A morally sensitive social scientist will, I think, instinctively move toward middle positions (middle between radical change and stubborn preservation) on most issues.'" --Jonathan B. Imber, Wellesley College, and Editor-in-Chief, Society
"Berger makes it clear that while he may be an authority on religion and modernity, he isn't himself solemn or pontifical...deeply engaging memoir." --Washington Post
About the Author
Peter L. Berger (Boston, MA) is University Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at Boston University and the founder and Senior Research Fellow of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs. He has written numerous books on sociological theory, the sociology of religion, and Third World development. Among his more recent books are In Praise of Doubt (with Anton Zijderveld); Religious America, Secular Europe? (with Grace Davie and Effie Fokas); Questions of Faith; Many Globalizations (edited with Samuel Huntington); and Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience. Professor Berger has received honorary degrees from Loyola University, University of Notre Dame, University of Geneva, University of Munich, Sofia University, and Renmin University of China.
Most helpful customer reviews
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
An Accidental Book Review
By Wayne Lusvardi
This might be called an accidental review of eminent sociologist Peter Berger's memoir of the background events to his life work, which he has entitled "Adventures of Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Being Boring." This review is accidental because in some respects I believe I have been Berger's accidental sociological doppelganger at times: having done graduate work in sociology, like Berger serving as a psychiatric social worker in the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Georgia, having read nearly all of his works including his "blockbuster" novels, writing several favorably rated Amazon.com reviews of his books, and even having a stray female cat I adopted that my friends have named Felicia Bastian after the pseudonym used by Berger for one of his comic novels.
Berger's memoir is a serious but often humorously self-critical account of his life work as America's most respected sociologist. Berger takes us back stage to meet his fellow actors, financiers, prop men, and stage hands that co-produced the drama of his sociological life work. Berger's book takes us on an adventure to the New School for Social Research in New York, Puerto Rican churches in the East Bronx, meetings with Bahai faith believers, short-lived relationships with Communist girlfriends, work for the American Bible Society, Fort Benning, Georgia, the Bad Boll Academy in Germany, the Women's College of the University of North Carolina, Mexico, South Africa, the United Nations, Boston College, Boston University, and the European University in Budapest, and the stories and jokes he tells along the way are anything but boring.
There is an amusing story about the "15% sex club." And there is another hilarious story of how he entered into the U.S. Army classified as a fake psychotherapist and was honorably discharged as a fake peanut farmer. There's the story of how he met his wife and fellow sociologist Brigitte Berger while he accompanied her on a date with another guy. Then there is the story about how two revolutionaries came all the way from Latin America to his office in New York City to ask him advice on behalf of their leader who was in hiding. Oh, and don't miss the story about how Berger ended up on a Texas dude ranch in a meeting of American businessmen who unbeknownst to him may have wanted to clandestinely discuss undermining the Sandinista regime during the Reagan administration using the meeting with Berger as a cover! Like a good novel I'm not going to spoil these stories by telling them to you. Berger says his two novels were failures but the vignettes of his life in this book are novellas of sorts.
My only disappointment was the Berger never told us what happened when he went on a double date with Aglaia Holt and Chelsea Rabinowitz-Hikamoto in his satire "The Other Face of Gaia" and a "Satiricist's Lament" both found online.
Berger's adventure stories have provoked me to re-read his little-known 1972 book "The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness," which I believe in retrospect is his greatest empirical work of sociology despite Professor Berger's admission of error's of omission in not discussing Capitalism. An extensive Amazon.com review is needed to hopefully revive the book in electronic form.
Some excerpts from the book:
1. "It is impossible to play chamber music at a rock festival."
2. "As to the most radical formulation of this `postmodernism' - that nothing really exists but the various `narratives' - this corresponds very neatly with the definition of schizophrenia, when one can no longer distinguish between reality and one's fantasies."
3. "...a capitalist model of development in uniquely capable of fundamentally improving the material conditions of life for huge numbers of people and that it can do so without destroying indigenous culture and traditions...No socialist case exists outside the utopian imagination."
4. Referring to his book with Michael Hsaio "Toward an East Asian Development Model." - "Neither Hsaio or I are culturalists."
5. "Sociological finding: Contrary to Marxist theory, the wealthier the locale is, the more left-leaning it will be."
6. "When people are shooting at each other it is not a career enhancing move to be in the middle."
7. "But human nature being what it is, people more easily deceive themselves about morality than about the self interest of their actions. Therefore, an intelligent Machiavellian will try to achieve the morally desirable outcome by working with people's selfish motives rather than with their putative values. It is a question of a safer bet."
8. "A morally sensitive social scientist will, I think, instinctively move toward middle positions (middle between radical changes and stubborn preservation) on most issues."
To tantalize you all the more the last chapter of Berger's book is sort of a distillation of his best jokes. Berger aptly closes the book with this story:
"I cannot remember this incident - my parents told me about it. I must have been four or five years old. For my birthday or for Christmas I was given the present of a very sophisticated electric toy train. One could control its movements through multiple tracks and tunnels across a miniature landscape. I had no interest in the mechanical wonders of this toy. I did not even turn on the electricity. Instead I lay flat on the ground and talked with imaginary passengers on the train. One might say that I have continued this conversation ever since. I never regretted it. It has been a lot of fun. It still is."
And I might add that for all those who have been carrying an imaginary return conversation with Prof. Berger from inside those passenger cars on the train of life we haven't regretted it either.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Exactly what it says it is
By Roland
This book is a book about the author as the title indicates. A lot of biography stuff, and some history of the sociology of knowledge and related writings of Berger over the years. I found the stuff on the history of the sociology of knowledge, and the background of his and Luckmanns book, to be the most interesting. The biography is fairly interesting, not the most, but its still all interesting, a relatively short read that took me half a day while on Amtrak through the central valley of California. The central valley is full of some sociologically interesting observations I might add. I think Berger should write a through history of the sociology of knowledge since he has an uncanny ability to tie all the fragments of sociology together into a concise and readable big picture. If I knew him personally I would implore him to do so!
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
easy reading
By flapping in traumatized laughter puddle
Peter Berger spent an evening with Ruth and the Latvians who settled in Queens after the Soviets had changed the nature of Latvia. The episode ends on page 40 with Berger never seeing Ruth again. There is an atavistic element in wanting some transformation to make everything alright that Ruth expressed on a walk to the subway with Berger after 40 minutes of listening to terrible things. America has many people who are here because Europeans expected a miraculous society and were not afraid to bring in Africans to do the work when owning slaves was considered a privilege like other forms of private property. The context that makes Berger's reflections on sociology easy to read is the level of social antagonism that becomes more obvious in radical rethinkings like Zizek's Living in the End Times.
Zizek's book has a page in the drop in the standard of living of Yugoslavia after Tito died in 1980. Somehow Tito had been sick for a decade and nobody had solved economic problems that greatly expanded the debt as a tactic for putting off the misery which split Yugoslavia into warring factions unfit to govern each other. Sometimes speculation seems to be the driving force that makes Americans so much more comfortable than the Balkans have been, but the big miracle in my lifetime has been in secret undersea corridors of a superpower squatting with mushroom clouds and delaying the beautiful slaughter of those less fortunate until the pathological hatred of old men becomes as normal as people like Ruth.
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