reaction part 1 to Peter L. Berger : meaning is a lazy ritual

Books I've ordered are arriving, and as is traditional, they arrive in order of least desperately wanted first.

So, the first is a general introduction to four writers on culture, which came out when I was 21 years old. Back then I was reading Stirner and anarchist SF.

Cultural Analysis : the work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986) which is co-written by Robert Wuthnow, James Davison Hunter, Albert Bergesen and Edith Kurzweil.

Reading it's introduction gave rise to the post Culture versus the world.

And the first essay on Peter L. Berger is the subject of this. Before reading it I do not think that I had distinquished him from John Berger.  I had not read him either, but both seem to have infected my general share-house education. I guess this is where Australia differs, because while share-house culture here in the 80s and 90s did include students, they were not exclusively students. Maybe this is changing. I mention this because calling these poor peeps now as part of 'the elite' as Murdoch's trolls are inclined to, really misses the mark, (not that they care about true stories as long as they can scare the goats).

Anyways, on to Peter Ludwig Berger. I'll note my reactions as I read Chapter 2 The phenomenology of Peter L. Berger (pages 22 to 76). 

Man, then, to Berger, is not only homo socius, but  in sympathy with Marx's conception, homo faber/homo pictor— man the world-or culture-maker, including material and non-material dimensions of culture. Society, then is a world-making activity. (page 24)

I'll just say here that worlding predates making, evolutionary speaking, so this is a potential mistframe. A lot of arguments and positioning are really about dating. Also, worlding pre-dates world-building, which is a type of making. An overly eager making.

Yeah we make stuff, and we think that makes us special… it is hard to get out of that mindset. (Spoiler: Berger gets in and out of it repeatedly).

We have a bit about Marx & reification, and alienation in the sense:

He merely 'forgets that the world he lives in has been produced by himself' (1965:200). (page 25)

That 1965 quote is from 'Reification and the sociological critique of consciouness' (with Stanley Pullberg), History and Theory, 4: 198 ff. That is the year I was born.

Not only do we forget, we actively reject the responsibility in a blame/credit game when we deify the act of creation. Agency often does away with itself, this is more than forgetting, this is self-harm. World-harm.

It is important to note what Berger regards as essential in culture. The very heart of the world that humans create is socially constructed meaning. Humans necessarily infuse meaning into reality. The individual attaches subjective meaning to all of his or her actions. In this sense one may understand one's acts as intentional […] intersubjective […] Culture, as artifact, emerges out of the stuff of subjective meanings. page 25

So, just before, I mentioned share houses with a note saying they were not restricted to students, and so the culture that arose therein should not be regarded as elite as Murdoch's trolls perjoratively use term. I.E. they use it regardless of its meaning, and do so in order to denigrate and divide us. Trolls do not care about meaning. They do it for effect.

So two things:

1. what is socially 'constructed' (made) is the world and not meaning.
2. i don't like 'meaning' used like this I think it is lazy (like in 'the search for meaning' as a superset for exploring notions of piety or something.)

I.E. I 'attache' subjective actions (uses) to my meanings, so I think this classically structured social constructionism "The individual attaches subjective meaning to all of his or her actions." either has it backwards, or it has its dates wrong.

And then there is something I agree with, some prior art, so to speak:

According to Berger, there is not only a biological imperative to build a world but a psychological imperative as well. The social world constitutes a nomos both objectively and subjectively. To be seperated from this nomos is to be subjected to disorder, senselessness, and madness — in a word, meaninglessness. pages 25-26

I agree with this "a biological imperative to build a world but a psychological imperative as well" but I wouldn't split them like that, but then he is using the framework that 'meaning' provides and I think this is in error. This 'meaning' is a social construction, a gloss if not an outcome like religion/morality/art/polity, and so in this context of science it is a mistake, in that it does not, at root, explain why we should. Even if it explicates the narcissism of phenomology.

In short 'meaning' is a type of worlding. There are likely others. Thus 'meaning' or even 'the search for meaning' is not causal, even if useful in explaining ourselves to ourselves when 'anomie' or 'akrasia' arise.

We then move from meaning to identity, wherein order depends on those castes or classes on offer. The Stirner in me rejects this.

A personal sense of order hinges on appropriation of an identity or set of identities, whether 'deviant' or 'normal', is reckoned with the larger social world. p 26 -27

—and I just wish we had a better vocubulary, not just some sort of hand waving like 'set of indentities'.

Anyway you don't need order if you have a routine. I think calling routine an identity is a bit much, though no doubt such complexes what-you-do-is-what-you-are can be easily socially negotiated.

Negotiated is better than structured BTW.

Anyway, on page 27, suddenly the word "world" takes over from 'culture', this type of thing often happens once the hand-waving begins. I 'mean' what (they say) Berger says is not wrong but it could be much better.

Moreover, given his focus on subjective meanings as the foundation of socially constructed reality, it is clear that the accent of this ontological priority is upon the individual as opposed to the collective. page 29

I'd begin to re-write this as:

Moreover, given my focus on subjective worlding as the foundation of socially negotiated worldings, it is clear that the accent of this epistemological method is upon the world the self worlds in the world of other selfing self worlders.

Which makes sense to me, but to you, dear reader, I suspect not. Or even me tomorrow, whoever they are. My 'meaning' is not clear.

Note: I find the individual versus the collective is a bad paring and misses the point entirely. The world is not a collective.

Nearly all collectives on offer are actually versions of the individual writ large or borglike or fascistically ego-ed into a reified object (not thing), regardless of whether these groupings emerge, or are made. The world is not made of this stuff, even as emperors desire otherwise and force the imaginary binary upon us (c.f. the Zoroastrian the lie/ the truth).

If I have an intelligence of note it lies in an easy skill in analogy. This is perhaps why meaning means little to me. When I look at new information i do not seek meaning, i seek use, signs of wear, and where the dirt lies easy, in order to see how it works compared to what I have seen before, and thus how it comes together— or not. Meaning is a routine of that effort, a short cut, a ready-made, a familiar. Meaning is a lazy ritual, and to call it a comfort is too kind.

The purpose of this task [social sciences] is to make these meanings clearer and to relate them (causally or otherwise) to other meanings and meaning systems.

I can't even.

We get a sort break down on two types of phenomenology on page 30, hermeneutic and existential. My note in pencil in the book on the focus on language in the hermeneutic is that it is all thoughts and prayers, but this is the one I prefer, the taphonomy of language use (rather than meaning & intepretation which assumes some god-maker can set us right). I find the existential too histrionic.

Anyway, (note to self) in addition to Husserl I will also one day read Merleau-Ponty on his self/world work. And Spivak on their use of worlding.

All individuals inhabit a life-world, that is, a total sphere of experience circumscribed by a natural environment, man-made objects, events, and other individuals. Yet this world is not in most cases a single unity: consciousness is capable of moving through different spheres of reality; dreams, hallucinations, and the theatre provide examples. pages 31-32

"Reality' must be a safe word, because I had to break off typing thereabouts. And it introduces a return of 'meaning' in the essay, 'meaning' that in our (now intersubjective) reality the social science will study as a means to its ends. A use even? Yes, meaning is usage, not a law, not a dogma, not the rash belief of a lazy ritual.

[There is some stuff on Marx and phenomenologcal bracketing of the researcher's biases. Because ideology.]

This methodological defense extends not only to politics but also to religion. Questions as to the onotological validity of religious reality must be suspended in the social scientific study of religion. pages 33-34

This is where Berger and I really depart from our commonalities.

The essay now returns to culture and Berger's defintion of it as 'the totality of man's products (1967:6)'.

I'll take up the rest of the essay in the next post.

References:

Peter L. Berger cited in Cultural Analysis : the work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986) which is co-written by Robert Wuthnow, James Davison Hunter, Albert Bergesen and Edith Kurzweil.

(1965) 'Reification and the sociological critique of consciouness' (with Stanley Pullberg), History and Theory, 4: 198 ff.

(1967) The sacred canopy, Garden City, Doubleday