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A review by saxifrage_seldon
Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective by Peter L. Berger
5.0
I just completed Peter Berger’s 1963 book, Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, and I have to say it was as personal and emotional as it was intellectual. Berger not only makes a compelling argument as to why sociology, as an academic discipline, should be viewed through a humanistic lens; he also underscores its importance in truly understanding the human condition. However, it wasn’t just the argument that compelled me; it was the emotional reaction I had and how it related to my teachers and mentors who introduced me to sociology, as well as the recent attacks on sociology, most notably from the Florida government.
Before delving deeper into the reasons for my emotional response, I want to explore what this book was about, at least to the best of my understanding. Like C. Wright Mills’s book, The Sociological Imagination, published four years prior, Berger seeks to redefine what is meant by sociology. It should be understood that at this time, American sociology was structured in the realm of empirical methodologists and technicians like Talcott Parsons and Paul Lazarsfeld. Instead, both authors attempt to rescue the discipline from the lifeless, ahistorical clutches of grand theory and abstract empiricism, and bring it within the human realm. While Mills’s “sociological imagination” rests on the intersection between the life of the individual human and their problems with larger historical social structures and processes, Berger’s “sociological perspective” rests on the classical, yet somewhat contradictory, dialectical postulate that while individuals make society, societies also make individuals. In other words, as Berger attempts to clarify throughout his book, society is a deterministic prison, but it is a prison that can be transformed, as humans can choose. To make this even more complex, Berger doesn’t center the individual as a singular entity but as a much larger networked complex of roles, each of which brings together a whole host of constraints, possibilities, motivations, and values.
The most interesting part of the book, however, happens when Berger embeds sociologists themselves into this complex, while asking about how they see themselves in contemporary society. Throughout this chapter, he notes, many see sociologists and sociology itself through several prisms, such as a pathway to a practical occupation like a social worker, or a means to social reform, as a methodological pursuit like statistics, or the more devious pursuit of social engineering. Sociologists also see themselves as scientists who are in a constant attempt to justify their pursuits and craft alongside the natural scientists. However, by the end of this chapter, he poses a new definition. Sociologists are those who attempt to understand society in a disciplined and scientific way, but there are individuals whose “consuming interest remains in the world of men, their institutions, their passions” (29). This interest is driven not so much by profit or prestige but by curiosity. Berger ends that chapter by noting “the sociological perspective is more like a demon that possesses one, that drives compellingly, again and again, to the questions that are its own” (36).
What is surprising, and extremely refreshing about Berger’s book, isn’t so much the repositioning of sociology in the context of human affairs, or even intellectual pursuits, but in how, by the end of the book, he positions sociology as a humanistic endeavor. This calls for sociological studies to break down the constraints that attempt to pigeonhole it into specific methodological and theoretical concerns, as well as attacks the nature of academe itself, which he contends is less a pursuit of knowledge than attempts at surviving the “rat race of the university” and its focus on publishing in the “right places” and attempting “to meet those people who dwell close to the mainsprings of academic patronage” (194). He closes the book though with seeing the sociologist as a “transmitter of knowledge,” which is someone in his moment, as well as our own, as someone to teach “students who come to college because they need a degree to be hired by the corporation of their choice or because that is what is expected of them in a certain social position” (197). While Berger acknowledges the utility of this venture, he notes that it is a problem that also goes against the primary ethos of sociology, which is to debunk and disenchant the social world. To Berger, this problem must be approached differently when teaching different levels of students; however, in essence, it is a problem not of teaching skills to gain credits, but instead, it is more of an enlightening process that entails risk and suffering but is also the foundation of freedom and awareness.
It is this pedagogical mission that evoked the response I had. It pushed me to reflect on my own education and how lucky I was to have the mentors I did throughout my academic career who constantly pushed me to question reality and to dig deeper to analyze and assess the larger historical structures and processes shaping that “reality.” It pushed me to more fully comprehend my opposition to Florida’s government's efforts to remove sociology as a core course, thus using its power to engage in “cancel culture” at its highest, most pertinent level. Above all else, Berger’s book allowed me to gain a greater understanding of my first mentor in sociology, Thomas Lambert. Lambert was one of Berger’s students when he studied sociology at the New School, and in reading this book, I saw the influence Berger had on him. Looking back on Lambert’s lectures, I saw everything in Berger’s book there, whether it was the centrality of social institutions as both a prison and protector from the existential dread of an uncaring universe, the networked multiplicity of roles one plays in a highly stratified world, and the constant strategic decisions that an individual must make to stay afloat. Moreover, I saw Lambert’s larger message that the sociological perspective is something that will not bring you money or get you status, but instead, set you on a passionate pursuit to uncover social realities that bring with it a contradictory similitude of awareness and ignorance, satisfaction and suffering, and despair and hope. It is a message that not only has helped me readjust the perspective of my own life but it is one that I hope to convey to my students.
Before delving deeper into the reasons for my emotional response, I want to explore what this book was about, at least to the best of my understanding. Like C. Wright Mills’s book, The Sociological Imagination, published four years prior, Berger seeks to redefine what is meant by sociology. It should be understood that at this time, American sociology was structured in the realm of empirical methodologists and technicians like Talcott Parsons and Paul Lazarsfeld. Instead, both authors attempt to rescue the discipline from the lifeless, ahistorical clutches of grand theory and abstract empiricism, and bring it within the human realm. While Mills’s “sociological imagination” rests on the intersection between the life of the individual human and their problems with larger historical social structures and processes, Berger’s “sociological perspective” rests on the classical, yet somewhat contradictory, dialectical postulate that while individuals make society, societies also make individuals. In other words, as Berger attempts to clarify throughout his book, society is a deterministic prison, but it is a prison that can be transformed, as humans can choose. To make this even more complex, Berger doesn’t center the individual as a singular entity but as a much larger networked complex of roles, each of which brings together a whole host of constraints, possibilities, motivations, and values.
The most interesting part of the book, however, happens when Berger embeds sociologists themselves into this complex, while asking about how they see themselves in contemporary society. Throughout this chapter, he notes, many see sociologists and sociology itself through several prisms, such as a pathway to a practical occupation like a social worker, or a means to social reform, as a methodological pursuit like statistics, or the more devious pursuit of social engineering. Sociologists also see themselves as scientists who are in a constant attempt to justify their pursuits and craft alongside the natural scientists. However, by the end of this chapter, he poses a new definition. Sociologists are those who attempt to understand society in a disciplined and scientific way, but there are individuals whose “consuming interest remains in the world of men, their institutions, their passions” (29). This interest is driven not so much by profit or prestige but by curiosity. Berger ends that chapter by noting “the sociological perspective is more like a demon that possesses one, that drives compellingly, again and again, to the questions that are its own” (36).
What is surprising, and extremely refreshing about Berger’s book, isn’t so much the repositioning of sociology in the context of human affairs, or even intellectual pursuits, but in how, by the end of the book, he positions sociology as a humanistic endeavor. This calls for sociological studies to break down the constraints that attempt to pigeonhole it into specific methodological and theoretical concerns, as well as attacks the nature of academe itself, which he contends is less a pursuit of knowledge than attempts at surviving the “rat race of the university” and its focus on publishing in the “right places” and attempting “to meet those people who dwell close to the mainsprings of academic patronage” (194). He closes the book though with seeing the sociologist as a “transmitter of knowledge,” which is someone in his moment, as well as our own, as someone to teach “students who come to college because they need a degree to be hired by the corporation of their choice or because that is what is expected of them in a certain social position” (197). While Berger acknowledges the utility of this venture, he notes that it is a problem that also goes against the primary ethos of sociology, which is to debunk and disenchant the social world. To Berger, this problem must be approached differently when teaching different levels of students; however, in essence, it is a problem not of teaching skills to gain credits, but instead, it is more of an enlightening process that entails risk and suffering but is also the foundation of freedom and awareness.
It is this pedagogical mission that evoked the response I had. It pushed me to reflect on my own education and how lucky I was to have the mentors I did throughout my academic career who constantly pushed me to question reality and to dig deeper to analyze and assess the larger historical structures and processes shaping that “reality.” It pushed me to more fully comprehend my opposition to Florida’s government's efforts to remove sociology as a core course, thus using its power to engage in “cancel culture” at its highest, most pertinent level. Above all else, Berger’s book allowed me to gain a greater understanding of my first mentor in sociology, Thomas Lambert. Lambert was one of Berger’s students when he studied sociology at the New School, and in reading this book, I saw the influence Berger had on him. Looking back on Lambert’s lectures, I saw everything in Berger’s book there, whether it was the centrality of social institutions as both a prison and protector from the existential dread of an uncaring universe, the networked multiplicity of roles one plays in a highly stratified world, and the constant strategic decisions that an individual must make to stay afloat. Moreover, I saw Lambert’s larger message that the sociological perspective is something that will not bring you money or get you status, but instead, set you on a passionate pursuit to uncover social realities that bring with it a contradictory similitude of awareness and ignorance, satisfaction and suffering, and despair and hope. It is a message that not only has helped me readjust the perspective of my own life but it is one that I hope to convey to my students.