Socialization of the “Homeless Mind”. An Analysis of Contemporary Society through the Contribution of Peter Berger

Make a contribution to the socialization process debate, using Peter Berger’s sociological perspective, is the goal of this paper. The making of consciousness after the modernization process – the era of the “homeless mind” (Berger, Berger, & Kellner, 1974) – is a very complex phenomenon to explain and it is a very relevant subject for sociology. Berger proposes a very innovative theoretical systematization in which is main the concept of meaning. The book that made him famous is the one written with Thomas Luckmann in 1966: “The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge”. Their study seeks to highlight the knowledge of common sense and social processes through this knowledge is built. The process of social construction of reality – according to the authors –, has a dialectical nature, which is made of three different moments but separable only analytically. These three moments are defined “externalization, objectivation and internalization” (Berger & Luckmann, 1991, p. 149). Of great importance to the stage of the internalization is the socialization process. So “the imposition of social patterns on behaviour” (Berger & Berger, 1975, p. 55) becomes a very remarkable phenomenon to be studied, especially in the contemporary society scenario where the traditional hierarchy of values has lost its stability.