Summary Of Peter Berger's Invitation To Sociology

Invitation to Sociology- Peter L. Berger Of the various articles read so far this semester, the most important article we have read, in my opinion, was Peter Berger's Invitation to Sociology. This article eye the framework for the entire semester and introduces a new way of thinking that is essential to fully comprehend all of the topics discussed later on in the class. In regards to looking at the world with the sociological perspective, Berger states that it will "lead you to rethink your social world, so that you become aware of issue that you may never before have considered". This directly relates to the first chapter of the textbook "social problems in a diverse world" here C. Wright Mills explains the idea of the Sociological Imagination,

In regard to the hypothetical situation of social barriers coming down suddenly and allowing people to glimpse the reality of people's lives and not the facades they put up to everyone else, Berger states "usually this does not happen, and the facades continue to confront us with seemingly rocklike permanence. The perception of the reality behind the facades then demands a considerable intellectual effort". Walking down the street, anyone can see a homeless person asking for spare change and understand, at least in part, the hard times that person is going through. With the sociological imagination one can look at that same homeless person and understand that they are part of a global issue of poverty, understand that their race might play a large part in determining their current economic situation, and ho the different issues are interconnected both on microlevel and macrolevel of

When looking at the importance of a particular article in regards to its benefit when studying social problems, there is no other article that nears the importance of Berger's Invitation to Sociology as it lays the groundwork for the entire study of sociology problems from a sociological perspective. In the same way that one cannot begin to comprehend the field of calculus without first understanding basic mathematics, one cannot being to study social problems without first being able to understand how the sociological imagination works and how to engage that new type of research and