Thomas Luckmann

Thomas Luckmann (; October 14, 1927 – May 10, 2016) was an American-Austrian sociologist of German and Slovene origin who taught mainly in Germany. Born in Jesenice, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Luckmann studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of Vienna and the University of Innsbruck. He married Benita Petkevic in 1950. His contributions were central to studies in sociology of communication, sociology of knowledge, sociology of religion, and the philosophy of science. His best-known titles are the 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (co-authored with Peter L. Berger), The Invisible Religion (1967), and The Structures of the Life-World (1973) (co-authored with Alfred Schütz)

Overview

Early life

Luckmann was born in 1927 in Jesenice, Slovenia which at the time was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He had an Austrian father who was an industrialist, his mother was from a Slovene family from Ljubljana. On his mother's side, he was the cousin of the Slovene poet Božo Vodušek. As a child he was exposed to two vastly different cultures, and Luckmann had the advantage of growing up in a bilingual environment speaking both Slovene and German. He attended Slovene-language schools while in Jesenice until the year 1941, when the occupation of Slovenia during World War II forced him to transfer to Klagenfurt high school in Austria. Later in 1943 he and his mother relocated to Vienna, after the death of his father and several other relatives during World War II. joining the Luftwaffe where he served as a Luftwaffenhelfer. Luckmann was transferred to a military hospital for minor injuries shortly before the end of the war. Luckmann was in the hospital in Bavaria when the United States liberated the region. After liberation in 1945 Luckmann became a prisoner of war where he remained until the end of the war. He then settled back to Vienna He obtained his first academic position at Hobart College, in Geneva, New York, before returning to teach at The New School after the death of Alfred Schütz. Luckmann was eventually granted a professorship position at the University of Frankfurt in 1965. After publishing two books in 1963 and 1966, and several successful essays, Luckmann worked as a professor of Sociology at the University of Konstanz in Germany from 1970 to his retirement, and later professor emeritus. It is noted that his time in at Konstanz was marked as an intense period of interdisciplinary work, in which he wrote multiple essays concerning communication, linguistics, literature and history.

Life Events

In 1950, Luckmann married Benita Petkevic, who was a Latvian-born sociologist who taught in the United States and Germany. It was said that their marriage was a turning point for his life, among many other factors. The couple had three daughters Maja, Mara, and Metka.

Concepts

Luckmann was a follower of the phenomenologically oriented school of sociology, established by the Austrian American scholar Alfred Schütz. He contributed to the foundation of phenomenological sociology, the sociology of religion in modern societies, and the sociology of knowledge and communication.

Social Constructionism focuses on the study of the process of social construction. It could be described as an "approach" that is neither a theory of religion or any other social phenomenon. In several of his works, he developed the theory of social constructionism, which argues that all knowledge, including the most basic common-sense knowledge of everyday reality, which included gender, ethnicity, nations, and religion. It's derived from and maintained by social interactions especially through language. Together with Peter L. Berger, he wrote the book The Social Construction of Reality, and it was published by 1966. The book was an important part of the move in sociology as it established "social construction" as part of sociological vocabulary. It was also particularly with the sociology of religion, away from the view of religion and religious values as central to the social order, arguing that social order is socially constructed by individuals and/or groups of individuals. Since publication, the book has been translated into thirteen different languages and serves as a cornerstone in sociological literature.

Sociology of Religion

Following his field work in Germany and the completion of his dissertation, Luckmann was asked to complete several reviews on the surrounding sociological literature concerning religion. Disappointed by the positivistic, unauthentic views of a Church-backed sociology of religion, Luckmann was compelled to write The Invisible Religion in 1963 under the German title Das Problem der Religion in der modernen Gesellschaft. The second, "the specific institutional social form of religion constituted by configurations of religious representations form- ing a sacred cosmos which is part of the worldview." Though Luckmann initially received harsh criticisms, The Invisible Religion became a pivotal move within the sociology of religion in the 20th century, especially in conjunction with The Social Construction of Reality.

Sociology of Knowledge and Communication

Luckmann's contribution to the sociology of knowledge and communication is based on his careful analysis of the link between socio-cultural linguistic practices, and the construction of social reality. Based on his empirical research of conversational analysis, Luckmann explains his theory of “communicative genres” in which linguistic types, such as, gossip, proverbs, or jokes, all serve as forms of social knowledge, and act as tools for the formation of social structure.

In 2004 Luckmann became an honorary member of the Slovenian Sociological Association.