Thomas Luckmann
Thomas Luckmann (/ˈlʌkmən/; October 14, 1927 – May 10, 2016) was an American-Austrian sociologist of German and Slovene origin who taught mainly in Germany.
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) Luckmann was born in 1927 in Jesenice, Slovenia which at the time was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
As a child he was exposed to two vastly different cultures, and Luckmann had the advantage of growing up in a bilingual environment[2] speaking both Slovene and German.
Luckmann attended high school in Klagenfurt, Austria, after he and his family fled Italian occupation in Ljubljana in 1941.
After the end of the war, Luckmann could return to school in Klagenfurt and pass his exit exams, the "Matura."
He was taught by Alfred Schütz, Dorion Cairns, Albert Salomon, and Carl Meyer, they later became great influence on Luckmann.
[6] For example, Luckmann was introduced to the sociology of religion when his teacher at the time, Carl Meyer, asked him to do field work about churches in Germany after World War II.
[7] 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.
[9] 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.
In 1950, Luckmann married Benita Petkevic, who was a Latvian-born socialogist who taught in the United States and Germany.
[3] Luckmann's ideas and theories have been influential within the field in sociology and has had a huge impact on the world and intellectual thought.
[10] Luckmann was a follower of the phenomenologically oriented school of sociology, established by the Austrian American scholar Alfred Schütz.
[7] Berger wrote on their experience writing the book saying "someone asked, Why did not The Social Construction of Reality immediately have a huge effect?
"[15] 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.
Luckmann's theory reiterate's Durkheim's notion that "the original symbol system whereby man emerged from the animal world was religious.
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.
