Peter L. Berger's Understanding of Alienation: Loss of Dialectical Consciousness

This study is focused on the understanding of alienation in Peter L. Berger. It should be noted that Berger's view on alienation is highly connected with his phenomenological sociology. In this respect, his ideas regarding alienation are generally different from the other sociologists, who deal with the same subject. According to Berger, alienation is given in the socialization process of the individuals, so it is anthropologically obligatory. In other words, alienation is a process in which the dialectical relationship among 'individual' and 'his world' is lost in the minds. In a sense, people could forget that the world mentioned above are cooperatively produced and maintained. In this respect, an 'alienated consciousness' is a consciousness, which is not 'dialectical'. Finally, Berger emphasizes that the true relationship among 'human' and 'world' is disordered on the mind and while the 'procreator' is recognized as only a product, actor becomes a subject that is just affected externally. For Berger, the only way to avoid from alienation is to recognize the socio-cultural world as a consequence of human's own activity and so providing the 'cohesiveness' instead of understanding socio-cultural world as natural facts.