Thomas Luckmann

The social construction of reality is an ongoing, dynamic process, not a static state.

Everyday life is the paramount reality, the fundamental and all-encompassing sphere of human experience.

Language is the most important vehicle of reality-maintenance.

The individual's subjective reality is constantly being confirmed and reconfirmed in interaction with others.

Social institutions are experienced as possessing an objective reality of their own, confronting the individual as an external and coercive fact.

The world of everyday life is not only taken for granted as reality by the members of society in their everyday conduct; it is a world that originates in their thoughts and actions, and is maintained as real by these.

The sacred cosmos is a human construction.

Religion, in its elementary forms, is a universal feature of human existence.

The 'invisible religion' refers to the ultimate meanings and values that guide individuals' lives, often without explicit institutionalization.

Modern societies are characterized by a pluralization of life-worlds and a corresponding pluralization of ultimate meanings.

The individual's biography is a continuous process of identity formation and transformation within a socially constructed world.

Socialization is the comprehensive and consistent induction of an individual into the objective world of a society or a sector of it.

The self is not a static entity but a dynamic process of identification and re-identification.

The taken-for-granted character of everyday life is precisely what makes it so powerful.

The world of common sense is the world of paramount reality.

Typifications are essential for making sense of the social world.

The institutionalization of human activity is a fundamental process in the formation of society.

Legitimation is the process by which an institutionalized order is explained and justified.

The symbolic universe is the matrix of all socially objectivated and subjectively real meanings.

The individual is not merely a passive recipient of social reality but an active participant in its construction.