Interaction as Reality-Maintenance

Abstract

A commentary and development of some notions on interaction as reality-maintenance derived from Berger and Luckmann's treatise on 'The Social Construction of Reality'. Berger and Luckmann's analysis is supplemented with some additional observations on the interactional definition of the self, on the role of expectations and retrospection in reality-confirmation (so that reality could be defined as a process of self-fulfilling shared expectations), and on the function of ideologies, institutions, communications and mass media in the structuring and management of the multiple overlapping realities which make up the social world.

Keywords: Reality, Expectations, Communication, Interaction, Symbolic interactionism, Constructivism, Social theory, Institutions, Ideology