Not exactly. In 1966, sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann published The Social Construction of Reality, a book that became hugely influential in sociology, philosophy, and cultural studies. They did not argue that reality itself is fake or that the material world is merely invented. Their point was more subtle and more powerful: much of social reality is constructed through human interaction, language, institutions, and shared habits of thought. Things like roles, customs, norms, and “what everybody knows” often feel natural and obvious, but they are built up over time by cultures and then handed down as if they were simply part of the world itself.
That timing matters. The 1960s were a period of intense cultural change in the West. Old social norms were being questioned, including ideas about authority, gender, religion, race, the family, and the meaning of personal freedom. Institutions that had long seemed stable suddenly looked far less fixed. In that setting, Berger and Luckmann’s work landed with force because it helped explain how entire societies build a lived world of meaning, then teach each new generation to experience it as normal.
So, they were not denying reality. They were explaining how human societies construct, preserve, and pass along a lived world of meaning. The danger comes when we forget that distinction and start treating socially inherited beliefs as if they are automatically true, rather than something to examine.
