In 1963, Peter Berger published Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. In the book, Dr. Berger explains the field of sociology for a lay audience. That explanation proved so influential that the book has been translated into more than fifteen languages, became a fixture in introductory sociology college classes,* and remains in print today.

Dr. Berger was born in Austria and moved to the United States as a teenager. He earned his Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research in New York. After teaching at numerous universities, Dr. Berger retired from Boston University as Professor of Religion, Sociology and Theology and as founder and Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs. He has written (and continues to write) many books primarily about the sociology of religion, sociological theory, and Third World Development. He maintains an active blog, “Religion and Other Curiosities” for The American Interest, an organization that characterizes itself as “an independent voice devoted to the broad theme of ‘America in the world.’”* The blog can be accessed at http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/berger/.

The EQ reading selection from Invitation to Sociology begins after Dr. Berger has argued in the previous chapter that society is like a prison, dominating people’s behaviors through a set of social controls. In Chapter Five, “Sociological Perspective—Society in Man,” Berger explains why humans endure such imprisonment so easily. He suggests that our very identities are shaped by society, and he spends most of the chapter explaining how that shaping occurs. He focuses on Role Theory, the Sociology of Knowledge, and Reference Group Theory. Berger’s introduction to these concepts can be readily applied to students’ own self-identity as “Wabash Men,” prompting questions about what expectations and rewards that role entails; how they learned those expectations; and how they came to “know” the reasons to attend a college for men.