Thomas Luckmann

On May 10th 2016, Luckmann died of cancer at the age of 88 at his home in Austria.

In 2004 Luckmann became an honorary member of the Slovenian Sociological Association. The German Sociological Association awarded him a prize for his outstanding lifetime contribution to sociology at its 2002 Congress, and Luckmann became an honorary member in 2016.

In 1998 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Luckmann continued this analysis of social action, and in 1982 he continued the work of Alfred Schütz, drawing on Schütz's notes and unfinished manuscripts to complete Structures of the Life-World, published (posthumously for Schütz) in 1982. Luckmann then built upon Schütz's analysis and published, Theory of Social Action in 1992.

In several of his works, he developed the theory of social constructionism, which argues that all knowledge, including the most basic common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions. Together with Peter L. Berger, he wrote the book The Social Construction of Reality in 1966. The book was an important part of the move in sociology, and particularly the sociology of religion, away from the view of religion and religious values as central to the social order, arguing that social order is socially constructed by individuals and/or groups of individuals. Since publication, the book has been translated into thirteen different languages and serves as a cornerstone in sociological literature. Berger wrote on their experience writing the book saying "someone asked, Why did not The Social Construction of Reality immediately have a huge effect? The effect came much later, and my answer was that you cannot play chamber music at a rock concert. And compared to what was going on all around us in the social sciences, we were doing chamber music."

He obtained his first academic position at Hobart College, in Geneva, New York, before returning to teach at The New School after the death of Alfred Schütz. Luckmann was eventually granted a professorship position at The University of Frankfurt in 1965. After publishing two books in 1963 and 1966, and several successful essays, Luckmann worked as a professor of Sociology at the University of Konstanz in Germany from 1970 to his retirement, and later professor emeritus. It is noted that his time in at Konstanz was marked as an intense period of interdisciplinary work, in which he wrote multiple essays concerning communication, linguistics, literature and history.

Following his field work in Germany and the completion of his dissertation, Luckmann was asked to complete several reviews on the surrounding sociological literature concerning religion. Disappointed by the positivistic, unauthentic views of a Church-backed sociology of religion, Luckmann was compelled to write The Invisible Religion in 1963. The book was then translated into English in 1967. Luckmann proposes that there are four derivative types of religion the first of those being a "is a universal and nonspecific elementary social form which is an objective total worldview providing social meaning for a society's existence." The second, "the specific institutional social form of religion constituted by configurations of religious representations form- ing a sacred cosmos which is part of the worldview." The third, "a universal nonspecific form of individual religiosity which is an internalized subjective system of relevance reflecting the objectivated universal and nonspecific elementary social form of religion." Lastly, "a specific biographical form of religiosity in individual consciousness." Drawing from Durkheim, Luckmann developed a functional perspective in his theoretical objectives. Luckmann's theory reiterate's Durkheim's notion that "the original symbol system whereby man emerged from the animal world was religious." Rather than reverting to popular explanations of secularization, Luckmann explained the emergence of a new kind of religion in the 20th century: private religion He explains the diffusion of world views and institutional de-specialization of religion led to a privatization, rather than a retreat, from religion. Though Luckmann initially received harsh criticisms, The Invisible Religion became a pivotal move within the sociology of religion in the 20th century, especially in conjunction with The Social Construction of Reality.

In 1950, Luckmann married Benita Petkevic, who was a Lativan-born social scientist who taught in Austria, Germany.

50th Anniversary Social Construction Thomas Luckmann.

He and his mother relocated to Vienna in 1943, after the death of his father and several other relatives during World War II. Living in Austria during this period automatically granted him German citizenship, and in 1944 he was drafted for the army, joining the Luftwaffe where he served as a Luftwaffenhelfer. Luckmann was transferred to a military hosipital for minor injuries shortly before the end of the war. Luckmann was in the hospital in Bavaria when the United States liberated the region. After liberation, in 1945 Luckmann became a prisoner of war and escaped after three months. He then settled in Vienna.

Luckmann was born in Jesenice, which at the time was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. His father was an Austrian industrialist, while his mother was from a Slovene family from Ljubljana. On his mother's side, he was the cousin of the Slovene poet Božo Vodušek. As a child of two parents from two vastly different cultures, Luckmann grew up in a bilingual environment. Luckmann grew up speaking both Slovene and German. He attended Slovene-language schools while in Jesenice until the year 1941, when the occupation of Slovenia during World War II forced him to transfer to a high school in Austria.

Luckmann attended high school in Klagenfurt, after he and his family fled Italian occupation in Ljubljana in 1941. After escaping being a prisoner of war, Luckmann began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Vienna and Innsbruck. In 1950 he married Benita Petkevic, with whom he moved to the United States, where he studied at The New School in New York City. The couple had three daughters.

Thomas Luckmann (/ˈlʌkmən/; October 14, 1927 – May 10, 2016) was an American-Austrian sociologist of German and Slovene origin who taught mainly in Germany. Born in Jesenice, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Luckmann studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of Vienna and the University of Innsbruck. He married Benita Petkevic in 1950. His contributions were central to studies in sociology of communication, sociology of knowledge, sociology of religion, and the philosophy of science. His best-known titles are the 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (co-authored with Peter L. Berger), The Invisible Religion (1967), and The Structures of the Life-World (1973) (co-authored with Alfred Schütz).