Peter L. Berger's Invitation To Sociology: Social Theory And Sociological Theory

As mentioned by Peter L. Berger in his book Invitation to Sociology, he argues that there is a debunking motif inherent in sociological consciousness. The very first basic thing about sociology, is that “things are not what they seem” (Berger, 1963, pp. 23). As “the art of mistrust” according to Nietzsche, it can offer us a sociological approach to understanding society as distinct from common sense. Debunking motif, as one of the four kinds of sociological consciousness, is an approach that can be understood as the tool for us to “look behind the scenes” of how society works as social reality has many layers of meaning. Berger referred the debunking motif of sociology as an unmasking tendency and a “seeing through the facades of social structures”

The above illustrated the meaning of debunking motif inherent in sociological consciousness as proposed by Peter Berger. While Berger proposed that to live in society would mean that it would be inevitable to expose ourselves to acting by the domination of society’s logic without noticing it in Durkheimian perspective (Berger, 1963, pp.40), with sociological consciousness in mind, however, the debunking motif inherent would go beyond one’s surface understanding and dig into the deeper meaning of it while giving the room to alternative implication of common beliefs that are hidden from our own awareness. To put forward an example in order to further illustrate its meaning, I would like to use a common sense that I find it very dubious, which is that “the higher its ranking, the better quality the university is

Take both World University Ranking and Asian University Rankings produced by QS as examples, even if they are both produced by QS, a British company specialising in education and study abroad, the two rankings released in the same academic year can be different. For example, in 2018 QS Asia University Ranking, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was ranked 3rd, the highest among Hong Kong universities. The University of Hong Kong (HKU), meanwhile, was ranked 5th. Among others, the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) who ranked 8th had surpassed the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) who ranked 10th. Meanwhile, in 2018 QS World University Ranking, however, is a whole different story as the title of Hong Kong’s top university goes to HKU who was ranked 26th. HKUST was ranked 30th. The contrasting ranking can also be observed in the ranking of CUHK and CityU that CUHK was ranked 46th, which is three places above CityU, making CUHK the “top three” university in Hong Kong. This is exactly why I find the seemingly logical “the higher its ranking, the better quality the university is of” dubious and doubtful. Suppose that there isn’t any logical fallacy in this common sense, or in other words- suppose it is correct, we may come up with nothing but contradiction that we cannot come to a conclusion on whether HKU or HKUST is the top university in Hong Kong, neither we