Institution and ‘Institutional Engineering’ as ‘Experienced Reality’

Abstract

Of course, as most of today’s sociologists would acknowledge, institutions are “objectivated human activity”. Hence, “however massive it may appear to the individual”, it “is a humanly produced, constructed objectivity” (Berger and Luckmann 1991: 78). Moreover, following Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, I conceive of institutions not only as objective, yet socially constructed, but also as “experienced reality” (Berger and Luckmann 1991: 77), being the product of a specific history (Berger and Luckmann 1991: 72). Consequently, for approaching and analysing an institutional order, the historically produced knowledge of its members must be taken into consideration (Berger and Luckmann 1991: 82).