v The present volume is intended as a systematic, theoretical treatise in the sociology of knowledge.

p.2 The man in the street does not ordinarily trouble himself about what is "real" to him and about what he "knows" unless he is stopped short by some sort of problem. He takes his "reality" and his "knowledge" for granted.

p.3 What is "real" to a Tibetan monk may not be "real" to an American businessman... It follows that specific agglomerations of "reality" and "knowledge" pertain to specific social contexts, and that these relationships will have to be included in an adequate sociological analysis of these contexts.

p.6 What concerned Marx was that human thought is founded in human activity... and in the social relations brought about by this activity.

p.14-15 The sociology of knowledge must concern itself with everything that passes for "knowledge" in society.

p.22 The reality of everyday life is organized around the "here" of my body and the "now" of my present. This "here and now" is the focus of my attention to the reality of everyday life... I experience everyday life in terms of differing degrees of closeness and remoteness, both spatially and temporally. Closest to me is the zone of everyday life that is directly accessible to my bodily manipulation... In this world of working my consciousness is dominated by the pragmatic motive, that is, my attention to this world is mainly determined by what I am doing, have done or plan to do in it.

p.22 Typically, my interest in the far zones is less intense and certainly less urgent. I am intensely interested in the cluster of objects involved in my daily occupation

p.24 As long as the routines of everyday life continue without interruption they are apprehended as unproblematic.

p.25 Compared to the reality of everyday life, other realities appear as finite provinces of meaning, enclaves within the paramount reality marked by circumscribed meanings and modes of experience. The paramount reality envelops them on all sides, as it were, and consciousness always returns to the paramount reality as from an excursion... All finite provinces of meaning are characterized by a turning away of attention from the reality of everyday life.

p.26 The world of everyday life is structured both spatially and temporally.

p.28 The reality of everyday life is shared with others... The most important experience of others takes place in the face-to-face situation, which is the prototypical case of social interaction. All other cases are derivatives of it.

p.30-31 The reality of everyday life contains typificatory schemes in terms of which others are apprehended and "dealt with" in face-to-face encounters... Our face-to-face interaction will be patterned by these typifications as long as they do not become problematic through interference on his part... At this point, of course, my typification scheme will have to be modified... Unless thus challenged, though, the typifications will hold until further notice and will determine my actions in the situation.
The typificatory schemes entering into face-to-face situations are, of course, reciprocal.

p.31 The typifications of social interaction become progressively anonymous the farther away they are from the face-to-face situation.

p.33-34 The social reality of everyday life is thus apprehended in a continuum of typifications, which are progressively anonymous as they are removed from the "here and now"... successors... are typified in an... anonymous manner... These typifications are substantively empty projections, almost completely devoid of individualized content... The anonymity of... these...typifications, however, does not prevent their entering as elements into the reality of everyday life, sometimes in a very decisive way. [JLJ - great. Note to self, put in current paper]

p.34-35 Human expressivity is capable of objectivation, that is, it manifests itself in products of human activity that are available both to their producers and to other men as elements of a common world... The reality of everyday life is not only filled with objectivations; it is only possible because of them... all objectivations are susceptible of utilization as signs, even though they were not originally produced with this intention.

p.38 Language originates in and has its primary reference to everyday life; it refers above all to the reality I experience in wide-awake consciousness, which is dominated by the pragmatic motive (that is, the cluster of meanings directly pertaining to present or future actions) and which I share with others in a taken-for-granted manner.

p.40 Any significative theme that thus spans spheres of reality may be defined as a symbol, and the linguistic mode by which such transcendence is achieved may be called symbolic language.

p.40-41 Language is capable not only of constructing symbols that are highly abstracted from everyday experience, but also of "bringing back" these symbols and appresenting them as objectively real elements in everyday life. In this manner, symbolism and symbolic language become essential constituents of the reality of everyday life and of the commonsense apprehension of this reality. I live in a world of signs and symbols every day.

p.42 Since everyday life is dominated by the pragmatic motive, recipe knowledge, that is, knowledge limited to a pragmatic competence in routine performances, occupies a prominent place in the social stock of knowledge. For example, I use the telephone every day for specific pragmatic purposes of my own. I know how to do this. I also know what to do if my telephone fails to function - which does not mean that I know how to repair it... All of this telephonic lore is recipe knowledge since it does not concern anything except what I have to know for my present and possible future pragmatic purposes. I am not interested in why the telephone works this way, in the enormous body of scientific and engineering knowledge that makes it possible to construct telephones.

p.43 a large part of the social stock of knowledge consists of recipes for the mastery of routine problems. Typically, I have little interest in going beyond this pragmatically necessary knowledge

p.43 The social stock of knowledge differentiates reality by degrees of familiarity. It provides complex and detailed information concerning those sectors of everyday life with which I must frequently deal. It provides much more general and imprecise information on remoter sectors. Thus my knowledge of my own occupation and its world is very rich and specific, while I have only very sketchy knowledge of the occupational worlds of others. The social stock of knowledge further supplies me with the typificatory schemes required for the major routines of everyday life... My world is structured in terms of routines... "I know what to do" with regard to... all these events within my everyday life.

p.44 the reality of everyday life always appears as a zone of lucidity behind which there is a background of darkness... I cannot know everything there is to know about this reality... There are always things that go on "behind my back."

p.45 My knowledge of everyday life has the quality of an instrument that cuts a path through a forest and, as it does so, projects a narrow cone of light on what lies just ahead and immediately around; on all sides of the path there continues to be darkness... My knowledge of everyday life is structured in terms of relevances. Some of these are determined by immediate pragmatic interests of mine

p.72-73 the origins of any institutional order lie in the typification of one's own and others' performances... The typification of forms of action requires that these have an objective sense, which in turn requires a linguistic objectification. That is, there will be a vocabulary referring to these forms of action... In principle, then, an action and its sense can be apprehended apart from individual performances of it and the variable subjective processes associated with them. Both self and other can be apprehended as performers of objective, generally known actions, which are recurrent and repeatable by any actor of the appropriate type... a segment of the self is objectified in terms of the socially available typifications. This segment is the truly "social self," which is subjectively experienced as distinct from and even confronting the self in its totality. This important phenomenon, which allows an internal "conversation" between the different segments of the self, will be taken up again later

p.94 The second level of legitimation contains theoretical propositions in a rudimentary form. Here may be found various explanatory schemes relating to sets of objective meanings. These schemes are highly pragmatic, discretely related to concrete actions.

p.95 symbolic processes are processes of signification that refer to realities other than those of everyday experience.

p.96 The symbolic universe is conceived of as the matrix of all socially objectivated and subjectively real meanings; the entire historic society and the entire biography of the individual are seen as events taking place within this universe.

p.103 All social reality is precarious. All societies are constructions in the face of chaos.

p.109 there is usually a continuity between the explanatory and exhortatory schemes, which serve as legitimations on the lowest theoretical level, and the imposing intellectual constructions that expound the cosmos.

p.149 As we have seen, the reality of everyday life maintains itself by being embodied in routines

p.152 The most important vehicle of reality-maintenance is conversation. One may view the individual's everyday life in terms of the working away of a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and reconstructs his subjective reality.

p.153 the great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective reality. Indeed, its massivity is achieved by the accumulation and consistency of casual conversation - conversation that can afford to be casual precisely because it refers to the routines of a taken-for-granted world. The loss of casualness signals a break in the routines and, at least potentially, a threat to the taken-for-granted reality.

p.153 Generally speaking, the conversational apparatus maintains reality by "talking through" various elements of experience and allocating them a definite place in the real world.

p.155 Disruption of significant conversation with the mediators of the respective plausibility structures threatens the subjective realities in question.

p.158 The plausibility structure must become the individual's world, displacing all other worlds, especially the world the individual "inhabited" before his alternation.