{"id":72038,"date":"2017-10-17T11:21:08","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T16:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72038"},"modified":"2017-10-17T11:21:08","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T16:21:08","slug":"the-airport-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/10\/17\/the-airport-ritual\/","title":{"rendered":"The Airport Ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend I was at the annual conference for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, where they held a memorial for sociologist <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peter_L._Berger\">Peter Berger<\/a>. I thought of Berger and Luckmann&#8217;s classic <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books\/about\/The_Social_Construction_of_Reality.html?id=Jcma84waN3AC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\"><em>The Social Construction of Reality<\/em><\/a> in the airport on the way home. Whenever people say ritual is dying out, or socially constructed things &#8220;aren&#8217;t real,&#8221; I think of airport lines.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-72039\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/10\/lanes-500x255.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"255\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/10\/lanes-500x255.png 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/10\/lanes-768x392.png 768w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/10\/lanes.png 931w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There are always two lines, but rarely any separation other than a sign like this. If you&#8217;re lucky, you can catch the gate agent making a big show of opening the &#8220;general boarding&#8221; lane, but everyone ends up at the same scanner right past the sign (usually only a minute or two after the &#8220;elite&#8221; passengers). From Berger and Luckmann (the Anchor Books paperback edition):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The developing human being not only interrelates with a particular natural environment, but with a specific cultural and social order which is mediated to him by the significant others who have charge of him (p. 48).<\/p>\n<p>The symbolic universe orders and thereby legitimates everyday roles, priorities, and operating procedures\u2026even the most trivial transactions of everyday life may come to be imbued with profound significance (p. 99).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.evan-stewart.com\/\">Evan Stewart<\/a> is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. You can follow his work at <a href=\"https:\/\/evan-stewart.com\">his website<\/a>, or on <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/evanstewart.bsky.social\">BlueSky<\/a>.<\/i>  <\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend I was at the annual conference for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, where they held a memorial for sociologist Peter Berger. I thought of Berger and Luckmann&#8217;s classic The Social Construction of Reality in the airport on the way home. Whenever people say ritual is dying out, or socially constructed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":72040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,8118,307],"class_list":["post-72038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-traveltourism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/10\/lanes-1-e1508256612625.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72042,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72038\/revisions\/72042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}