1 Introduction Human Intellect and Adaptability Toward a Social Theory of Human Reality The Constructed Nature of Human Reality the interplay of Routines and Reflexivity What is Reflexivity? The Struture of the Book 2 Norms and Rules The Meaning of Moral Rules: A Case Example What is Wrong with Control Theory? Regulative and Constitutive Rules Rules as Reflexive Resources Norms as Part of Discourse The Emergence of Norms in Social Change Norms and Ethinicity Norms and Morality Norms in Everyday Interaction Norms and Social Order 3 Language Language and reality: The Natural Attitude Language as a System of Its Own Saussure's Theory Language and Reality in the Structuralist View Language Use as Practice Toward an Integrative Theory of Meaning Construction The Discursive and the Non-Discursive The Foucauldian Perspective What is Non-Discursive? Evoking the Unthought The Persistence of the Mundane Notion of Language 4 Conversations Conversations as a Game Literal and Commonsensical Meaning Bracketing Contents and Suppressing Agency Building on and Updating Shared Assumptions Institutional Interaction and Power Relations Conclusion 5 Rituals What is a Ritual? Cognition and Emotion in Rituals Hierarchies and Solidarity Ritual as a train Why Do We Have Rituals? 6 Personality: The Case of Modernity The Formation of the Individual and the Inner Self Life-Stories and Biographical Reasoning The Cultural Premisses of Self Rescuing the Split Character: The 'freudian' Narrative A Case Example in Personality Construction Biographical Narration and Self 7 Identity Subject Position Justifications and Legitimations Coping Strategies Group Consciousness Conclusion 8 The Modernization Story as a Reflexive Frame The History of the Story of Modernization The Historicist Method The Main Assumptions of the Modernization Discourse The Crisis of the Sacred Increasing Reflexivity Conclusion 9 The Enigma of Human Reality The Inherent Televions in Human Reality The Sociology and Ethics of Scientific Knowledge Toward More Reflexive Human Science