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Abstract
This paper argues that the concept of "recipe knowledge," first articulated by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966) as an extension of Alfred Schutz's (1960) concept of "cookbook knowledge," should be further refined. There are two distinguishable ideal types of recipe knowledge, called "simple recipes" and "standardized recipes," which differ from one another in terms of specification, applicability across situations, and reliability. Simple recipes are "rules of thumb" for handling typical situations passed along during socialization, while standardized recipes reflect Weber's concept of rationalization and are currently associated with the advancement of technology. The paper ends with a plea for sociologists to study both types of recipe knowledge as a contribution to the sociology of everyday life and to the sociology of knowledge.
Beyond Berger and Luckmann's Concept of "Recipe Knowledge:" Simple versus Standardized Recipes
The term recipe knowledge was first used in Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's influential book, The Social Construction of Reality (1966). In describing the mind-set of the average person doing daily tasks, Berger and Luckmann wrote the following:
Since everyday life is dominated by the pragmatic motive, recipe knowledge, that is, knowledge limited to pragmatic competence in routine performance, occupies a prominent place in the social stock of knowledge. For example, I use the telephone everyday 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, but that I know whom to call on for assistance....All of this telephonic lore is recipe knowledge since it does not concern anything except what I have to know for my present and possibly 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. Nor am I interested in uses of the telephone that lie outside of my purposes, say in combination with short-wave radio for the purpose of marine communication. Similarly, I have recipe knowledge of the workings of human relationships. (p. 42)
The last sentence of this passage contains a promissory note: sociologists' efforts to develop a sociology of everyday life should be facilitated by...