The article presents the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD). SKAD, which has been in the process of development since the middle of the 1990s, is now a widely used framework among social scientists in discourse research in the German-speaking area. It links arguments from the social constructionist tradition, following Berger and Luckmann, with assumptions based in symbolic interactionism, hermeneutic sociology of knowledge, and the concepts of Michel Foucault. It argues thereby for a consistent theoretical (...) and methodological grounding of a genuine social sciences perspective on discourse interested in the social production, circulation and transformation of knowledge, that is in social relations and politics of knowledge in the so-called ‘knowledge societies’. Distancing itself from Critical Discourse Analysis, Linguistics, Ethnomethodology inspired discourse analysis and the Analysis of Hegemonies, following Laclau and Mouffe, SKAD’s framework has been built up around research questions and concerns located in the social sciences, referring to public discourse and arenas as well as to more specific fields of (scientific, religious, etc.) discursive struggles and controversies around problematizations (Foucault). (shrink)

Mad liberation — the former mental patient self-help movement — is characterized in this paper as a true progressive social movement. A sociology of knowledge perspective is used to account for much of the research literature that argues, to the contrary, that self-help groups do not represent a true social movement. Based on the "myth of individualism" and the "myth of simplicity," the psychological literature on self-help has defined empowerment in self-help groups as an individual-change or therapeutic orientation. (...) This paper, adopting a sociological perspective, argues that, in fact, empowerment in the mad liberation movement is typically a socio-political concept used to promote social change and the civil rights of mental patients. Accordingly, examples of social changes brought about by members of the mad liberation movement are cited in support of the claim that this movement fits the criteria of a progressive social movement. (shrink)

This article focuses on two developments in nineteenth-century (philosophy of) social science: Moritz Lazarus’s and Heymann Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie and Georg Simmel’s early sociology of knowledge. The article defends the following theses. First, Lazarus and Steinthal wavered between a “strong” and a “weak” program for Völkerpsychologie. Ingredients for the strong program included methodological neutrality and symmetry; causal explanation of beliefs based on causal laws; a focus on groups, interests, tradition, culture, or materiality; determinism; and a self-referential model of social (...) institutions. Second, elements of the weak program were the blurring of explanatory and normative interests, an emphasis on freedom of the will, and antirelativism and antimaterialism. Third, later research projects keeping the label “Völkerpsychologie” followed the weak program. Fourth, in the 1880s and 1890s, Simmel tried to build on some of the elements of the strong program. Finally, and fifth, part of the explanation for why Simmel did not succeed in his attempt had to do with the social-political situation of German academia around 1900. (shrink)

Etude de la conception des grands penseurs, de Saint Simon à Mannheim en ce qui concerne la sociologie de la connaissance.

(1997). Sociology of knowledge and the sociology of scientific knowledge. Social Epistemology: Vol. 11, New Directions in the Sociology of Knowledge, pp. 187-192.

This book reformulates the sociological subdiscipline known as the sociology of knowledge. Knowledge is presented as more than ideology, including as well false consciousness, propaganda, science and art.

The Sociology of Knowledge in Weimar Germany: Its Background and Context i Any serious attempt to understand the distinctive nature of the German tradition ...

Dascal’s position on scientific controversies is submitted to a critical examination. It is pointed out that his distinction between knowledge and understanding, between ‘hard rationality’ and ‘soft rationality’ is unlikely to survive sustained critical probing. What is egregiously missing in his approach is a recognition of the role of so-called ‘sociology of knowledge’ in the way scientific controversies play out. It is argued that, insofar as they constitute pragmatic events, scientific controversies cannot be studied properly without taking (...) into account their inalienable sociological dimension. (shrink)

This paper considers the charge that—contrary to the current widespread assumption accompanying the near-universal neglect of his work—Wilhelm Jerusalem (1854–1923) cannot count as one of the founders of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge. In order to elucidate the matter, Jerusalem’s “sociology of cognition” is here reconstructed in the context of his own work in psychology and philosophy as well as in the context of the work of some predecessors and contemporaries. It is argued that while it shows (...) clear discontinuities with the present-day understanding of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge, Jerusalem’s sociology of cognition was not only distinctive in its own day but also anticipated in nuce a much-discussed theme in current history of science. (shrink)

Two distinct attitudes have been adopted by investigators in the field of the sociology of knowledge. One of them may be called speculative; the other, empirical. The central interest of an investigator having the speculative attitude lies in developing a theory of the sociology of knowledge. The central interest of investigators having the empirical attitude lies in finding out or explaining concrete phenomena; the theory is employed, implicitly or explicity, for this purpose. The existence of the (...) two attitudes may be in part explained, as far as the German sociology of knowledge is concerned, by reference to the history of this school, which has grown out of and has been determined by a Marxist and materialistic philosophy, and especially by the use of this philosophy as a political instrument in the struggle of the emerging proletariat against the bourgeoisie. This statement, however, must be supplemented by a short location of the four most important contributors to the theory of the German sociology of knowledge. Max Scheler approaches the problem phenomenologically; he was the first and only one to ask the fundamental question, “What is knowledge?” Karl Mannheim, though markedly influenced by the Marxist viewpoint, particularly by Lukács, seems to me more adequately characterized by stressing his development from a more exclusively speculative to a more decidedly empirical attitude, which latter is especially evident in his most recent book, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. Alexander von Schelting's main contribution is his thorough logical analysis of Mannheim's theory in the light of Max Weber's methodology. Ernst Grünwald has given the most complete survey of the forerunners, the history, and the various contributions of the sociology of knowledge. These four thinkers are indirectly dependent on the historically determined emphasis of the movement on ideology in that they remain on the level of a theoretical discussion without arriving at factual research. (shrink)

My objective in the following study is to present and analyze the objections to the "classical argument" in the sociology of knowledge raised by Leo Strauss and Karl Popper. Building on this expository account, I will attempt to demonstrate (1) that the opposition of Strauss and Popper is more apparent and polemical than real, (2) that the position taken by Strauss and Popper on the viability of a sociology of knowledge is essentially no different from that (...) taken by the discipline's founders: Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim, and Georg Lukács, (3) that whatever the merits of Strauss and Popper's contentions, they become relevant only in the context of a radicalized version of the sociology of knowledge which developed subsequent to their formulation, and (4) that the sociology of knowledge has needlessly and deplorably become the battleground for meta?theoretical disputes that are irrelevant to its practice. (shrink)

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Situating Karl Mannheim in a tradition of critical social philosophy, Iaan Reynolds argues that Mannheim’s early explorations in the sociology of knowledge offer a novel approach to this tradition, since they emphasize the need for social research to cultivate the critical self-awareness of social researchers.

This book, first published in 1975, is an examination of the theoretical foundation of the sociology of art and literature and an in-depth study in the sociology of knowledge. In discussing and clarifying some of the important philosophical issues in this field, the constant underlying reference is to the creative and artistic-expressive areas of knowledge ¿ so that the better understanding of the social nature and genesis of all knowledge may point the way towards a (...) similar comprehension of art and society. (shrink)

The article examines Randall Collins's magnum opus, The Sociology of Philosphies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change in relation to a number of discourses bearing on the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of philosophies, from Hegel and 19th-century historicism to Mannheim, Foucault, Bourdieu and Gillian Rose's Hegel Contra Sociology. The article explicates Collins's dual theory of intellectual networks and institutional conflict as factors in the explanation of intellectual change. The article interprets Collins's work as (...) a classic application of Durkheimian sociological principles to the analysis of knowledge. However, the article argues that Collins is less successful in accounting for the internal normative motives of inquiry and the problem of what Hegel saw as the claims of reason in history based on the orientation to truth. (shrink)

2015 Reprint of Original 1936 American Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Karl Mannheim was a Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology as well as a founder of the sociology of knowledge. His essays on the sociology of knowledge have become classics in the field. In "Ideology and Utopia" he argued that the application of (...) the term ideology ought to be broadened. He traced the history of the term from what he called a "particular" view. This view originally saw ideology as the perhaps deliberate obscuring of facts. Over time this view gave way to a "total" conception (most notably in Marx), which argued that a whole social group's thought was formed by its social position (e.g. the proletariat's beliefs were conditioned by their relationship to the means of production). However, he called for a further step, which he called a general total conception of ideology, in which it was recognized that everyone's beliefs-including the social scientist's-were a product of the context they were created in. Mannheim points out social class, location and generation as the greatest determinants of knowledge. He feared this could lead to relativism but proposed the idea of relationism as an antidote. To uphold the distinction, he maintained that the recognition of different perspectives according to differences in time and social location appears arbitrary only to an abstract and disembodied theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Recent developments in artificial intelligence based on neural nets—deep learning and large language models which together I refer to as NEWAI—have resulted in startling improvements in language handling and the potential to keep up with changing human knowledge by learning from the internet. Nevertheless, examples such as ChatGPT, which is a ‘large language model’, have proved to have no moral compass: they answer queries with fabrications with the same fluency as they provide facts. I try to explain why this (...) is, basing the argument on the sociology of knowledge, particularly social studies of science, notably ‘studies of expertise and experience’ and the ‘fractal model’ of society. Learning from the internet is not the same as socialisation: NEWAI has no primary socialisation such as provides the foundations of human moral understanding. Instead, large language models are retrospectively socialised by human intervention in an attempt to align them with societally accepted ethics. Perhaps, as technology advances, large language models could come to understand speech and recognise objects sufficiently well to acquire the equivalent of primary socialisation. In the meantime, we must be vigilant about who is socialising them and be aware of the danger of their socialising us to align with them rather than vice-versa, an eventuality that would lead to the further erosion of the distinction between the true and the false giving further support to populism and fascism. (shrink)

An exposition and defense of the sociology of knowledge, i.e., "the ideational factors compelling men to act." Horowitz holds that the sociology of knowledge has now shed its metaphysical inheritance and assumed the status of a science.--R. C. N.

It is widely believed that the “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge comes into serious conflict with mainstream epistemology. I argue that the programme has two aspects—one modest, and the other less so. The programme’s modest aspect—best represented by the “symmetry thesis”—does not contain anything to threaten much of the epistemological mainstream, but does come into conflict with a certain kind of epistemological “externalism”. The immodest aspect, however—in the form of “finitism”—pushes the programme towards a radical form (...) of relativism about truth. Accepting these points will allow us to put an end to much unnecessary debate surrounding the strong programme, and allow a more fruitful discussion to begin.Author Keywords: Author Keywords: Strong programme; Epistemology; Normativity; Relativism; Finitism. (shrink)

This article investigates the status of Norbert Elias’s conception of the sociology of knowledge as the means to provide a new epistemological security for sociology. The author of the article argues that this translates into an effective critique of the underlaboring model of the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences, which is consistent with Elias’s attempt to consolidate his own sociological theory. Nevertheless, the author argues that Elias’s sociology of knowledge runs into problems in (...) its attempt to evade the problem of relativism in explanation, and in its conception of human agency. (shrink)

Business ethics is the study of ethics as it applies to a particular sphere of human activity. As such, business ethics presupposes a difference between an individual's experience within a business organization and his or her experience outside the organization. But how do we examine this difference? How do we discuss an individual's experience of everyday reality? What processes create and sustain this reality, and how does one's version of reality affect what is, and what is not, ethical? This paper (...) outlines an approach to these questions based on theory from the sociology of knowledge, an approach which makes some progress towards making business ethics more existential. The sociology of knowledge, and particularly the social constructionist perspective, is concerned with how an institution creates knowledge and how this knowledge affects the cognitive processes of the individuals who make up the institution. The dialectic nature of the interdependent processes which shape both the individual and the organization are important in understanding how business ethics, as one kind of social knowledge, are enacted. Examining these processes leads to several interesting hypotheses about the nature of both the study and practice of business ethics. XXXOnly individuals have a sense of responsibility. — Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

The sociology of knowledge can most generally be defined as the discipline devoted to the social origins of thought. It is an analysis concerned with specifying the existential basis of thought, and with establishing the relationship obtained between mental structures or thought, and that existential basis. Some very interesting and difficult problems arise from this conception of the sociology of knowledge. Perhaps the most obvious of these is whether or not a sociology of knowledge, (...) as here conceived, is theoretically possible. This is a problem I do not intend to deal with at present because limitations of time prevent me from doing even partial justice to it. (shrink)

The speed of social dynamics has overtaken the speed of thought. Adopting a dialectical perspective towards reality, social theory has always detected faults in the dominant social pattern, foreseeing crises and outlining in advance the features of new social models. Thought has always moved faster than reality and its ruling models, ensuring a dynamic equilibrium during modernity. Despite any dramatic social crisis, theory has always provided exit routes. The tragedy of current crisis lies in the fact that its social implications (...) are exasperated by the absence of alternative views. This book identifies the causes of this mismatch between thought and reality, and illustrates a way out. (shrink)