3/23/04 © 1998, 2000 by Ronald Keith Bolender This explanation comes from a faith-based site: SOC444 Sociological Theory: Karl Mannheim

• 1893-1947
• Born in Budapest, Hungary
• Only child
• Father--Hungarian
• Mother--German

Education

Hungary

Germany

France

Fled Germany in 1933 because of the Nazis

Sociology of Knowledge

This branch of sociology studies the relation between thought and society and is concerned with the social or existential conditions of knowledge (Coser 1971:429).

Coser, Lewis A. 1971. Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

existential: 1 Of, relating to, or affirming existence 2 a: grounded in existence or the experience of existence: EMPIRICAL b: having being in time and space

Thinking is an activity that must be related to other social activity within a structural frame. To Mannheim, the sociological viewpoint seeks from the very beginning to interpret individual activity in all spheres within the context of group experience (Mannheim 1936:27).

Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Thinking is never a privileged activity free from the effects of group life; therefore, it must be understood and interpreted within its construct.

No given individual confronts the world and, in striving for the truth, constructs a world view out of the data of his experience. . . . It is much more correct that knowledge is from the very beginning a co-operative process of group life, in which everyone unfolds his knowledge within a framework of a common fate, a common activity, and the overcoming of common difficulties (Mannheim 1936:26).

Ideology and Utopia

Ideology

Those total systems of thought held by society's ruling groups that obscure the real conditions and thereby preserve the status quo. Utopia

Total systems of thought are forged by oppressed groups interested in the transformation of society. From the utopian side, the purpose of social thought is not to diagnose the present reality but to provide a rationally justifiable system of ideas to legitimate and direct change.

Mannheim was a Conflict Theorist.

Relativism and Relationalism

Relativism

More on a psychological/individual level…knowledge/truth is subjective per the individual

Relationalism

Takes into account the influence of social factors, status, class, sociohistorical position

Methods of Dealing with Cultural Objects or Intellectual Phenomena

“From the inside”

So that their immanent meanings are disclosed to the investigator

“From the outside”

As a reflection of the societal process in which the thinker is inevitably enmeshed

Knowledge is conceived as existentially determined

Mannheim undertook to generalize Marx’s programmatic orientation to inquire into the connection of . . . philosophy with . . . reality (Marx and Engles 1939:6), and to analyze the ways in which systems of ideas depend on the social position--particularly the class positions--of their proponents.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engles. 1939. The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers.

In the Marxian formulation, attention was called to the functions of ideology for the defense of class privileges, and to the distortion and falsification of ideas that derived from the privileged positions of bourgeois thinkers. In contrast to this interpretation of bourgeois ideology, Marx’s own ideals were held by the Marxists to be true and unbiased by virtue of their being an expression of a class--the proletariat--that had no privileged interests to defend.

Mannheim did not make this distinction between various systems of ideas. He allowed for the probability that all ideas, even “truths,” were related to, and hence influenced by, the social and historical situation from which they emerged. The very fact that each thinker is affiliated with particular groups in society--that he occupies a certain status and enacts certain social roles--colors his intellectual outlook.

VERY IMPORTANT STATEMENT…THINK ABOUT IT!

Men do not confront the objects of the world from the abstract levels of a contemplating mind as such, nor do they do so exclusively as solitary beings. On the contrary, they act with and against one another in diversely organized groups, and while doing so they think with and against each other (Mannheim 1936:3).

Mannheim defined the sociology of knowledge as a theory of the social or existential conditioning of thought. To him all knowledge and all ideas are “bound to a location,” though to different degrees, within the social structure and the historical process. At times a particular group can have fuller access to the understanding of a social phenomenon than other groups, but no group can have total access to it. Ideas are rooted in the differential location in historical time and social structure of their proponents so that thought is inevitably perspectivistic.

VERY IMPORTANT STATEMENT…THINK ABOUT IT!

. . . Perspective . . . is something more than a merely formal determination of thinking. [It] signifies the manner in which one views an object, what one perceives in it, and how one construes it in his thinking. [Perspective] also refers to qualitative elements in the structure of thought, elements which must necessarily be overlooked by a purely formal logic. It is precisely these factors which are responsible for the fact that two persons, even if they apply the same formal-logical rules, may judge the same object very differently (Mannheim 1936:244).

Like the proverbial seven blind men trying to describe the properties of an elephant, persons viewing a common object from dissimilar angles of vision rooted in their different social location are apt to arrive at different cognitive conclusions and different value judgements. Human thought is “situationally relative.”

Problem of Generations Zeitlin (1997:381-383)

• New participants in the cultural process are emerging
• Former participants in that process are continually disappearing
• Members of any one generation can participate only in a temporally limited section of the historical process
• It is therefore necessary continually to transmit the accumulated cultural heritage
• The transition from generation to generation is a continuous process

Zeitlin, Irving M. 1997. Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Remember Comte’s Law of Human Progress and the sociological assumption of progressive change?----The sociology of knowledge (especially the problem of generations) follows the logic of this assumption.

A good example of this idea is a review of the concept (definition) of Nazarene membership from the 1st generation to the 5th generation.

How has the definition and related cultural expectations changed? (Think in terms of rules, standards, and definition of the “holiness lifestyle.”)

How has the “knowledge” of the culture changed? Is different? What has been lost? What has been added?

How do the “Problem of Generations” and “relationalism” impact the analysis of the situation between the 1st and 5th generation members? Dr. Ron.