SOC444 Sociological Theory: Karl Mannheim

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SOC444 Sociological TheoryKarl Mannheim
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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

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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 1971429).
• Coser, Lewis A. 1971. Masters of Sociological
  Thought Ideas in Historical and Social Context.
  New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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 193627).
• Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. New
  York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

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

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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 193626).

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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.

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• Relativism and Relationalism
• Relativism
• More on a psychological/individual
  levelknowledge/truth is subjective per the
  individual
  
• Relationalism
• Takes into account the influence of social
  factors, status, class, sociohistorical position

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• Mannheim undertook to generalize Marxs
  programmatic orientation to inquire into the
  connection of . . . philosophy with . . . reality
  (Marx and Engles 19396), 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.

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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, Marxs 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.

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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 STATEMENTTHINK ABOUT IT!

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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 19363).

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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 STATEMENTTHINK ABOUT IT!

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• . . . 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 1936244).

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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.

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• Problem of Generations Zeitlin (1997381-383)
• 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.

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• Remember Comtes 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.

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• 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?

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Karl MannheimSociology of Knowledge

• How do the Problem of Generations and
  relationalism impact the analysis of the
  situation between the 1st and 5th generation
  members?