Introduction: The Development of the Classical Sociology of Knowledge

Together with Émile Durkheim, Karl Mannheim is considered one of the founders of the branch of study subsequently known as the sociology of knowledge. More precisely, what the two are credited with is having initiated what used to be commonly referred to as, respectively, the French and the German traditions within this field (Merton 1968, 543– 44). Overall, the discipline aims at explaining the origin and development of ideas and thoughts by linking them to the social conditions from which they have emerged. Since the time Durkheim and Mannheim made their seminal contributions in the course of the first decades of the twentieth century, the field of study has, however, naturally changed and developed quite considerably. Bourdieu's concept of ‘field’, for example, has been an important innovation that has done much to help carry empirical research forward in the area. With this concept at their disposal, many sociologists of knowledge today examine knowledge production, such as through scientific controversies or intellectual positioning, as a function of micro or meso, rather than just macro, conditions (Camic and Gross 2001). Yet, even though Mannheim and Durkheim restricted themselves to macro – most usually cultural and political – conditions in their investigations, it would be an exaggeration to conclude that contemporary sociology of knowledge has left its classical legacy behind.

It is not particularly difficult, for example, to identify and trace the influence of Durkheim in some of the most notable works in the sociology of knowledge produced in recent decades. Durkheim's principal work in the area is The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). In it, he argues that intellectual concepts are collective representations that exert a coercive force on individuals who cannot shield themselves from their influence. In one form or another, this seminal insight can also be found operationalized, for example, in David Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery (1976), Mary Douglas's How Institutions Think (1986) and Randall Collins's The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998).