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The term first came into widespread use in the 1920s, when a number of German-speaking sociologists wrote extensively on it, notably Max Scheler, and Karl Mannheim with Ideology and Utopia. With the dominance of functionalism through the middle years of the 20th century, the sociology of knowledge tended to remain on the periphery of mainstream sociological thought. It was largely reinvented and applied much more closely to everyday life in the 1960s, particularly by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in The social construction of reality (1966) and is still central for methods dealing with qualitative understanding of human society. Compare socially constructed reality.
Although very influential within modern sociology, the sociology of knowledge can claim its most significant impact on science more generally through its contribution to debate and understanding of the nature of science itself, most notably through the work of Thomas Kuhn on The structure of scientific revolutions (see also: paradigm).
sociology of knowledge n. The study of the social origins of belief systems and (according to its proponents) knowledge. The German political philosophers Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95) argued in Die Deutsche Ideologie (1846, The German Ideology) and elsewhere that people's ideologies, including their social and political beliefs and opinions, are rooted in their class interests, and more generally in the social and economic circumstances in which they live: ‘It is men, who in developing their material inter-course, change, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life’ (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe 1/5). Under the influence of this doctrine, and of phenomenology, the Hungarian-born German sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) gave impetus to the growth of the sociology of knowledge with his Ideologie und Utopie (1929, translated in 1936 as Ideology and Utopia), although the term had been introduced five years earlier by the co-founder of the movement, the German philosopher and social theorist Max Scheler (1874–1928), in Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens (1924, Attempts at a Sociology of Knowledge). A strong interpretation claims that all knowledge and beliefs are the products of socio-political forces, but this version is self-defeating, because if it is true, then it too is merely a product of socio-political forces and has no claim to truth and no persuasive force. Mannheim sought to escape this paradox by exempting free-floating intellectuals, whom he claimed were only loosely anchored in social traditions, relatively detached from the class system, and capable of avoiding the pitfalls of total ideologies and of forging a ‘dynamic synthesis’ of the ideologies of other groups. See also epistemology, sociology.
Tran Van Kham, USSH, Vietnam National University E-mail: khamtv@vnu.edu.vn
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A particularly important strain of the sociology of knowledge is the criticism by Michel Foucault. In " Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason ", 1961, he argued that conceptions of madness and what was considered "reason" or "knowledge" was itself subject to major culture bias - in this respect mirroring similar criticisms by Thomas Szasz, at the time the foremost critic of psychiatry, and himself now an eminent psychiatrist. A point where Foucault and Szasz agreed was that sociological processes played the major role in defining "madness" as an "illness" and prescribing "cures".
In " The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception ", 1963Events January-March January 11 The Whisky A Go-Go night club in Los Angeles, the first disco in the USA, is opened. January 14 George Wallace becomes governor of Alabama. January 22 Elysee treaty between France and Germany January 28 Black student Harvey, Foucault extended his critique to all of modern scientific medicine , arguing for the central conceptual metaphorConceptual metaphor In cognitive linguistics metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain, e. one person's life experience versus another's. A conceptual domain is any coherent organization of experience of " The Gaze ", which had implications for medical education , prison design , and the carceral stateA carceral state is a state modelled on a prison. It is a form of, or a pre-requisite to/evolution upon, a police state. A carceral state is one that seeks to know everything about its inhabitants and visitors, but hide everything about itself. It demands as understood today. Concepts of criminal justiceThe study of criminal justice traditionally revolves around three main components of the criminal justice system police courts corrections Nowadays, it is sometimes argued that psychiatry is also a central part of the criminal justice system. The pursuit and its intersection with medicine were better developed in this work than in Szasz and others, who confined their critique to current psychiatric practice.
Finally, in " The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences ", 1966Events January January 1 In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bedel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. January 2 Strike of public transportation workers in New York City ends January 13 January 3 First Acid Test at the Fil, and " The Archaeology of Knowledge , 1969For other uses, see Number 1969. For the movie, see 1969 (movie). Events January January 1 Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch purchases the largest selling British Sunday newspaper The News Of The World January 5 The Derry Riots leave over 100 people i, Foucault introduced the abstract notions of mathesis and taxonomia . These, he claimed, had transformed 17th and 18th century studies of " general grammar " into modern " linguisticsBroadly conceived, linguistics is the study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. The study of linguistics can be thought of along three major axes, the endpoints of which are described below: Synchronic and diachronic Sy", " natural historyNatural history is an umbrella term for what are now usually viewed as a number of distinct scientific disciplines. Most definitions include the study of living things (e. biology, including botany and zoology); other definitions extend the topic to inclu" into modern " biology", and " analysis of wealth" into modern " economics". Not, claimed Foucault, without loss of meaning. The 19th century had transformed what knowledge was.
Perhaps Foucault's best-known and most controversial claim was that before the 18th century, " Man did not exist ". The notions of humanity and of humanism were inventions or creations of this 19th century transformation. Accordingly, a cognitive bias had been introduced unwittingly into science, by over-trusting the individual doctor or scientist's ability to see and state things objectively. This study still guides sociology of knowledge and has been claimed to have sparked single-handed much of postmodernism. Foucault is taught as core curriculum to French high school students, who also study Nietzsche and his claim that " God is dead".