Knowledge as Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge

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Sign In or Create an Account. Close mobile search navigation Article navigation. Article PDF first page preview. You do not currently have access to this article. You could not be signed in. Sign In Forgot password? The paper concludes with a discussion of three new and exciting areas of growth and debate in the sociology of knowledge: The pioneer of the study of structural knowledge is the French theorist and sociologist Emile Durkheim. Furthermore, he showed the importance of symbols and beliefs for the continued solidarity of members of society. Durkheim argued that knowledge can only come about from and through society and is thus conditioned largely by the sociohistorical milieu of which it is part.

He also showed that the importance of this knowledge for the cohesion of the group is not only necessary in primitive religion but also, by extension, all institutions in modern society. Here, Durkheim and Mauss recognize the variation of temporal systems from culture to culture. Durkheim shows that a division of time is not something that is universal but rather derives from the different historical and structural elements of the community.

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Clearly, Durkheim and Mauss acknowledge that even the most basic pieces of knowledge are products of social organization and not pregiven Kantian categories. Furthermore, there is a rich Durkheimian tradition that examines the social constitution of time and cognition Sorokin ; Zerubavel ; Flaherty Max Weber, a German contemporary of Durkheim, also made central contributions to the early sociological perspective on the structures of ideas and knowledge.

Weber argued that ideas are absolutely central to sociological analysis, positing that it was the prevalence of Calvinist religious beliefs, not simply technological and industrial advancement, that led to the development of capitalism in the West for critiques, see Hamilton This emphasis on values was influential to the work of Parsons in his development of a theory of the social system.

Following the tradition of Weber and Parsons, the first modern institutional approach to an empirical sociology of knowledge was developed by Robert Merton. Merton drew historical linkages between Puritan thought and the values and methods prevalent in contemporary science.

Sociology of knowledge

Later in his career , Merton studied how the values and norms active in scientific institutions functioned. Despite these shortcomings, Merton was able to provide an extensive set of theories and methods that can be used to study science at several levels, such as historical developments, contemporary institutional structures, and broader social dynamics Cole Merton established a framework for an institutional sociology of knowledge and has left a lasting legacy of questions still to be researched with regard to the institutional and organizational underpinnings of knowledge cultures today see Cole ; Merton The study of the underlying structures of traditions of knowledge was reinvented in France by Pierre Bourdieu.

Through the development of a habitus a product of conscious and unconscious dispositions gained through immersion in the field , actors are equipped to move up the hierarchy of positions. This perspective emphasizes the hidden power dynamics at work in disciplinary knowledge and shows that fields are made up of relational networks of actors, often in opposition to each other, in a hierarchical manner. Those near the top of the structural hierarchy have the necessary capital to define what is legitimate and valued within the field.

This framework has inspired a great deal of contemporary work on the topic of disciplinary knowledge and reward systems in both the humanities and the sciences see, e. Collins shows that great intellects seldom come from nowhere but are connected to networks with high visibility to begin with. Furthermore, Collins depicts oppositional streams of thought i. Oppositional ideas are a way to get attention, reduce the importance of those already in the spotlight, and provide what seem like original ways forward.

A similar notion is pursued by Andrew Abbott in Chaos of Disciplines. Abbott contends that knowledge evolves in fields following a law of oppositional fractals. By studying and diagramming the development of dualities in various fields of knowledge, Abbott shows that academic progress tends to be made by dividing the field into increasingly smaller fractal divisions.

His recursive model of fractals shows that forms of knowledge that have their roots in direct opposition through the process of continual fractionalization, which eventually covers all possible combinations and divisions, leading to lots of ideas but, perhaps, few truly original and new discoveries. Network analyses have also produced interesting results in their studies of disciplinary fields and knowledge. Price observed that modern science moves too quickly to rely on publication through books or even journal articles to keep up with the cutting edge of the field.

Crane later argued for the value of membership in these networks, arguing that it encourages drive, enthusiasm, solidarity, and interest in relevant issues. Many scholars have studied the role of scholarly networks by undertaking detailed citation analyses Baldi ; Hargens ; Moody Scholars have also used a more thoroughly institutional and organizational approach to understanding knowledge cultures, which has helped sociologists move beyond the issue of demarcation between science and nonscience. Whitley argues it is these organizational qualities and not the inherent nature of the subject matter that is most important in the demarcation of the disciplines.

Stephan Fuchs , , inspired largely by the work of Luhmann , Collins , and Whitley , has laid the groundwork for a series of empirical inquiries into science and knowledge with the use of an organizational framework. The critical tradition of the sociology of knowledge began most famously with Karl Marx in the mids. Marx argues that it is real people who, through their interrelations and subsistence within the bounds of nature, develop ideas:.

Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Thus, for Marx, knowledge is the result of human activity rooted within material conditions. Laws are enacted to bolster or protect capitalist production and are justified by the fact that they are decided in relation to abstract, disinterested ideals.

Marx viewed science as a natural offshoot of the productive processes of society, and thus the Marxist perspective would come to represent scientists as proletariat workers producing knowledge and technology to help bolster production and profits for the ruling classes see Mulkay ; Aronowitz ; Stachel The content of scientific knowledge was protected from its social roots for Marx vis-a-vis the rigor and discipline of the scientific method. Mannheim was primarily concerned with the development of ideology and knowledge through the course of history, arguing that a great deal of our knowledge can be accounted for outside of purely rational thought springing forth from empirical conditions:.

The process of knowing does not actually develop historically in accordance with immanent laws. On the contrary, the emergence and the crystallization of actual thought is influenced in many divisive ways by extra-theoretical factors of the most diverse sort. Utopias are challenges to prevailing orthodox ideologies, offering ways to change the current order of knowledge, enabling an alternative way of life for society. All knowledge, for Mannheim, was relational, and as such, historical analysis was the best hope for uncovering the hidden motives of ideological systems see Ketler, Meja, and Stehr Neo-Marxist approaches to science have been linked to this question of ideology.

Unlike the position Marx himself took on scientific knowledge, neo-Marxists tend to critique what they see as the procapitalist features in the actual content of knowledge claims in science. Marxist theories treat scientific knowledge as a determinate product of material and social conditions Restivo For example, Alfred Sohn-Rethal attempted to show that mathematics arose as a way to further commodity exchange and that because of this, all of math and science is at its root based on economic ideologies.

Sociology of Knowledge

Aronowitz argues that science represents a hegemonic system, in that it is considered a dominant form of ideology that serves the interests of the powerful in society, akin to the use of religious ideology as a force of coercion in the past. For Barnes, the types of interests that affect knowledge include broader considerations than a purely Marxist economic-oriented perspective and allows for such things as gender , race, and politics see also Hess The postmodernist turn in France, often linked with the political upheaval of the s see Seidman , created a drastic turn in the sociology of knowledge.

Derrida , turned against the structuralism of Saussure and Levi-Strauss and argued that while language is indeed built on binary oppositions, the nature of these oppositions are culturally relative. Furthermore, the valuations that are linked to these oppositions serve as a tool of discursive power that establishes the conditioning of everyday reality and hence is a powerful and ever-present form of control.

Introduction

As such, grand narratives ought to be abandoned for local narratives, where incommensurability and difference is celebrated. Baudrillard moves the classic Marxist concerns of class and the ownership of the means of production as secondary to the most powerful coercive force in postmodern society, which is, like Derrida envisioned, the realm of the symbolic. Symbols begin to take on a power of their own, as the flood of symbols has become so replete that their connections to concrete referents is lost.

The differentiation between the signifier and the sign has collapsed. He argues that the discursive formations that are generated in the creation of intellectual ideas often find their way into politics and everyday life as well for the case of Freudianism, see McLaughlin a.

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In this way, knowledge is tied closely to forms of microcontrol, serving to label and control people who must exercise internal monitoring and self-discipline. Foucault also posited that beneath the possibility of science lies a particular episteme, an epistemological substructure that allows for different types of knowledge to take hold. Thus, the episteme characterizing the classical age an emphasis on resemblances varied markedly from the episteme that allowed for the rise of science in the seventeenth century an emphasis on causal reasoning. First, all claims and ideas are reduced to text, and science is nothing more than individuals rhetorically persuading others that their textual claims are of more value than others see Bazerman ; Gross Second, all epistemological assumptions of the modern period are questioned such that there remains little or no confidence in the ability to base an argument solely on evidence see also Ward Third, there is a shift of focus from how scientists represent, discover, or interpret reality, to how scientists create reality.

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Bohm finds the directions and motivations of science as amoral, in that it serves whatever good or evil entity that happens to be in command. Postmodernism tends to treat the views of science as true only insofar as they are consistent with the interests of the dominant groups in society Griffin In line with the call of Lyotard, postmodernist arguments seem to argue for a decentering of science, to allow for pluralistic, localized, and incommensurate approaches to understanding.

Sociology of knowledge - Wikipedia

Feminists are another variant of the critical tradition, analyzing science as it is seen to represent an andocentric, or male-centered, enterprise. Dorothy Smith has argued that women have been conspicuously absent in formalized and mainstream knowledge and that the entire enterprise of the sciences and humanities is excessively centered on male experience.

Keller explains that the success of science has devalued women through society, as they represent the opposite traits of neutral objectivity and active interrogation celebrated through the age of reason. Feminist studies in science have concentrated especially on the fields of biology, physiology, evolution, and the social sciences, as these are most closely related to gender differences e.

Feminist contributions to a critical sociology of knowledge have illustrated how androcentric practices, institutions, methods, and even theories can be shaped by the often unconscious influence of gender bias. Camic and Gross a argue that the new sociology of ideas can be defined in large part by a renewal in a local emphasis.

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