Knowledge and Social Structure: An Introduction to the Classical Argument in the Sociology of Knowledge

177 Pages·2014·8.57 MB·English

by  Peter Hamilton

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
SOCIAL THEORY
Volume 37
KNOWLEDGE AND
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
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KNOWLEDGE AND
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
An introduction to the classical argument
in the sociology of knowledge
PETER HAMILTON
Firstpublishedin1974
Thiseditionfirstpublishedin2015
byRoutledge
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Knowledge and social structure
An introduction to the classical
argument in the sociology
of knowledge
Peter Hamilton
Routledge & Kegan Paul
London and Boston
First published in 1974
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane,
London EC4V 5EL and
9 Park Street,
Boston, Mass. 02108, U.S.A.
Printed in Great Britain by
Ebenezer Bay/is & Son Ltd
The Trinity Press, Worcester, and London
© Peter Hamilton 1974
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism
ISBN 0 7100 7746 7 (c)
ISBN 0 7100 77866 (p)
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 73-86574
Contents
Introduction Vll
1 Philosophy and the roots of social science: the
Enlightenment 1
2 Marxism I: Hegel and Marx 15
3 Marxism 11: Lukacs 37
4 Marxism III 55
I The Frankfurt school: Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse
and Habermas 55
II Lucien Goldmann: sociology of knowledge and
sociology of literature 65
5 Max Scheler 75
6 MaxWeber 88
7 Durkheim 103
8 Karl Mannheim and the production of a 'relationist'
sociology of knowledge 120
9 Phenomenological-sociological approaches to the
sociology of knowledge 135
10 Conclusions 147
Notes 153
Index 161
v
For Susan
Introduction
As its title somewhat grandiosely suggests, the primary aim of this
study is the presentation, elucidation and analysis of the develop
ments which have characterized the sociology of knowledge, and
which have set for it the outlines of its major problematics. However,
the study is neither exhaustive nor analytically complete. It repre
sents a more or less idiosyncratic journey through the subject-field
in which the author picked out those contributions or fEUvres which
seemed to him to have had the most obvious influence upon the
progression of a distinctive sociology of knowledge. Thus the analysis
excludes-but does not intend to derogate by doing so-such
notables as Uvy-Bruhl, Griinewald, De Gre, Znaniecki, Merton and
Parsons, all of whom deserve mention in one respect or another. It
is merely time and energy which have prevented their inclusion.
However, what remains is a particular interpretation of what con
stitutes the primary elements of a distinctive field of study concerned
with a determinate relationship between knowledge and social struc
ture. What I have done is to take each of the most distinctive
approaches to the explication of such a postulated relationship, and
reconstruct them analytically so as to present a coherent way into
looking at how they affect that explication. Consequently I have dis
cussed and analysed the three main 'pre-paradigms'l of the sociology
of knowledge based in the work of, respectively, Marx, Durkheim and
Weber. Each of these 'pre-paradigms'-by which I mean a structured
framework of concepts and subject matter which claims to hold
scientific adequacy-treats in a distinctive way the determinate rela
tionship between knowledge and social structure. Each pre-paradigm
also has distinctive philosophical roots and characteristic expressions.
I have tried also to describe the intellectual context in which the
problems involved in producing a sociology of knowledge first came
to light. That context produced the notion of ideology, in the sense
vii