The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim

Description

An international collection of original articles Karl Mannheim documenting the current revitalization of the reception of this classical sociologist.

The Hungarian-born Karl Mannheim became recognized as a pathbreaking sociologist in Germany when he published 'Ideologie und Utopie' (1929) and in the English-speaking world upon publication of 'Ideology and Utopia' (1936), a book in which he explored the possibilities of an approach to political thought by way of sociology of knowledge. Eighty years later, and viewed from varied substance-rich perspectives worldwide, the many facets of Mannheim’s original work are examined in their bearing on numerous other questions in political theory, cultural studies and social analysis. 'The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim' is an international collection of original articles on the classical sociologist and documents the current revitalization of the reception of this social thinker. Using “learning from Mannheim” as their motif, the chapters in this volume favor fresh negotiations with his works, including the writings published posthumously in recent decades.

Introduction: Karl Mannheim as Interlocutor, David Kettler and Volker Meja; Chapter One Between Ideology and Utopia: Karl Mannheim’s Quest for a Political Synthesis, Henrik Lundberg; Chapter Two Karl Mannheim and the Realism Debate in Political Theory, Peter Breiner; Chapter Three Mannheim, Mass Society and Democratic Theory, Ryusaku Yamada; Chapter Four Karl Mannheim and Hannah Arendt on Conduct, Action and Politics, Philip Walsh; Chapter Five Karl Mannheim and Women’s Research, David Kettler and Volker Meja; Chapter Six The Melodrama of Modernity in Karl Mannheim’s Political Theory, Hartmut Behr and Liam Devereux; Chapter Seven Historicization and the Sociology of Knowledge, Reinhard Laube; Chapter Eight Karl Mannheim, T. S. Eliot and Raymond Williams: Cultural Sociology or Cultural Studies?, Claudia Honegger; Chapter Nine Karl Mannheim’s Sociology of Self- Refl exivity, Amalia Barboza; Chapter Ten Praxeological Sociology of Knowledge and Documentary Method: Karl Mannheim’s Framing of Empirical Research, Ralf Bohnsack; List of Contributors; Index.

Sujets

• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783086498
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim
Anthem Companions to Sociology
Anthem Companions to Sociology offer authoritative and comprehensive assessments of major figures in the development of sociology from the last two centuries. Covering the major advancements in sociological thought, these companions offer critical evaluations of key figures in the American and European sociological tradition, provide students and scholars with in-depth assessments of the makers of sociology and chart their relevance to modern society.
Series Editor
Bryan S. Turner – City University of New York, USA/Australian Catholic University, Australia/University of Potsdam, Germany
Forthcoming Titles
The Anthem Companion to Gabriel Tarde
The Anthem Companion to Philip Rieff
The Anthem Companion to Ernst Troeltsch
The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim
Edited by
David Kettler and Volker Meja
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

© 2018 David Kettler and Volker Meja editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters © individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-480-7 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-480-4 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.
Contents
Introduction: Karl Mannheim as Interlocutor
David Kettler and Volker Meja
Chapter One Between Ideology and Utopia: Karl Mannheim’s Quest for a Political Synthesis
Henrik Lundberg
Chapter Two Karl Mannheim and the Realism Debate in Political Theory
Peter Breiner
Chapter Three Mannheim, Mass Society and Democratic Theory
Ryusaku Yamada
Chapter Four Karl Mannheim and Hannah Arendt on Conduct, Action and Politics
Philip Walsh
Chapter Five Karl Mannheim and Women’s Research
David Kettler and Volker Meja
Chapter Six The Melodrama of Modernity in Karl Mannheim’s Political Theory
Hartmut Behr and Liam Devereux
Chapter Seven Historicization and the Sociology of Knowledge
Reinhard Laube
Chapter Eight Karl Mannheim, T. S. Eliot and Raymond Williams: Cultural Sociology or Cultural Studies?
Claudia Honegger
Chapter Nine Karl Mannheim’s Sociology of Self-Reflexivity
Amalia Barboza
Chapter Ten Praxeological Sociology of Knowledge and Documentary Method: Karl Mannheim’s Framing of Empirical Research
Ralf Bohnsack
List of Contributors

Index
INTRODUCTION: KARL MANNHEIM AS INTERLOCUTOR
David Kettler and Volker Meja
In the 1945–46 academic year, a loyal one-time Karl Mannheim student, Kurt H. Wolff, offered an ambitious yearlong graduate seminar on the sociology of knowledge at Ohio State University, where he had finally found a regular position after ten difficult exile years in Italy and America. Wolff’s design of the seminar was multifaceted, uncompromisingly theoretical and self-consciously reflexive. A noteworthy product was a book-length record (300 single-spaced pages in small type), entitled The Sociology of Knowledge: A History and a Theory (Wolff 1945 ), comprising not only extensive lecture and discussion notes, but also periodic reports on student research projects and, most important, feedback from living authorities who were routinely sent transcripts of seminar reports on their work.
The most consequential of these exchanges was with Mannheim, whose Ideology and Utopia (Mannheim 1929 , 1936 ) served as the culminating topic of the first semester and as primary syllabus of problems for the second. In the context of the course, Wolff is quite stern with Mannheim, exemplifying his own loyalty by his independence. His exposition of Mannheim’s approach is grounded on the article “Sociology of Knowledge” (Mannheim 1931, 1936 ), published some years after the book in a “handbook” of sociological concepts, which Wolff characterizes as “his latest draft of his conception of sociology of knowledge contained in his Ideology and Utopia ” (Wolff 1946: 65). Wolff sums up, with three principal objections, the criticisms that already punctuate his exposition. First, he notes that Mannheim fails to specify the kind of “knowledge” that is comprehended by the “perspectives” subject to the characteristic treatment of the sociology of knowledge, although certain “formal” dimensions appear to be excluded. Second, Wolff follows commentaries in American publications by Robert K. Merton ([ 1941 ] 1968: 543–62) and Alexander von Schelting ( 1936 ) in animadversions against the numerous equivocal formulations of “social determination,” ranging from “direct causation” to a “kind of ‘emanationist’ relation between social conditions and thought” (Wolff 1946: 71), with other imprecise possibilities in between. Third, he agrees with von Schelting that Mannheim’s “relationism” is, strictly speaking, only a verbal evasion of the relativist vicious circle, but he prefers Merton’s more “constructive” “attempt at saving what is valuable and tenable,” and promises to implement a “third attitude,” closer to Merton than to von Schelting, in his own theory (Wolff 1946: 72).
For present purposes, what is noteworthy is Mannheim’s letter in response to these notes. After compliments on the “courage” of the group’s “pioneering venture,” Mannheim says that he must limit himself to one point, which proves to be the charge of self-contradiction in the matter of “epistemology.”

[What] happens is that in our empirical investigation we become aware of the fact that we are observing the world from a moving staircase, from a dynamic platform, and, therefore, the image of the world changes with the changing frames of reference that various cultures create. On the other hand, epistemology still only knows of a static platform where one doesn’t become aware of the possibility of various perspectives and, from this angle, it tries to deny the existence and the right of such dynamic thinking. There is a culture lag between our empirical insight into the nature of knowing and the premises upon which the traditional idealists’ epistemology is built. Instead of perspectivism, the out-of-date epistemology wants to set up a veto against the emerging new insights, according to which man can only see the world in perspective, and there is no view that is absolute in the sense that it represents the thing in itself beyond perspective. (Wolff 1974 : 557–58)
Mannheim defends the presence of “contradictions and inconsistencies” in his papers on the grounds that he deliberately develops his themes to their conclusion, even if it leads him to contradictions “because […] in this marginal field of knowledge we should not conceal inconsistencies […] but our duty is to show the sore spots in human thinking at the present stage” (Wolff 1959: 213). The underlying problem is that “our most advanced empirical investigations […] show that the human mind with its whole categorical apparatus is a dynamic entity,” while “our predominant epistemology derives from an age, the hidden desire and ideal of which was stability” (Wolff 1959: 213–14). “If there are contradictions,” Mannheim concludes, “they are not due to my shortsightedness but to the fact that I want to break through the old epistemology radically but have not succeeded yet fully” (Wolff 1974 : 214).
The present collection of recent studies that engage with Karl Mannheim’s work is not limited to questions of epistemology, although they play a part, but it speaks in a variety of voices to Mannheim’s own openness to experiment, willingness to risk error and prioritizing of timely questions over stable, certain answers. For readers altogether unfamiliar with Mannheim, we first offer a brief, standard account of his work on sociology of knowledge. Then we very briefly characterize the studies presented in this collection, taking for granted that they are all, in their ways, “pioneering ventures” of the kind that Mannheim sought to foster.
Sociology of Knowledge
Before sociology of knowledge became a specialized subfield of sociology as a university discipline by which intellectual assumptions and productions are studied in relation to the social settings from which they emerge, it was a contested class of activities that figured in conflicts among German philosophers, cultural commentators and social thinkers. In the context of the Weimar Republic, where the traditional Bildung (cultivation) of German cultured life was thought to be under attack or, indeed, in “crisis,” and where the Marxist practice of relativizing truth claims bearing on social, political or economic life by unveiling t