Knowledge and Politics (RLE Social Theory)

by Volker Meja

Author	: Volker Meja
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 384
Release	: 2014-08-13
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1317651626

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Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia has been a profoundly provocative book. The debate about politics and social knowledge that was spawned by its original publication in 1929 attracted the most promising younger scholars, some of whom shaped the thought of several generations. The book became a focus for a debate on the methodological and epistemological problems confronting German social science. More than thirty major papers were published in response to Mannheim’s text. Writers such as Hannah Arendt, Ernst Robert Curtius, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Helmuth Plessner, Hans Speier and Paul Tillich were among the contributors. Their positions varied from seeing in the sociology of knowledge a sophisticated reformulation of the materialist conception of history to linking its popularity to a betrayal of Marxism. The English publication in 1936 defined formative issues for two generations of sociological self-reflection. Knowledge and Politics provides an introduction to the dispute and reproduces the leading contributions. It sheds new light on one of the greatest controversies that have marked German social science in the past hundred years.

Social Theory and Political Practice (RLE Social Theory)

by Brian Fay

Author	: Brian Fay
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 107
Release	: 2014-08-27
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1317652282

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This book examines the question of how our knowledge of social life affects, and ought to affect, our way of living it. In so doing, it critically discusses two epistemological models of social science – the positivist and the interpretive – from the viewpoint of the political theories which, it is argued, are implicit in these models; moreover, it proposes a third model – the critical – which is organised around an explicit account of the relation between social theory and practical life. The book has the special merit of being a good overview of the principal current ideas about the relation between social theory and political practice, as well as an attempt at providing a new and more satisfactory account of this relationship. To accomplish this task, it synthesises work from the analytic philosophy of social science with that of the neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt school.

The Politics of Knowledge.

by Patrick Baert

Author	: Patrick Baert
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 236
Release	: 2013-03-01
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1134004370

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Social scientists often refer to contemporary advanced societies as ‘knowledge societies’, which indicates the extent to which ‘science’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowledge production’ have become fundamental phenomena in Western societies and central concerns for the social sciences. This book aims to investigate the political dimension of this production and validation of knowledge. In studying the relationship between knowledge and politics, this book provides a novel perspective on current debates about ‘knowledge societies’, and offers an interdisciplinary agenda for future research. It addresses four fundamental aspects of the relation between knowledge and politics: • the ways in which the nature of the knowledge we produce affects the nature of political activity • how the production of knowledge calls into question fundamental political categories • how the production of knowledge is governed and managed • how the new technologies of knowledge produce new forms of political action. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, political science, cultural studies and science and technology studies.

Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (RLE Social Theory)

by Michael Mulkay

Author	: Michael Mulkay
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 142
Release	: 2014-08-07
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1317651189

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How far is scientific knowledge a product of social life? In addressing this question, the major contributors to the sociology of knowledge have agreed that the conclusions of science are dependent on social action only in a very special and limited sense. In Science and the Sociology of Knowledge Michael Mulkay's first aim is to identify the philosophical assumptions which have led to this view of science as special; and to present a systematic critique of the standard philosophical account of science, showing that there are no valid epistemological grounds for excluding scientific knowledge from the scope of sociological analysis. The rest of the book is devoted to developing a preliminary interpretation of the social creation of scientific knowledge. The processes of knowledge-creation are delineated through a close examination of recent case studies of scientific developments. Dr Mulkay argues that knowledge is produced by means of negotiation, the outcome of which depends on the participants' use of social as well as technical resources. The analysis also shows how cultural resources are taken over from the broader social milieu and incorporated into the body of certified knowledge; and how, in the political context of society at large, scientists' technical as well as social claims are conditioned and affected by their social position.

Knowledge and Social Structure (RLE Social Theory)

by Peter Hamilton

Author	: Peter Hamilton
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 172
Release	: 2014-08-13
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1317634985

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The primary concern of this study is to present, elucidate and analyse the developments which have characterized the sociology of knowledge, and which have set for it the outlines of its major problematics. Peter Hamilton examines the most distinctive approaches to the determinate relationship between knowledge and social structure. He considers the three main ‘pre-paradigms’ of the sociology of knowledge based on the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, and looks at the contribution of Scheler, Mannheim and phenomenological studies to this complex field. He explores the intellectual context, particularly that of Enlightenment philosophy, in which the problems involved in producing a sociology of knowledge first came to light. In conclusion, the author suggests an inclusive perspective for approaching the difficulties posed in any attempt to describe and explain relations between knowledge and social structure.

A World of Struggle

by David Kennedy

Author	: David Kennedy
Publisher	: Princeton University Press
Total Pages	: 345
Release	: 2018-05-01
Genre	: Law
ISBN	: 1400889391

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How today's unjust global order is shaped by uncertain expert knowledge—and how to fix it A World of Struggle reveals the role of expert knowledge in our political and economic life. As politicians, citizens, and experts engage one another on a technocratic terrain of irresolvable argument and uncertain knowledge, a world of astonishing inequality and injustice is born. In this provocative book, David Kennedy draws on his experience working with international lawyers, human rights advocates, policy professionals, economic development specialists, military lawyers, and humanitarian strategists to provide a unique insider's perspective on the complexities of global governance. He describes the conflicts, unexamined assumptions, and assertions of power and entitlement that lie at the center of expert rule. Kennedy explores the history of intellectual innovation by which experts developed a sophisticated legal vocabulary for global management strangely detached from its distributive consequences. At the center of expert rule is struggle: myriad everyday disputes in which expertise drifts free of its moorings in analytic rigor and observable fact. He proposes tools to model and contest expert work and concludes with an in-depth examination of modern law in warfare as an example of sophisticated expertise in action. Charting a major new direction in global governance at a moment when the international order is ready for change, this critically important book explains how we can harness expert knowledge to remake an unjust world.

Towards the Sociology of Knowledge (RLE Social Theory)

by Gunter Werner Remmling

Author	: Gunter Werner Remmling
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 472
Release	: 2022-03-23
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 100015579X

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The sociology of knowledge is an area of social scientific investigation with major emphasis on the relations between social life and intellectual activity. It is now an area central to most graduate and undergraduate courses in sociology. The present collection of readings explains the origins, systematic development, present state and possible future direction of the discipline. The major statements in the field were developed early in the twentieth century by Durkheim, Scheler and Mannheim, but the sociology of knowledge continues to engage the theoretical and empirical interests of contemporary sociologists who desire to penetrate the surface level of social existence. This book, with its carefully selected contributions and an introduction which relates the selections to the developmental pattern of the discipline, provides guidance and insight for the reader concerned with the topical issues raised by sociologists of knowledge.

Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (RLE Social Theory)

by Barry Barnes

Author	: Barry Barnes
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 176
Release	: 2014-08-13
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1317651685

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Intriguingly different in approach from conventional works in the same area of inquiry, this study deals with the central problems and concerns of the sociology of knowledge as it has traditionally been conceived of. In other words, it is concerned with the relationship of knowledge, social interests and social structure, and with the various attempts which have been made to analyse the relationship. Barry Barnes takes the classic writings in the sociology of knowledge – by Marx, Lukács, Weber, Mannheim, Goldmann, Habermas and others – and uses them as resources in coming to grips with what he regards as the currently most interesting and significant questions in this area. This approach reflects one of the principal themes of the book itself. Knowledge, it is argued, is best treated as a resource available to those possessing it. This is the best perspective from which to understand its relationship to action and its historical significance; it is a perspective which avoids the problems of holding that knowledge is derivative, as well as those generated by the view that knowledge is a strong determinant of consciousness. the result is an unusual textbook, particularly valuable when read in conjunction with the original works it discusses.

Interpretation and Social Knowledge

by Isaac Ariail Reed

Author	: Isaac Ariail Reed
Publisher	: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages	: 205
Release	: 2011-08-15
Genre	: Philosophy
ISBN	: 0226706729

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For the past fifty years anxiety over naturalism has driven debates in social theory. One side sees social science as another kind of natural science, while the other rejects the possibility of objective and explanatory knowledge. Interpretation and Social Knowledge suggests a different route, offering a way forward for an antinaturalist sociology that overcomes the opposition between interpretation and explanation and uses theory to build concrete, historically specific causal explanations of social phenomena.