Sociology of knowledge

Definitions, terms etc.

 * Esoteric vs exoteric: Exoteric refers to knowledge that is outside, and independent from, a person's experience and can be ascertained by anyone (related to common sense). Exoteric relates to external reality as opposed to a person's thoughts or feelings.

Sociology of knowledge

 * Due to its inherent complexity, social knowledge is always historical, contextual and transient
 * Knowledge implies a body of facts or ideas, whereas information carries no such implication of systematically connected facts or ideas
 * Knowledge is only that part of opinion socially certified by particular criteria of evidence.
 * Primarily concerned with the relations between knowledge and other existential factors in the society or culture.
 * Above all, the sociologist of knowledge seeks the social determinants of the intellectual's perspectives, how he came to hold his ideas
 * The genesis of the categories of thought is to be found in the group structure and relations and that the categories vary with changes in the social organization.
 * Even ideas as abstract as those of time and space are, at each moment of their history, in close relation with the corresponding social organization
 * The sociology of knowledge must concern itself with everything that passes for'knowledge' in society
 * The sociology of knowledge must first of all concern itself with what people 'know' as 'reality' in their everyday, non- or pre-theoretical lives. In other words, common-sense 'knowledge' rather than 'ideas' must be the central focus for the sociology of knowledge. It is precisely this 'knowledge' that constitutes the fabric of meanings without which no society could exist.

European & American sociology of knowledge

 * The European focus:
 * Knowledge, the European on the esoteric doctrines/intellect of the elites
 * Thinks about a total structure of knowledge available to a few
 * Emphasis on systems of doctrine
 * Analyzes the ideology of political movements
 * Analyze the system of tenets in all their complex interrelation, with an eye to conceptual unity, levels of abstraction and concreteness, and categorization (e.g., morphological or analytic)
 * Stresses relations which subsist logically
 * Interested in political labels only as they direct him to systems of political ideas which he will then construe in all their subtlety and complexity, seeking to show their (assumed) relation to one or another social stratum
 * The European knows not what he is talking about, and that is a great deal
 * The European holds high the banner of preserving intact the problem in which he is basically interested, even though it can be only a matter of speculation
 * The European variant comes to talk about important matters in an empirically questionable fashion; the European speculates on the long run


 * The American focus:
 * Information
 * The exoteric beliefs of the masses/popular opinion
 * Accordingly studies the isolated fragments of information available to masses of people
 * Aggregates of discrete tidbits of information
 * Detect, through the techniques of factor analysis for example, the clusters of ideas (or attitudes) which empirically occur
 * Stresses relations which occur empirically
 * Interested in discrete political beliefs, and in these, only as they enable the investigator to classify ("code") people under some general political label or category, which can then be shown, not assumed, to have greater currency in one or another social stratum.
 * Investigates the opinions of voters and non-voters
 * The American knows what he is talking about, and that is not much
 * The American variant, with its small vision, focuses so much on the establishment of fact that it considers only occasionally the theoretic pertinence of the facts, once established
 * The American variant, with its emphasis on empirical confirmation, devotes little attention to the historical past. This may partly account for the American tendency to deal primarily with problems of the short-run. The virtual neglect of historical materials is not for want of interest in or recognition of the importance of long-run effects but only because these, it is believed, require data which cannot be obtained. Thus, confine oneself to the historical present
 * The American raises aloft the standard affirming adequacy of empirical data at any price, even at the price of surrendering the problem which first led to the inquiry
 * The American talks about possibly more trivial matters in an empirically rigorous; the American investigates the short-run

Paradigm for the sociology of knowledge
A central point of agreement in all approaches to the sociology of knowledge is the thesis that thought has an existential basis in so far as it is not immanently determined and in so far as one or another of its aspects can be derived from extra-cognitive factors.

1. Where is the existential basis of mental productions located? a) The social bases of mental productions: social position, class, generation, occupational role, mode of production, group structures (university, bureaucracy, academies, sects, political parties), "historical situation," interests, society, ethnic affiliation, social mobility, power structure, social processes (competition, conflict, etc.) b) The cultural bases of mental production: cultural bases: values, ethos, climate of opinion, Volksgeist, Zeitgeist, type of culture, culture mentality, Weltanschauungen, etc.

2. What mental productions are being sociologically analyzed? a) spheres of: moral beliefs, ideologies, ideas, the categories of thought, philosophy, religious beliefs, social norms, positive science, technology, etc b) which aspects are analyzed: their selection (foci of attention), level of abstraction, presuppositions (what is taken as data and what as problematical), conceptual content, models of verification, objectives of intellectual activity, etc.

3. How are mental productions related to the existential basis? a) causal or functional relations: determination, cause, correspondence, necessary condition, conditioning, functional interdependence, interaction, dependence, etc. b) symbolic or organismic or meaningful relations: consistency, harmony, coherence, unity, congruence, compatibility (and antonyms); expression, realization, symbolic expression, Strukturzusammenhang, structural identities, inner connection, stylistic analogies, logicomeaningful integration, identity of mean-ing, etc. c) ambiguous terms to designate relations: correspondence, reflection, bound up with, in close connection with, etc.

4. Why? What are the manifest and latent functions imputed to these existentially conditioned (i.e. socially, culturally based) mental productions? a) to maintain power, promote stability, orientation, exploitation, obscure actual social relationships, provide motivation, canalize behavior, divert criticism, deflect hostility, provide reassurance, control nature, coordinate social relationships, etc.

Fallacies in knowledge production

 * Ecological fallacy