The name is absent

13

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
the ruling ideas; i.e.,the class which is the
material force of society, is at the time its
ruling intellectual force (Marx/Engels, Arthur, ed.,
1970:64).

Mannheim (1936:238-9) built on Marx’s insight. His grappling
with the problem of ideology led him to make a distinction between
ideology and the sociology of knowledge.

I

The study of ideology was categorised by Mannheim (1936:238)
as an attempt

...to unmask more or less conscious deceptions and
disguises of human groups.

The sociology of knowledge, on the other hand, involved
a wider study, namely

the subject’s whole mode of conceiving things
as determined by his historical and social
setting (Mannheim, 1936:239).

All knowledge, not merely distortions, was seen by Mannheim
as socially contexted and therefore the object of study within
the sociology of knowledge.

Stark (1958:9,12) developed the theory of the sociology of
knowledge a step further. He asserted that

Cultural phenomena are interconnected with social
ones and fully understandable only if they are
seen within this nexus .

The individual himself cannot be understood unless
he be seen in his social setting, in the living
interplay of his self with other selves .

Thus we now have sociology of knowledge applied not only
to ideas, but to all cultural phenomena.

Berger and Luckmann (1966) build on this tradition.

For them the sociology of ideas (including ideology)

is important, but no less important is the sociology of being₃
the sociology of everyday life.

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