The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (57 page)

intellectuals, though we caution against reading into this term any of the many

additional connotations that it has frequently been given (see assumption 5

below).

The Old Sociology of Ideas

Since its inception, sociology has shown an interest in understanding the social basis of intellectual life. This interest can be found in the work of thinkers as disparate as Comte, Marx and Engels, Durkheim, and Weber. It was not, however, until the 1940s that the sociological study of ideas began to crystallize as a coherent project under the banner of the sociology of knowledge. Responding to

the work of Mannheim, a number of scholars turned explicit attention to

developments in the intellectual arena. Although there were major differences

among the approaches to the sociology of ideas taken by thinkers like DeGreÂ

(1939), Znaniecki (1940), Mills (1942), Merton (1949), Stark (1958), Parsons

(1959), Coser (1965), Gouldner (1965, 1970), and such first-wave sociologists

of science as Hagstrom (1965), Ben-David (1971), Crane (1972), and Mullins

(1973), there were also important commonalties. In this section, we identify five assumptions shared by many of these scholars.

Assumption 1: The Sociology of Ideas is a Means, Not an End

With the notable exception of early works in the sociology of science, the old

sociology of ideas typically viewed the study of ideas not as an end in itself, i.e.

not as a legitimate arena of social inquiry that formulates and tests claims about the social bases of ideational production, but as a means to other ends, especially social-critical ends. This was somewhat ironic, since the area was indebted to

Mannheim, who insisted on the need to depoliticize the Marxian approach to

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ideology (see Frisby, 1983, pp. 107±73; Thompson, 1990, pp. 44±52; Eagleton

1991, pp. 107±10). As Mannheim often complained, Marx's engagement with

the sociology of knowledge did not extend beyond a desire to discredit bourgeois thought; it thus saw economic `ìnterest [as] the only form of social conditioning of ideas'' (Mannheim, 1925, p. 183). Mannheim's alternative agenda proposed

that sociologists of knowledge attempt to understand thèèxistential basis'' of

all forms of thought, whether `ìdeological'' in Marx's sense of the word or not, by means of an analysis of the socio-historical experiences of groups of intellectuals (see especially Mannheim, 1962). (But, as discussed below, Mannheim

subsequently denied that some forms of thought have any social basis.)

Yet this depoliticization was by no means as thorough as it could have been.

For Mannheim, the ultimate aim of the sociology of knowledge was not to

understand knowledge production processes, but to inject a new kind of ration-

ality into political and moral life, forcing individuals to interrogate the social bases of their beliefs and helping them avoid ``talk[ing] past one another. . .

overlook[ing] the fact that their antagonist differs from them in his whole out-

look, and not merely in his opinion about the point under discussion'' (Mann-

heim, 1929, p. 280). This view of the political aim of the sociology of knowledge was consequential for Mannheim, for it inclined him to analyze those worldviews, such as utopianism or conservatism, that seemed to underlie the most

pressing political disputes of his day.

In the years following the publication of Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia

(1929), sociologists followed the book's lead, conceiving the sociology of ideas to have critical aims and selecting research topics accordingly. In Gouldner's

view, for example, the sociology of ideas was a form of critical hermeneutics.

The sociologist of ideas may ``contribute to an empirically testable social theory about social theorists,'' but his or her ultimate aim is tòàssist us in taking

possession of our own intellectual heritage, past or present, by appraising it

actively ± which is to say, critically ± in terms of our viable interests'' (Gouldner, 1965, pp. 171, 170; 1970). Similarly, Stark argued that `ìt is not the least

valuable service which the sociology of knowledge has to render that it can

teach all men humility and charity'' by showing that ``the truth is the truth only in its proper sphere'' (Stark, 1958, p. 159). On these grounds, he suggested that researchers focus their attention upon major societal disagreements (Stark,

1958, pp. 208±9). Even Parsons (1959) touted the sociology of knowledge not

as an end in itself, but as subsidiary to the task of understanding the relationship between the social and the cultural system.

Assumption 2: The Internal/External Distinction

The old sociology of ideas assumed an unproblematic distinction between the

content of ideas, their `ìnternal'' substance, and the social and thereforèèxternal'' factors that condition this content. Having made this distinction, it was

assumed further that the content of thought, represented in terms of logical

propositions, or what DeGre (1939, p. 3) called ``thought signs'' ± ``manifestations of thinking as embodied in scientific, philosophical, theological, logical, The New Sociology of Ideas

239

mathematical and magical systems, propositions, and concepts'' ± was (in vary-

ing degrees) the realm of an asocial, scientific rationality about which sociology could have little to say. From this it followed that the sociology of ideas should restrict itself to those non-scientific arenas of thought in which rational considerations have little sway, or, insofar as it wished to treat science, forswear the content of science and analyze the socio-historical conditions under which the

institutions of science were able to grow and develop.

The notion that sociology can only explain the content of ideas in some fields

was suggested by Mannheim, who argued that there exist `à few propositions in

which the content is so formal and abstract (for example, in mathematics,

geometry, and pure economics) that in fact they seem to be completely detached

from the thinking social individual.'' In his view, social life conditions only those forms of thought `ìn which every concept is . . . from the first'' ripe with social meaning. For Mannheim, political, moral, religious, and social thought fell in

this category, but thèèxact'' sciences did not (Mannheim, 1929, p. 43).

Merton took a similar position: `À 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.'' This thesis, according to Merton, has its roots in Marxism, which tends ``to consider natural science as standing in a relation to the economic base different from that of other spheres of knowledge and belief. In science, the focus of attention may be socially determined but not, presumably, its conceptual apparatus.'' While

Merton was open to the possibility that ``the cultural and social context [does]

enter. . . into the conceptual phrasing of scientific problems,'' he made no

attempt to explain the content of scientific thought. Instead, his influential

version of the sociology of science problematized the external normative climate that governs the process of scientific inquiry (Merton, 1949, pp. 516, 523±4,

539±40).

Nor did those who accepted the notion of an asocial realm of immanent

determination limit it to the natural sciences. Even when dealing with ideas in

the humanities and social sciences, the point remained that many intellectual

choices rest on free and rational grounds ± that ``the process of [intellectual]

creation itself has always been a process of free choice and adaptation'' (Shils, 1958, p. 10). From this perspective, the sociologist of ideas could do little more than show how social factors incline thinkers to certain topics, general worldviews, or stylistic conventions. For example, Coser's analysis of eighteenth-

century French social thought focused on how the salon ``helped shape the

literary style of the eighteenth century.'' Because success in salon circles

depended on ``wit and grace, . . . the literature that emerged was eminently a

literature of sociability, a literature of playfulness, liveliness, and sparkle

. . . eschew[ing] the deeply personal and the philosophically profound'' (Coser, 1965, p. 15). As to the social origins of the substance of any of the French

thinkers' actual arguments, however, Coser had nothing sociological to say.

Not surprisingly, sociologists whose primary interests lay with the natural

sciences were even less willing to treat the content of ideas sociologically.

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Ben-David's view was representative: ``the possibilities for either an interactional or institutional sociology of the conceptual and theoretical contents of science are extremely limited.'' Consequently, the sociology of science should restrict

itself tò`the conditions that determine . . . the level of scientific activity and shape . . . the roles and careers of scientists and the organization of science''

(Ben-David, 1971, p. 14). That sociologists were still of this opinion a decade

after Kuhn's (1962) influential, and quasi-sociological, historical study of the content of scientific revolutions is significant. For, though open to Kuhn's work in some respects (see Hagstrom, 1965; Crane, 1972), first-wave sociologists of

science devoted little energy to explaining how social factors affect ``the actual substance of the scientific ideas that are developed in the laboratory and then

evaluated by the scientific community'' (Cole, 1992, p. 33).

Assumption 3: The Transparency of Ideas

When it did deal with intellectual fields whose substance was not immanently

shaped, the old sociology of ideas treated the content of the ideas that it

subjected to sociological analysis in a characteristic way. It assumed that the

basic meanings of these ideas were more or less transparent to the sociological

investigator, i.e. that a correct interpretation of the substance of the ideas could be achieved simply by reading this off from the writings of the intellectuals who produced them. Two brief examples will illustrate the practice.

In one of the most famous studies in the area, Gouldner examined the social

theory of the young Talcott Parsons, seeking to reveal Parsons's ideas as `à

response to the social conflicts . . . of the Great Depression.'' To establish the content of Parsons's ideas, Gouldner's procedure was simply to draw on scattered statements in Parsons's early writings and classify these according to

Gouldner's own theoretical and political categories. This mode of analysis

neglected to take account of Parsons's other work at the time and the writings

of the contemporaries who made up his intellectual context, thereby overlooking

the contemporary meaning of Parsons's statements and imputing to him ideas he

never held. To be sure, since Gouldner was concerned to expose Parsons's deeper

ideological message ± his ``tacit ideological apologetics'' for capitalism ± he had ample reason not to restrict himself to Parsons's self-understanding. The assumption of this approach, however, was that the sociologist of ideas could so

immediately grasp Parsons's basic arguments that no interpretive effort was

even necessary before one moved on to their ideological reinterpretation (Gould-

ner, 1970, pp. 141, 348; see also Marcuse, 1964).

Likewise, a study in the sociology of science by Mullins (1973) sought to

account for changing theoretical orientations in American sociology. Seeking to

identify the various ``theory groups'' making up American sociology, Mullins's

method was to read the existing theory literature, categorizing some theorists as symbolic interactionists, others as functionalists, etc., based primarily on

whether their statements and assumptions appeared on the surface to fit Mul-

lins's own views about the ideas that defined each group (a procedure Mullins

complemented with citation and co-authorship analysis). This method gave no

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attention to the contextual meanings of these intellectual orientations and failed to consider whether the intellectual positions whose developments Mullins

sought to explain were those actually occupied by the theorists in question.

Assumption 4: The Focus on Macrosocial Factors

When Znaniecki (1940) called attention to the effects of a thinker's ``social

circle'' on his or her ideas, he gave voice to a micro-level focus that would

remain recessive in the sociology of ideas until the 1970s. Proponents of the

old sociology of ideas like Stark might concede thè`great service the micro-

sociology of knowledge can render the historian of ideas,'' but they tended

nevertheless to assign explanatory weight tò`the total historical movement of

the social system'' (Stark, 1958, pp. 26, 30). Insofar as ideas admitted of sociological explanation, such explanations involved appeals to macro-level eco-

nomic, political, and cultural factors, cited separately or in combination.

Examples of this mode of explanation were plentiful. According to Mann-

heim's analysis of Greek philosophy, for example, it was thè`process of social

ascent . . . in the Athenian democracy [that] called forth the first great surge of scepticism in the history of Occidental thought,'' while sophism ``was the expression of an attitude of doubt'' arising from the collision of `à dominant nobility already doomed to decline'' and `àn urban artisan lower stratum, which was in