Encyclopedia, Difference between revisions of "Karl Mannheim" - New World
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| − | '''Karl Mannheim''' (March 27, 1893 | + | '''Karl Mannheim''' (born March 27, 1893 – died January 9, 1947) was a [[Hungary|Hungarian]]-born [[sociology|sociologist]], one of the founding fathers of classical [[sociology]]. Mannheim rates as a founder of the [[sociology of knowledge]], the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context. |
| − | + | ==Life== | |
| − | |||
| − | + | '''Karl Mannheim''' was born in Budapest, [[Austria-Hungary]], now in [[Hungary]]. He was the only child of a Hungarian father and a [[Germany|German]] mother. After graduating from a gymnasium in Budapest, he studied in Budapest, [[Berlin]], [[Paris]] and Freiburg. He attended lectures by [[Georg Simmel]], [[Georg Lukács]] and [[Edmund Husserl]]. Mannheim’s interest however shifted from [[philosophy]] to [[sociology]], as he became influenced by [[Karl Marx]] and [[Max Weber]]. | |
| − | + | During the brief period of the [[Hungarian Soviet Republic]] in 1919, he was lecturing in Budapest. However, after the collapse of the government Mannheim moved to [[Germany]], and from 1925 to 1929 worked in [[Heidelberg]] under the German sociologist [[Alfred Weber]], brother of the well-known sociologist [[Max Weber]]. | |
| − | + | Mannheim moved to the [[University of Frankfurt]] in 1929, where he became a professor of [[sociology]] and [[economics]]. [[Norbert Elias]] worked as one of his assistants (from spring 1930 until spring 1933). Mannheim published his famous ''Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge'' in 1929. | |
| − | + | However, when [[Nazism|Nazis]] came to power in 1933 Mannheim fled to [[Great Britain]], where he stayed for the rest of his life. He became a lecturer in sociology at the [[London School of Economics]] in 1933. From 1941 to 1944 he was a lecturer in the sociology of education, and from 1944 to 1947 Professor of education and sociology at the Institute of Education of the University of London. During that time he also worked as an editor of the International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction. | |
| − | + | Mannheim died in [[London]], [[Great Britain]] in 1947. | |
| − | + | ==Work== | |
| − | In his ''' | + | Mannheim’s work can be divided into three phases – Hungarian, German, and British. In his '''Hungarian phase''', Mannheim was a precocious scholar and an accepted member of two influential circles, one centered on [[Oscar Jaszi]] and interested above all in French and English sociological writings, and one centered on Georg Lukacs, with interests focused on the enthusiasms of German diagnosticians of cultural crisis, notably the novels of Dostoyevsky and the writings of the German mystics. Mannheim's Hungarian writings, notably his "Structural Analysis of Epistemology," anticipate his lifelong search for "synthesis" between these currents. |
| − | + | In the '''German phase''', Mannheim's most productive one, he turns from philosophy to sociology, inquiring into the roots of culture. His essays on the sociology of knowledge have become classics. In Ideology and Utopia (1929) he argued that the application of the term [[ideology]] ought to be broadened. He traced the history of the term from what he called a 'particular' view. This view saw ideology as the perhaps deliberate obscuring of facts. This view gave way to a 'total' conception (here is the influence of [[Marx]]) which argued that a whole social group's thought was formed by its social position (e.g. the proletariat's beliefs were conditioned by their relationship to the means of production). However, Mannheim introduced an additional step, which he called a general total conception of ideology, in which it was recognized that everyone's beliefs - including the social scientists’ - were a product of the context they were created in. He feared however that this could lead to [[relativism]] so he proposed the idea of “relationism” as an antidote. “Relationism” was the idea that certain things are true only in certain times and places. To uphold the distinction, he maintained that the recognition of different perspectives according to differences in time and social location appears arbitrary only to an abstract and disembodied theory of knowledge. | |
| − | == | + | For Mannheim “ideology” meant the systems of thought held by ruling groups in the society, which was maintained in order to preserve the status quo. On the other side was the “utopian” thought, which meant exactly opposite, and which was supported by the oppressed. For Mannheim, "ideological structure does not change independently of the class structure and the class structure does not change independently of the economic structure" (Ideology and Utopia, p.130). |
| − | * Mannheim, K. ( | + | |
| − | * Mannheim, K. ( | + | Mannheim's ambitious attempt to promote a comprehensive sociological analysis of the structures of knowledge was treated with suspicion by Marxists and neo-Marxists of the [[Frankfurt School]]. They saw the rising popularity of the sociology of knowledge as neutralization and a betrayal of Marxist inspiration. During his few years in Frankfurt prior to 1933 the rivalry between the two intellectual groupings - Mannheim's seminar (with [[Norbert Elias]] as his assistant) and that of [[Horkheimer]] and the Institute for Social Research - was intense. While this contest looms large in retrospect, Mannheim's contemporary competitors were other academic sociologists, notably the gifted proto-fascist, a [[Leipzig]] professor [[Hans Freyer]], and the proponent of formal sociology and leading figure in the profession, [[Leopold von Wiese]]. |
| − | * Mannheim, K. ( | + | |
| − | + | In his '''British phase''', Mannheim attempted a comprehensive analysis of the structure of modern society by way of democratic social planning and education. His work was admired more by educators, social workers, and religious thinkers than it was by the small community of British sociologists. His books on planning nevertheless played an important part in the political debates of the immediate post-war years, both in the United States and in several European countries. | |
| − | * Mannheim, K. (1940) ''Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction''. | + | |
| − | * Mannheim, K. ( | + | ==Legacy== |
| − | * Mannheim, K. ( | + | |
| + | In the years after its publication, Mannheim’s "Ideology and Utopia" stirred enormous interest. The list of reviewers who wrote on it includes a remarkable roll call of individuals who became famous in exile, after the rise of Hitler: [[Hannah Arendt]], [[Max Horkheimer]], [[Herbert Marcuse]], [[Paul Tillich]], [[Hans Speier]], Gunther Stern (Anders), [[Waldemar Gurian]], [[Siegfried Kracauer]], [[Otto Neurath]], [[Karl August Wittfogel]], [[Béla Fogarasi]], and [[Leo Strauss]]. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Eventually ''Ideologie und Utopie'' became the most widely debated book by a living sociologist in Germany during the [[Weimar Republic]]. The English version ''Ideology and Utopia'' (1936) has been a standard in American-style international academic sociology, carried by the interest it aroused in the United States. The quite different German and English versions of the book figure in reappraisals of Mannheim initiated by new textual discoveries and republications. Mannheim’s sociological theorizing has been the subject of numerous book-length studies, evidence of an international interest in his principal themes. Beside ''Ideologie und Utopie'' Mannheim wrote some fifty major essays and treatises, most later published in book form. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==Publications== | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Mannheim, K. 1955 (original published in 1929). ''Ideology and Utopia''. Harvest Books. ISBN 0156439557 | ||
| + | * Mannheim, K. 1980 (original published in 1924). ''Structures of Thinking.'' Routledge. ISBN 041513675X | ||
| + | * Mannheim, K. 1986 (original published in 1925). ''Conservatism. A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge.'' London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0710203381 | ||
| + | * Mannheim, K. 1998 (original published in 1950). Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning. Routledge. ISBN 0415150825 | ||
| + | * Mannheim, K. 1998 (original published in 1940). ''Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction''. Routledge. ISBN 0415136741 | ||
| + | * Mannheim, K. 2001 (original published in 1930). ''Sociology as Political Education''. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction | ||
| + | * Mannheim, K. 2003. Selected Correspondence (1911-1946) of Karl Mannheim, Scientist, Philosopher and Sociologist (Eva Gabor, Ed.). Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0773468374 | ||
==References== | ==References== | ||
| − | * | + | |
| − | * Kettler, David | + | * Frisby, David. 1992. The Alienated Mind: The Sociology of Knowledge in Germany, 1918-1933. Routledge. ISBN 0415057965 |
| − | * | + | * Karadi, Eva & Vezer, Erzsebet. 1985. Georg Lukacs, Karl Mannheim und der Sonntagskreis. Frankfurt/M: Sendler. |
| − | * | + | * Kettler, David & Volker, Meja. 1995. Karl Mannheim and the Crisis of Liberalism. New Brunswick and London: Transaction. ISBN 1560001887 |
| − | * Loader, Colin. | + | * Kettler, David, Volker Meja & Nico Stehr. 1984. Karl Mannheim. New York: Tavistock. ISBN 0853126887 |
| − | * | + | * Laube, Reinhard. 2004. Karl Mannheim und die Krise des Historismus. Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. |
| − | * | + | * Loader, Colin. 1985. The Intellectual Development of Karl Mannheim. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521265673 |
| − | + | * Meja, Volker & Stehr, Nico (Eds) 1990. Knowledge and Politics. The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415028817 | |
| + | * Spencer, Lloyd. Karl Mannheim (1893-1947). University of Leeds. Retrieved on May 5, 2007, <http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/Modules/Theory/Mannheim.htm> | ||
==External links== | ==External links== | ||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| + | * [http://oldweb.uwp.edu/academic/criminal.justice/mannheimbk01.htm Backup of Sociological theory: Karl Mannheim] – An article on Mannheim’s work | ||
| + | * [http://www.bookrags.com/biography/karl-mannheim/ Karl Mannheim] – Biography on BookRags.com | ||
| + | * [http://www.bard.edu/arendtcollection/pdfs/MannheimKettler.pdf Karl Mannheim] – Life and work of K. Mannheim, on Bard College website | ||
| + | * [http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/Modules/Theory/Mannheim.htm Karl Mannheim (1893-1947)] – Biography on the University of Leeds website | ||
| + | * [http://www.bolender.com/Dr.%20Ron/SOC4044%20Sociological%20Theory/Class%20Sessions/Sociological%20Theory/Mannheim,%20Karl/mannheim,_karl.htm Karl Mannheim (1883-1947) - Ideology and Utopia] – Short biography and the review of his Ideology and Utopia (1929) | ||
| + | * [http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD32-1/TAD32-1-fnl-pg20-43-pdf.pdf Michael Polanyi and Karl Mannheim] – Article by Phil Mullins and Struan Jacobs on Missouri Western State University | ||
{{Credit1|Karl_Mannheim|94726711|}} | {{Credit1|Karl_Mannheim|94726711|}} | ||
Revision as of 06:58, 5 May 2007
Karl Mannheim (born March 27, 1893 – died January 9, 1947) was a Hungarian-born sociologist, one of the founding fathers of classical sociology. Mannheim rates as a founder of the sociology of knowledge, the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context.
Life
Karl Mannheim was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, now in Hungary. He was the only child of a Hungarian father and a German mother. After graduating from a gymnasium in Budapest, he studied in Budapest, Berlin, Paris and Freiburg. He attended lectures by Georg Simmel, Georg Lukács and Edmund Husserl. Mannheim’s interest however shifted from philosophy to sociology, as he became influenced by Karl Marx and Max Weber.
During the brief period of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, he was lecturing in Budapest. However, after the collapse of the government Mannheim moved to Germany, and from 1925 to 1929 worked in Heidelberg under the German sociologist Alfred Weber, brother of the well-known sociologist Max Weber.
Mannheim moved to the University of Frankfurt in 1929, where he became a professor of sociology and economics. Norbert Elias worked as one of his assistants (from spring 1930 until spring 1933). Mannheim published his famous Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge in 1929.
However, when Nazis came to power in 1933 Mannheim fled to Great Britain, where he stayed for the rest of his life. He became a lecturer in sociology at the London School of Economics in 1933. From 1941 to 1944 he was a lecturer in the sociology of education, and from 1944 to 1947 Professor of education and sociology at the Institute of Education of the University of London. During that time he also worked as an editor of the International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction.
Mannheim died in London, Great Britain in 1947.
Work
Mannheim’s work can be divided into three phases – Hungarian, German, and British. In his Hungarian phase, Mannheim was a precocious scholar and an accepted member of two influential circles, one centered on Oscar Jaszi and interested above all in French and English sociological writings, and one centered on Georg Lukacs, with interests focused on the enthusiasms of German diagnosticians of cultural crisis, notably the novels of Dostoyevsky and the writings of the German mystics. Mannheim's Hungarian writings, notably his "Structural Analysis of Epistemology," anticipate his lifelong search for "synthesis" between these currents.
In the German phase, Mannheim's most productive one, he turns from philosophy to sociology, inquiring into the roots of culture. His essays on the sociology of knowledge have become classics. In Ideology and Utopia (1929) he argued that the application of the term ideology ought to be broadened. He traced the history of the term from what he called a 'particular' view. This view saw ideology as the perhaps deliberate obscuring of facts. This view gave way to a 'total' conception (here is the influence of Marx) which argued that a whole social group's thought was formed by its social position (e.g. the proletariat's beliefs were conditioned by their relationship to the means of production). However, Mannheim introduced an additional step, which he called a general total conception of ideology, in which it was recognized that everyone's beliefs - including the social scientists’ - were a product of the context they were created in. He feared however that this could lead to relativism so he proposed the idea of “relationism” as an antidote. “Relationism” was the idea that certain things are true only in certain times and places. To uphold the distinction, he maintained that the recognition of different perspectives according to differences in time and social location appears arbitrary only to an abstract and disembodied theory of knowledge.
For Mannheim “ideology” meant the systems of thought held by ruling groups in the society, which was maintained in order to preserve the status quo. On the other side was the “utopian” thought, which meant exactly opposite, and which was supported by the oppressed. For Mannheim, "ideological structure does not change independently of the class structure and the class structure does not change independently of the economic structure" (Ideology and Utopia, p.130).
Mannheim's ambitious attempt to promote a comprehensive sociological analysis of the structures of knowledge was treated with suspicion by Marxists and neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt School. They saw the rising popularity of the sociology of knowledge as neutralization and a betrayal of Marxist inspiration. During his few years in Frankfurt prior to 1933 the rivalry between the two intellectual groupings - Mannheim's seminar (with Norbert Elias as his assistant) and that of Horkheimer and the Institute for Social Research - was intense. While this contest looms large in retrospect, Mannheim's contemporary competitors were other academic sociologists, notably the gifted proto-fascist, a Leipzig professor Hans Freyer, and the proponent of formal sociology and leading figure in the profession, Leopold von Wiese.
In his British phase, Mannheim attempted a comprehensive analysis of the structure of modern society by way of democratic social planning and education. His work was admired more by educators, social workers, and religious thinkers than it was by the small community of British sociologists. His books on planning nevertheless played an important part in the political debates of the immediate post-war years, both in the United States and in several European countries.
Legacy
In the years after its publication, Mannheim’s "Ideology and Utopia" stirred enormous interest. The list of reviewers who wrote on it includes a remarkable roll call of individuals who became famous in exile, after the rise of Hitler: Hannah Arendt, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Paul Tillich, Hans Speier, Gunther Stern (Anders), Waldemar Gurian, Siegfried Kracauer, Otto Neurath, Karl August Wittfogel, Béla Fogarasi, and Leo Strauss.
Eventually Ideologie und Utopie became the most widely debated book by a living sociologist in Germany during the Weimar Republic. The English version Ideology and Utopia (1936) has been a standard in American-style international academic sociology, carried by the interest it aroused in the United States. The quite different German and English versions of the book figure in reappraisals of Mannheim initiated by new textual discoveries and republications. Mannheim’s sociological theorizing has been the subject of numerous book-length studies, evidence of an international interest in his principal themes. Beside Ideologie und Utopie Mannheim wrote some fifty major essays and treatises, most later published in book form.
Publications
- Mannheim, K. 1955 (original published in 1929). Ideology and Utopia. Harvest Books. ISBN 0156439557
- Mannheim, K. 1980 (original published in 1924). Structures of Thinking. Routledge. ISBN 041513675X
- Mannheim, K. 1986 (original published in 1925). Conservatism. A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0710203381
- Mannheim, K. 1998 (original published in 1950). Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning. Routledge. ISBN 0415150825
- Mannheim, K. 1998 (original published in 1940). Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. Routledge. ISBN 0415136741
- Mannheim, K. 2001 (original published in 1930). Sociology as Political Education. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
- Mannheim, K. 2003. Selected Correspondence (1911-1946) of Karl Mannheim, Scientist, Philosopher and Sociologist (Eva Gabor, Ed.). Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0773468374
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Frisby, David. 1992. The Alienated Mind: The Sociology of Knowledge in Germany, 1918-1933. Routledge. ISBN 0415057965
- Karadi, Eva & Vezer, Erzsebet. 1985. Georg Lukacs, Karl Mannheim und der Sonntagskreis. Frankfurt/M: Sendler.
- Kettler, David & Volker, Meja. 1995. Karl Mannheim and the Crisis of Liberalism. New Brunswick and London: Transaction. ISBN 1560001887
- Kettler, David, Volker Meja & Nico Stehr. 1984. Karl Mannheim. New York: Tavistock. ISBN 0853126887
- Laube, Reinhard. 2004. Karl Mannheim und die Krise des Historismus. Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
- Loader, Colin. 1985. The Intellectual Development of Karl Mannheim. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521265673
- Meja, Volker & Stehr, Nico (Eds) 1990. Knowledge and Politics. The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415028817
- Spencer, Lloyd. Karl Mannheim (1893-1947). University of Leeds. Retrieved on May 5, 2007, <http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/Modules/Theory/Mannheim.htm>
External links
- Backup of Sociological theory: Karl Mannheim – An article on Mannheim’s work
- Karl Mannheim – Biography on BookRags.com
- Karl Mannheim – Life and work of K. Mannheim, on Bard College website
- Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) – Biography on the University of Leeds website
- Karl Mannheim (1883-1947) - Ideology and Utopia – Short biography and the review of his Ideology and Utopia (1929)
- Michael Polanyi and Karl Mannheim – Article by Phil Mullins and Struan Jacobs on Missouri Western State University
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