1) Sociologists such as Durkheim, Marx, Berger, and Luckmann study how knowledge and reality are socially constructed through institutions and collective representations. 2) Knowledge is embedded in and distributed throughout society, with certain beliefs becoming taken for granted as "what everybody knows." 3) Thinkers like Foucault and Mannheim examine how knowledge and power are intertwined, with ideologies serving to maintain the power of ruling classes by appearing neutral and objective while still being socially constructed.

1. The Sociology of
Knowledge

2. Durkheim – The Elementary
Forms of Religious Life
O Deals also with
social origins
and impact of
society on
knowledge

3. Collective Representations
O Symbols and images that represent
ideas, beliefs and values of the collective
O Contradictory existence
O Both external to the individual (created and
controlled by society)
O And internal to the individual (part of the
individual as a participant in society)
O Help conform the individual to society‟s
thoughts and morality
O Help make sense of the world

4. Marx – The German Ideology
O “Life is not
determined by
consciousness, but
consciousness by
life.”

5. Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann
O The Social Construction of Reality
O Looks at how roles become
institutionalized
O Institutionalizing roles embeds meaning in
society
O Knowledge and conceptualizations of
reality become embedded in social
institutions
O Ergo, reality and knowledge are socially
constructed

6. Social Stock of Knowledge
O “Theoretical knowledge is only a small
and by no means the most important part
of what passed for knowledge in a
society…the primary knowledge about the
institutional order…is the sum total of
„what everybody knows‟ about a social
world, an assemblage of
maxims, morals, proverbial nuggets of
wisdom, values and beliefs, myths, and so
forth.”

7. Berger and Luckmann
O The general body of knowledge in a
society is distributed throughout the
society
O Symbolic universes are created to
legitimate the institutional structure of
society
O Beliefs that everybody knows
O Have to be maintained

8. Objectivity
O Is it possible?

9. Karl Mannheim
O If all knowledge is socially
constructed, the argument is self-
defeating
O Relationism
O Certain things are only true in certain times
and places
O Doesn‟t make them any less true overall

10. Michel Foucault
O Madness and Civilization
O Conceptions of madness and reason are
culturally based

11. Discipline and Punish: the
Birth of the Prison
O Knowledge is a form of
power and can be used
against individuals as such
O Knowledge is socially
constructed to maintain the
power of the rule class
O Social institutions
perpetuate ideologies

12. Discipline and Punish: the
Birth of the Prison
O Discourses and ideologies subject us to
power, turning us into subjects of that
power
O We become afraid to challenge the norm
O Ideologies and discourses appear as
neutral, but are, in fact, not