201. Outlines For A Sociology of Self-Knowledge (Appendix: Comparative Perspectives, Competing Explanations: Reconstructing the History of the Sociology of Knowledge Project).
- Author
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Tamdgidi, Mohammad H.
- Subjects
SOCIOLOGY of knowledge ,INTELLECT ,SOCIAL structure ,HERMENEUTICS ,THEORY of knowledge - Abstract
In this study the history of thought in the sociology of knowledge preceding, including, and following Karl Mannheim is retraced in order to reconstruct his intellectual project away from self-defeating argumentations and in favor of revitalization of his contributions. I argue that the sociology of knowledge needs to be recognized as a broader and much more flexibly defined field than one defined narrowly in terms of "the social determination of knowledge" thesis, taking into consideration the reciprocal ways in which social existence and knowledge may interact with one another in terms of the dialectics of part and whole. Alternatively I propose a postdeterminist dialectical research practice which considers the specific nature of causality between thought and society to be determinable only as a result of concrete analysis of specific biographical and historical conditions, treating in the process various causal modalities previously developed by various sociologists of knowledge as equally plausible and worthy of consideration. Demonstrating that discourses in cultural studies, poststructuralism, postmodernism, postcoloniality, hermeneutics, etc., may be interpreted as exercises in new, and more dialectical, sociologies of knowledge, I proceed to propose a sociology of self-knowledge as a sub-field of inquiry in the sociology of knowledge that extends the exercise of the sociological imagination in both directions in terms of the study of how the investigator's own self-knowledges and world-historical social structures constitute one another. The purpose of the study is to accomplish what Mannheim promised to be an important aim of his sociology of knowledge, namely, to consciously bring together and synthesize comparative perspectives and competing explanatory approaches to the subject matter at hand in order to arrive at a more all-rounded perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005