Research Handbook on the Sociology of Knowledge

Edited by Fran Collyer, Professorial Fellow, Sociology, People and Culture, University of Wollongong, Australia

‘The Research Handbook on the Sociology of Knowledge is a major achievement. In it, eminent sociologist Fran Collyer assembles an international group of more than two dozen sociologists, philosophers, and other scholars to address, with great success, the long unmet need for a comprehensive guide to the sociology of knowledge, which is at once deeply informed by the field’s complex history and finely geared to the variegated intellectual landscape of the 21st century. The Handbook carries the reader, authoritatively, from the contributions of the field’s founders and early advocates (Karl Mannheim, Robert Merton, Norbert Elias) to later-day constructivist and hermeneutic approaches, as well as approaches influenced by the sociology of the professions and Science Studies. Theoretically rich, and attuned especially to the nexus of power, inequality, and knowledge, the Handbook also charts new empirical territory with original and stimulating chapters on subjects such as regional knowledge ecosystems, climate knowledge, audit cultures, commercial publishing, and “resistant knowledge” (as created by social groups oppressed by systems of gender, race, and class), among many other important topics. An indispensable resource for social scientists and humanists who specialize in the study of knowledge-making and knowledge-utilization, the Handbook will also greatly reward non-specialists who are at all concerned with the multiple and mutable forms of contemporary knowledge.’

• ContentsThe sociology of knowledge: editor’s introduction xviiiFran M. CollyerPART I HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE1 Junctures and movements across an intellectual terrain: the historiographyof the sociology of knowledge 2Fran M. Collyer2 A diagnosis of the sociology of our time: Karl Mannheim and thesociology of knowledge 23Frédéric Vandenberghe3 Religion, science, and civilisation: a history of the sociology of knowledgein China 45Hon-Fai ChenPART II EARLY SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE4 Karl Mannheim and the sociology of knowledge 69Barbara Hoenig5 Wilhelm Jerusalem’s ‘Sociology of Cognition’ and the Early Sociology ofKnowledge 84Thomas Uebel6 A tale of two sociologies: empiricism versus ‘metaphysics’ in socialresearch and the early sociology of knowledge 102Silvia Rief and Alan Scott7 Merton’s pursuit of an ‘American’ version of the sociology of knowledge 122Charles CrothersPART III SOCIAL THEORY AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE8 Power, knowledge and history: the contributions of Max Weber andNorbert Elias to the sociology of knowledge 142Gina Zabludovsky and Héctor Vera9 Sciences, symbols and society: Norbert Elias and the sociology ofknowledge 160Philip D. Walsh10 From the social to the communicative construction of knowledge 175Hubert Knoblauch11 Classical sociology of knowledge and contemporary constructivism 192Stephan FuchsPART IV KNOWLEDGE MAKING, KNOWLEDGE WORKERS AND KNOWERS12 Thinking about thinking 210John Keane13 The sociology of sociology: thought styles and thought collectives 226Fran M. Collyer14 Pleasure of sociological writing: a new project for a hermeneutic sociologyof knowledge 249Anna Borisenkova15 The potential for muckraking sociology to rebalance the sociologicalproject: putting ‘sociological knowledge’ under the microscope 266Graham Scambler, Lance (Benny) Goodman and Miranda Scambler16 Negotiating knowledge: complementary and alternative medicineprofessions in the university 284Caragh BrosnanPART V POWER, INEQUALITY AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION17 Constraints on the power of scientific knowledge 304Nico Stehr18 Gender, climate change, and the production of scientific knowledge 330Sam Kendrick and Joane Nagel19 The social construction of maps: knowledge, maps and power 350Christine Leuenberger20 Resistant knowledge 361Patricia Hill Collins21 Fallacies of mainstream economics: unmasking ideas 379David FasenfestPART VI INSTITUTIONS AND INSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLE22 A divided republic of letters? Infrastructural coloniality and thecommercialisation of academic publishing 394David Mills23 Social explanations of science and the sociology of knowledge: a troubledrelationship 415Stephen Turner24 Negotiating academic knowledge: alternative academic institutions 433Wiebke Keim and Claire Lapique25 Struggles over the sociological canon: exiles and other outsiders 452Bryan S. Turner26 Challenging academic freedom 467Nick Osbaldiston