ABSTRACT
The new sociology of scientific knowledge, and the new sociology of culture more generally, have familiarized us with talk about the "ordinary," "unexceptional," and down-to-earth character of all practices and products of the high intellect. The generalization of economic categories to the analysis of political, cultural, and intellectual practices has become a familiar gesture in a variety of intellectual currents, which include the "economic theory of democracy" such as elaborated by Downs or Barry, rational choice theory as practised by Becker, Olsen, Coleman, or Elster, neo-Marxist cultural studies Jameson, Eagleton, Harvey, or the general "economy of practices" which has been introduced by Pierre Bourdieu. Karl Mannheim's essay on "Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon" offers a more systematic account, not only of the convergence of a generalized economics and politics of knowledge, but also of the author's careful intention to avoid the double trap of economic and political reductionism.
