INTRODUCTION

The sociology of knowledge has occupied a preeminent (if sometimes marginal) place in the social sciences, for its core texts elucidate sociology’s paramount claim that society is constitutive of human being. Whether in the writings of sociologists from the French, German, or American traditions, the sociology of knowledge argues that society’s influence extends into the structures of human experience in the form of ideas, concepts, and systems of thought. Furthermore, since social life belongs to human conscious life and reflective capacities, one cannot significantly address human being without addressing what Arthur Child called “the intrinsic sociality of mind” (1940-1, p. 418).