ABSTRACT
The sociology of knowledge, broadly conceived, seeks to trace the relationships between social structure and human mental productions. Karl Mannheim's theory can be separated into two major divisions: an empirical theory of the interrelationships between thought patterns and social patterns of existence; and a theoretical formulation of the epistemological and methodological implications for social science of those observed relationships. This chapter introduces relevant aspects of the empirical theory, and considers the methodological and epistemological claims. Mannheim contends that the sociology of knowledge possesses important implications for epistemology; in fact "a new kind of epistemology is called for which will reckon with the facts brought to light by the sociology of knowledge". Mannheim persuasively argued that the concepts and categories one develops are linked to the social process, and he devised the fruitful concept of the perspective to represent the variegated connections between social environment and ideation.
