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The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim
Edited by Volker Meja & David Kettler
“The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim” is an international collection of original articles on the classical sociologist Karl Mannheim and documents the current revitalization of the reception of this social thinker. Using “learning from Mannheim” as its motif, the chapters in this volume favor fresh negotiations with his works, including the writings published posthumously in recent decades.
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About This Book
Karl Mannheim is a classic of sociology. “The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim” helps us to accompany him in his open, experimental thinking, the generation of new questions, the recognition of thought experiments as well as the care for controlling evidence, and his negotiations with colleagues he encounters in his own searches. This is not simply to dismiss the elements brought together by earlier scholars into a challenging composite design, but there cannot be many authors recognized as classical who have characterized the work for which he/she is justly honored as a collection of experimental essays. Sociology of knowledge is a project, not a creed; and “Ideology and Utopia” is a documentation, not a scripture.
After a brief introductory overview of Karl Mannheim’s intellectual career, “The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim” offers fresh commentaries and explorations by an international and presently active group of scholars. As the institutionalized understanding of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge project was so long shaped by the synthetic reading by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton—a classic in his own right––the companion opens with a careful exposition and critique of that authoritative interpretation. It is followed by a close reading of the considerations that led Mannheim to move beyond the neo-Kantian epistemology of his earlier training to the project of a sociological understanding of critical knowledge. Next to come is a series of studies that marked by perspectives derived from intellectual strategies developed since the breakdown of consensus on the approaches examined in the previous section. In their variety, the studies capture a number of perspectives opened up or expanded by an understanding of Mannheim’s undertaking. The key terms are familiar: self-reflexivity, praxeological sociology, neo-realism, and dramatistic readings of world-views. The angles of vision differ, but they agree in projecting new and important light on Mannheim’s efforts. At the end, attention is focused on some unfamiliar links between Mannheim’s work and current interests: a study of Mannheim’s influence on Hannah Arendt, who knew him as teacher in Heidelberg and Frankfurt; an inquiry into Mannheim’s political thought from the standpoint of contemporary democratic political theory; and an examination of Mannheim’s attention to the status of women and of the work done on these matters under his tutelage by a group of talented women students.
The idea of “The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim” is by no means to dismiss the work for which Mannheim has been best known, but it is to put that work in its particular context, as a multisided agenda rather than as a finished doctrine, to be accepted or rejected. The aim is to learn from Karl Mannheim.
Reviews
“Kettler and Meja’s Anthem Companion offers timely reflections on some of the main issues in Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge from the point of view of its ‘actuality’ understood as ‘applicability’”.
—Gábor Tverdota (2019) “The anthem companion to Karl Mannheim”, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 6:1, 131–136
The Anthem Companions to Sociology offers wide ranging and masterly overviews of the works of major sociologists. The volumes in the series provide authoritative and critical appraisals of key figures in modern social thought. These books, written and edited by leading figures, are essential additional reading on the history of sociology. — Gerard Delanty, Professor of Sociology, University of Sussex, Brighton
This ambitious series provides an intellectually thoughtful introduction to the featured social theorists and offers a comprehensive assessment of their legacy. Each edited collection synthesizes the many dimensions of the respective theorist’s contributions and sympathetically ponders the various nuances in and the broader societal context for their body of work. The series will be appreciated by seasoned scholars and students alike. — Michele Dillon, Professor of Sociology and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, University of New Hampshire
The orchestration and emergence of the Anthem Companions to Sociology represent a formidable and invaluable achievement. Each companion explores the scope, ingenuity, and conceptual subtleties of the works of a theorist indispensable to the sociological project. The editors and contributors for each volume are the very best in their fields, and they guide us towards the richest, most creative seams in the writings of their thinker. The results, strikingly consistent from one volume to the next, brush away the years, reanimate what might have been lost, and bring numerous rays of illumination to the most pressing challenges of the present. — Rob Stones, Professor of Sociology, Western Sydney University, Australia
The Anthem Companions, those that have appeared already and those that are to come, will give every sociologist a handy and authoritative guide to all the giants of their discipline. — Stephen Mennell, Professor Emeritus, University College Dublin
Each volume of the Anthem Companions to Sociology examines comprehensively not only a theorist’s distinct approach and unique contributions, but also situates each in reference to the major parameters of mainstream theoretical schools and traditions. This remarkable Series in addition throws into high relief the singular features of modern societies. It promises to set the standard for discussions of Sociology’s long-term development and belongs on the shelves of every social scientist.— Stephen Kalberg, Professor of Sociology Emeritus, Boston University
This valuable series covers both familiar figures in the history of sociology (such as Max Weber and, prospectively, Marx and Durkheim) and less often treated ones such as Arendt and Troeltsch who are also highly relevant to sociology, broadly conceived. In these books, leading scholars explore important but often neglected aspects of their subjects’ work. — William Outhwaite, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University, UK
Author Information
David Kettler is research professor at Bard College, US, and professor emeritus at Trent University, Canada. His publications include five coauthored books on Karl Mannheim.
Volker Meja is professor emeritus at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
Series
Anthem Companions to Sociology
Table of Contents
Introduction: Karl Mannheim as Interlocutor, David Kettler and Volker Meja; Chapter One Between Ideology and Utopia: Karl Mannheim’s Quest for a Political Synthesis, Henrik Lundberg; Chapter Two Karl Mannheim and the Realism Debate in Political Theory, Peter Breiner; Chapter Three Mannheim, Mass Society and Democratic Theory, Ryusaku Yamada; Chapter Four Karl Mannheim and Hannah Arendt on Conduct, Action and Politics, Philip Walsh; Chapter Five Karl Mannheim and Women’s Research, David Kettler and Volker Meja; Chapter Six The Melodrama of Modernity in Karl Mannheim’s Political Theory, Hartmut Behr and Liam Devereux; Chapter Seven Historicization and the Sociology of Knowledge, Reinhard Laube; Chapter Eight Karl Mannheim, T. S. Eliot and Raymond Williams: Cultural Sociology or Cultural Studies?, Claudia Honegger; Chapter Nine Karl Mannheim’s Sociology of Self- Refl exivity, Amalia Barboza; Chapter Ten Praxeological Sociology of Knowledge and Documentary Method: Karl Mannheim’s Framing of Empirical Research, Ralf Bohnsack; List of Contributors; Index.
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