Karl Mannheim and the Legacy of Max Weber: Retrieving a Research Programme

This book focuses on the important work of Karl Mannheim by demonstrating how his theoretical conception of a reflexive sociology took shape as a collaborative empirical research program. The authors' show how contemporary work along these lines, whether derived from Foucault, Bourdieu or other theorists, can benefit from the insights of Mannheim and his students into both morphology and genealogy.The book comprises three parts: the first offers a new reading of Mannheim's empirical project, with emphasis on his lifelong dialogue with Max Weber. Special attention is paid to his article on economic ambition; part two analyzes the dissertations of Mannheim's students, including studies of newspapers, women's household roles, sentimentalism in women's literature, relations between female social workers and male bureaucrats, exile, Jewish assimilation, and Liberal cultivation; the final part assesses recent receptions of Mannheim and Mannheim's topics in empirical research.The book places Mannheim's sociology of knowledge inquiries into this broader context as well as on scholarship concerning the early history of sociology more generally.