Karl Mannheim - Structures Of Thinking V10

The Sociology of Karl Mannheim

K. Mannheim (1935) Ideology and Utopia: an Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (new edition 1991).

K. Mannheim (1940) Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

K. Mannheim (1943) Diagnosis of our Time: Wartime Essays of a Sociologist. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

K. Mannheim (1951) Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

K. Mannheim (1952) Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

K. Mannheim (1953) Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

K. Mannheim (1956) Essays on the Sociology of Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (new edition 1992).

K. Mannheim (1957) Systematic Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

K. Mannheim and W. A. C. Stewart (1962) An Introduction to the Sociology of Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

K. Mannheim (1982) Structures of Thinking. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

K. Mannheim (1986) Conservatism: A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

STRUCTURES OF THINKING

Collected Works Volume Ten

Karl Mannheim

Text and translation edited and introduced by David Kettler, Volker Meja and Nico Stehr

Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shierry Webar Nicholsen

First published 1982

by Routledge

Reprinted 1997

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

Routledge 1982

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publishers Note

These reprints are taken from original copies of each book. In many cases the condition of these originals is not perfect, the paper, often handmade, having suffered over time, and the copy from such factors as inconsistent printing pressure resulting in faint text, show-through from one side of a leaf to the other, the filling in of some characters, and the break-up of type. The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of these reprints, but wishes to point out that certain characteristics of the original copies will, of necessity, be apparent in reprints thereof.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0415144485 (set)

ISBN 041513675X (hbk)

Editors Preface

The texts to be presented in this edition had been in the possession of the late Dr Paul Kecskemeti, who was a close associate of Karl Mannheim and a distinguished social scientist in his own right. The published version rests upon a photocopy of the typescripts, which Dr Kecskemeti allowed to be made some years ago. In preparing the texts for publication, almost sixty years after their composition, the editors have been governed above all by their conviction that Mannheims reflections on cultural sociology have value beyond their interest as documents for a representative intellectual biography. The objectives have accordingly been to preserve the methodological structure and substantive content of the works while putting out of the way linguistic and grammatical obscurities which could only serve to distract the attention of readers. This has meant, especially in the case of the less finished later text, a certain amount of editorial retouching, especially of syntactical patterns occasionally reminiscent of Mannheims native Hungarian. But every care has been taken to avoid meddling with Mannheims conceptualizations, rich in metaphors Mannheim hopes to revitalize, as well as deliberate tautologies and ambiguities. These are methodical, systematized notes, preparatory to the carefully wrought essays which were Mannheims chosen means of public expression. To burden the edition with an apparatus detailing editorial changes would render the contents less accessible and would imply unwarranted claims for the historical weight of these texts. Specialists can consult the complete, unedited typescripts in the libraries of the Universitt Konstanz and Trent University, where they are also available for reproduction.

The texts were preserved in several typewritten copies separately assembled in binders. In the one, there is a title page, with the title, authors name, and the notation Sulz am Neckar. Begonnen September, 1922, followed by three pages of fairly detailed table of contents, and 183 consecutively numbered pages of text, of which the last eight are devoted to footnotes. The second typescript is longer, and the pagination more complex. The title page is limited to the title and sub-title, and the one-page table of contents contains only the headings of the major sections. After a three-page Vorwort, the pagination begins again. The first part runs from page 1 to page 50. The second part is numbered from page 1 to page 136, but there is an error in the count. After page 56, the numbering returns to 50 and runs once more through 56 before going on. There is no sign in the text that this is anything more than a simple mistake in pagination, consistent with other signs of this being an unrevised early draft. The third part is a twelve-page fragment, breaking off in mid-sentence with a half-line of periods followed by a note about topics for continuation. In the edited version, most of this last part has been included as an Appendix. Both texts, in the original, employ marginal summary headings; and these have been removed. The table of contents for the earlier text includes almost all these headings, making for a sort of analytical outline. The editors have used many of the headings from the later text in a similar way, to construct a comparable table of contents.

The typescripts appear to have been typed on the same machine, perhaps a portable, not equipped with the German sharp s or umlaut; but there is no reason to suppose that the texts were redrafted after their original composition, and every reason to suppose the contrary.

Since the German publication of these materials in Strukturen des Denkens (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980), the Dutch sociologist Henk Woldring has generously put at our disposal a second copy of the text of the second manuscript, and this copy has some corrections in Mannheims hand, enabling us to solve a few textual riddles. It has also allowed us to include page 97 of the manuscript, which was missing from our earlier copy. More important, the state of the manuscript gives very good reason for believing that Mannheim reviewed the text as late as 1945 or 1946, since he noted a 1945 edition of a psychology book on the cover sheet, seemingly in the same manner of writing (which did change over the years). And at that late date, it seems, he found it appropriate to make very few, largely grammatical or narrowly stylistic changes. To maintain the historical integrity of the text, we did not reproduce the three changes which affect the substance, although even these are barely perceptible adjustments in nuance.