Sociology of knowledge

Sociology of knowledge studies how social conditions shape the production, circulation, and acceptance of knowledge, including scientific and everyday beliefs.

Social construction of reality: The process by which people create and sustain shared understandings of reality through interaction and institutionalization. Berger and Luckmann show how shared realities become taken-for-granted knowledge.
Karl Mannheim: A Hungarian-born sociologist who developed a systematic sociology of knowledge and analyzed ideology and utopia. His work established the field's central questions about socially situated thought.
Peter L. Berger: An Austrian-American sociologist known for work on religion, modernity, and the social construction of reality. His collaboration with Luckmann gave the field a durable account of everyday knowledge.
Sociology of scientific knowledge: The study of how social processes shape the production, validation, and use of scientific knowledge. It applies the field's questions directly to scientific communities and findings.
Epistemological relativism: The view that standards of knowledge or truth vary between conceptual schemes, cultures, or historical settings. Sociological explanations of belief do not by themselves entail that truth is relative.
Standpoint theory: An approach holding that social location shapes what people can know and that marginalized positions can reveal dominant assumptions. It explains why knowledge varies with social position and whose perspective gains authority.
Ideology and utopia: Karl Mannheim's analysis of how political thought reflects social positions and can either stabilize or transcend existing arrangements. This book set out Mannheim's account of knowledge shaped by social location.
Thomas Luckmann: A German sociologist whose work examined the social construction of reality, religion, and everyday knowledge. His collaboration with Berger connected social institutions to the formation of common sense.
Strong programme: A sociology of scientific knowledge approach that explains true and false beliefs symmetrically through social causes. Its symmetry principle makes social explanation apply to accepted and rejected scientific claims alike.
Logical positivism: A philosophical movement holding that meaningful claims are analytic or empirically verifiable. Its emphasis on logical and empirical criteria contrasts with attention to social conditions.

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