2. Durkheim – The Elementary
Forms of Religious Life
O Deals also with
social origins
and impact of
society on
knowledge
3. Collective Representations
O Symbols and images that represent
ideas, beliefs and values of the collective
O Contradictory existence
O Both external to the individual (created and
controlled by society)
O And internal to the individual (part of the
individual as a participant in society)
O Help conform the individual to society‟s
thoughts and morality
O Help make sense of the world
4. Marx – The German Ideology
O “Life is not
determined by
consciousness, but
consciousness by
life.”
5. Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann
O The Social Construction of Reality
O Looks at how roles become
institutionalized
O Institutionalizing roles embeds meaning in
society
O Knowledge and conceptualizations of
reality become embedded in social
institutions
O Ergo, reality and knowledge are socially
constructed
6. Social Stock of Knowledge
O “Theoretical knowledge is only a small
and by no means the most important part
of what passed for knowledge in a
society…the primary knowledge about the
institutional order…is the sum total of
„what everybody knows‟ about a social
world, an assemblage of
maxims, morals, proverbial nuggets of
wisdom, values and beliefs, myths, and so
forth.”
7. Berger and Luckmann
O The general body of knowledge in a
society is distributed throughout the
society
O Symbolic universes are created to
legitimate the institutional structure of
society
O Beliefs that everybody knows
O Have to be maintained
9. Karl Mannheim
O If all knowledge is socially
constructed, the argument is self-
defeating
O Relationism
O Certain things are only true in certain times
and places
O Doesn‟t make them any less true overall
11. Discipline and Punish: the
Birth of the Prison
O Knowledge is a form of
power and can be used
against individuals as such
O Knowledge is socially
constructed to maintain the
power of the rule class
O Social institutions
perpetuate ideologies
12. Discipline and Punish: the
Birth of the Prison
O Discourses and ideologies subject us to
power, turning us into subjects of that
power
O We become afraid to challenge the norm
O Ideologies and discourses appear as
neutral, but are, in fact, not
