Mannheim’s German and English phases diverged between emancipatory knowledge and planning control

Evidence

In the Germany of the 1920s, Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge aimed at creating a scientifically informed politics which could overcome the irrational elements present in ideology. He proposed the “free-floating intelligentsia” as being in a privileged position to achieve the integration of the common denominator present in the various thought-models, thereby actualizing the emancipatory promise of sociology. In the England of the 1930s, however, Mannheim turned towards the idea of “planning for freedom” as a way to pre-emptively safeguard Western civilization, which meant that traditional elites ought to embrace his sociological diagnosis of their failures and apply remedies. He shifted from a conception of knowledge with a catalytic function at the service of a better-informed politics towards a knowledge instrumental for control by the planning elite as a way to counter social disintegration. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 86

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Karl Mannheim shifted from emancipatory sociology to elitist planning for freedom — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 86; The sociology of knowledge predates Said and traces to Marx, Mannheim, and Scheler — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 486; European knowledge of the Orient shifted from textual contemplation to administrative and military appropriation — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 522 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Karl Mannheim shifted from emancipatory sociology to elitist planning for freedom #expands (0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 86
• The sociology of knowledge predates Said and traces to Marx, Mannheim, and Scheler #corroborates (0.80) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 486
• Mannheim answered historical relativism by vesting truth in a detached intelligentsia #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 331
• European knowledge of the Orient shifted from textual contemplation to administrative and military appropriation #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 522
• Historical knowledge gets co-opted for administrative manipulation #expands (0.75)
• Coordinated capitalism’s constraints, not US market relations, drove the entrepreneurship discourse in Germany #qualifies (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 308
• Lukács’s class world-view theory descended from German national world-view thinking #corroborates (0.72)