The Sociology of Knowledge

Analyzing Structures of Knowledge

The pioneer of the study of structural knowledge is the French theorist and sociologist Émile Durkheim.2 In Durkheim's ([1893] 1964) analysis of law in The Division of Labour in Society, he showed how societal norms do not emerge transcendentally from the spiritual world, or through some rationally derived truth about some overarching universal morality, but are created according to the specific needs or functions of society at the time. In Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim's ([1912] 1965) classic study of religion, he illustrated how the content of primitive religious beliefs seem to parallel a society's historically situated organizational structure. Furthermore, he showed the importance of symbols and beliefs for the continued solidarity of members of society. Durkheim argued that knowledge can only come about from and through society and is thus conditioned largely by the sociohistorical milieu of which it is part. He also showed that the importance of this knowledge for the cohesion of the group is not only necessary in primitive religion but also, by extension, all institutions in modern society.

[Page II-240]Durkheim's consideration of the social basis of knowledge is seen most poignantly in his study of time (see Durkheim and Mauss 1963). Here, Durkheim and Mauss recognize the variation of temporal systems from culture to culture. Durkheim shows that a division of time is not something that is universal but rather derives from the different historical and structural elements of the community. Taking no unit of knowledge for granted, Durkheim and Mauss (1963) argue that “even ideas so abstract as those of time and space are, at each point in their history, closely connected with the corresponding social organization” (p. 88). Clearly, Durkheim and Mauss acknowledge that even the most basic pieces of knowledge are products of social organization and not pregiven Kantian categories. Gouldner (1965) adopted a Durkheimian-like macrostructural analysis in his sociological analysis of the development of Plato's philosophy (see Camic and Gross 2002b). Furthermore, there is a rich Durkheimian tradition that examines the social constitution of time and cognition (Sorokin 1943; Zerubavel 1997; Flaherty 1999).

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