KARL MANNHEIM AND THE LEGACY OF MAX WEBER Rethinking Classical Sociology Series Editor: David Chalcraft, University of Derby, UK This series is designed to capture, reflect and promote the major changes that are occurring in the burgeoning field of classical sociology. The series publishes monographs, texts and reference volumes that critically engage with the established figures in classical sociology as well as encouraging examination of thinkers and texts from within the ever-widening canon of classical sociology. Engagement derives from theoretical and substantive advances within sociology and involves critical dialogue between contemporary and classical positions. The series reflects new interests and concerns including feminist perspectives, linguistic and cultural turns, the history of the discipline, the biographical and cultural milieux of texts, authors and interpreters, and the interfaces between the sociological imagination and other discourses including science, anthropology, history, theology and literature. The series offers fresh readings and insights that will ensure the continued relevance of the classical sociological imagination in contemporary work and maintain the highest standards of scholarship and enquiry in this developing area of research. Also in the series: Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology Hans Henrik Bruun ISBN 0 7546 4529 0 Crossing the Psycho-Social Divide Freud, Weber, Adorno and Elias George Cavalletto ISBN 978 0 7546 4772 0 Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology A Framework for Political Psychology Alasdair J. Marshall ISBN 978 0 7546 4978 6 For more information on this series, please visit www.ashgate.com Karl Mannheim and the Legacy of Max Weber Retrieving a Research Programme DAVID KETTLER Bard College, USA COLIN LOADER University of Nevada, USA VOLKER MEJA Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada © David Kettler, Colin Loader and Volker Meja 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. David Kettler, Colin Loader and Volker Meja have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Gower House Suite 420 Croft Road 101 Cherry Street Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405 Hampshire GU11 3HR USA England www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kettler, David Karl Mannheim and the legacy of Max Weber. - (Rethinking classical sociology) 1. Mannheim, Karl, 1893-1947 2. Weber, Max, 1864-1920 - Influence 3. Sociology - Research - Germany - History - 20th century I. Title II. Loader, Colin, 1941- III. Meja, Volker 301’.072’043 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kettler, David. Karl Mannheim and the legacy of Max Weber : retrieving a research programme/ by David Kettler, Colin Loader and Volker Meja. p. cm. -- (Rethinking classical sociology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7224-1 (hardcover) 1. Knowledge, Sociology of. 2. Mannheim, Karl, 1893-1947. 3. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. I. Loader, Colin, 1941- II. Meja, Volker. III. Title. HM651.K43 2008 301.092--dc22 2008030292 ISBN: 978-0-7546-7224-1 Contents Series Editor’s Preface vii Preface xi List of Abbreviations xiii About the Authors xv Introduction 1 1 The Challenging Context 9 2 Time and Place 23 3 The Social Structure of Advancement: Education for Life in the Economy 33 4 The “Intensive Study Group” Around Karl Mannheim 57 5 Norbert Elias and the Sociology of External Forms 75 6 Hans Gerth and Hans Weil: The Genealogy of the Liberal Bildungselite 85 7 Käthe Truhel and the Idea of a Social Bureaucracy 101 8 Natalie Halperin and Margarete Freudenthal: The Genealogy of Women’s Movements 117 9 Jacob Katz: Sociology of the Stranger I 131 10 Nina Rubinstein: Sociology of the Stranger II 141 11 Individual Projects and Orphans 153 12 The Unfinished Business Between Karl Mannheim and Max Weber 187 Bibliography 197 Index 207 This page intentionally left blank Series Editor’s Preface With Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) we encounter a different generation of ‘classical sociologists’ to those normally associated with the epithet. When thinking sociologically with the help of Comte (1798–1857), Tocqueville (1805– 1859), Spencer (1820–1903), Marx (1818–1883), Pareto (1848–1923), Durkheim (1858–1917), Simmel (1858–1918) or Weber (1864–1920), or, for that matter, with Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) or Jane Addams (1860–1935) or Dubois (1868–1963), there is a feeling that we are dealing direct with classical sociology. From the previous list it would be important to distinguish between generations and it is important to acknowledge that each of these thinkers might well point to other traditions and thinkers as significant for their own development; yet there is a sense that these figures are from periods when sociology emerges in earnest and one can almost approach their work, within intellectual history, in media res. Since we feel we are dealing direct with classical sociology our hermeneutical tools are sharpened to acknowledge the historical, linguistic and cultural distances that separate us from their lives and works. In contrast, perhaps when dealing with Horkheimer (1895–1973), Parsons (1902–1979), Adorno (1903–1969), Homans (1910–1989) or C.W. Mills (1916–1962) there is more a sense of continuity with the past even though that continuity recedes year on year, especially as these names fall away from the ken of syllabi and discussion. The hermeneutical task in appreciating these classics is compounded by the fact that their own receptions of the ‘first generations’ of classical sociologists is a topic of concern as much as understanding their own work in the history of sociology. Indeed, often the history of sociology owes to them the classical legacy that their work ensured was passed on. The Russian doll that is the theoretical tradition in sociology, especially one that seeks to still comprehend its relation to the classical sociologists and their varying accounts of the rise, nature and possible futures of modernity, is of larger size when we consider the theoretical work of contemporary social theorists such as Habermas or more latterly, Jeffrey Alexander, Tony Giddens, Ulrich Beck or John Urry. Yet central aspects of the hermeneutical task are shared nonetheless—whilst their historical and social experiences may feel more familiar and their national traditions less diverse than might be the case with an Adorno or Homans the layered texture of their theorising vis-à-vis classical and contemporary sociological writing is more dense. In contrast, the earlier generation’s layering of influences and debates might well be less dense, but their historical experiences feel more remote. Given that many of the figures who were writing prolifically in the 1930s and 1940s had their lives and careers disrupted by the rise of National Socialism (and prior to this for some by the ‘Red Revolutions’ in the aftermath of the Great War) and the voluntary and enforced migrations thereby occasioned, viii Karl Mannheim and the Legacy of Max Weber the historical and political settings of social thought press themselves upon the contemporary interpreter, demanding to be factors to be included in understanding the production of sociological knowledge. This is especially the case with regard to Mannheim as his career moves from Hungary to Germany to England and the London School of Economics. This volume Retrieving a Research Programme: Karl Mannheim and the Legacy of Max Weber, by David Kettler, Colin Loader and Volker Meja, is the second one in our series to move beyond the first generations of classical thinkers; George Cavelletto’s very well received Crossing the Psycho-Social Divide included analysis of the work of Adorno and Elias in addition to the legacies of Freud and Weber. We have already published fine volumes on rethinking the classical legacies of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Pareto. Looking at more contemporary ‘classical’ figures raises, as I have intimated, related but different issues. With Mannheim (1893–1947), the figures and texts of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Lukacs (1885–1971) and others, were certainly influential intellectual forebears if not yet ‘classics’. When engaging with Mannheim and classical sociology, the interpreter needs to deal then not only with placing Mannheim into his political, social, intellectual and cultural context but understanding how those contexts impacted on his reading of the ‘classics’ and his formulation of the nature and task of sociology. For sure, Mannheim does not have the status of a thinker with whom one must engage as a stage on the journey to encounter the classics more or less at ‘first hand’. Yet sociology is not a discipline whose insights cumulate with each generation so that it can be accepted that each figure in the tradition functions as a filter for what in the ‘founders’ is considered valuable for sociology and transcends time and place, on the one hand, and, on the other, pointing out the limitations at source. There are clearly limits to writing a history of classical sociology on the basis of the chronological dates of birth and death of individual sociologists. Yet Mannheim himself reminds us of the importance of generations for the nature, content and dissemination of knowledge. Just as there are a variety of traditions and routes by which the present day social theorist might arrive at the door of the ‘founding classics’, so too with the next generation of writers, whether that be Mannheim, Talcott Parsons or Robert Merton for example. In previous times the route to Karl Mannheim’s thought was perhaps far more immediate and clear to sociologists than it is perhaps today. This appears to be a shame, if true, since Mannheim’s concerns with the affinities between social group location and ideologies, the role of the intellectual and the expert in civic debate about the future of society and so on, are hardly of arcane interest.