Karl Mannheim's Sociology as Political Education

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"German professors and academic intellectuals are often blamed for their passivity or complexity in the face of the anti-Republican surge of the late Weimar years, culminating in the National Socialist rise to power. Karl Mannheim was a preeminent member of a vital minority committed to making German universities contribute to democratization. Mannheim argued that traditional German emphasis on the cultivation of individuals rooted in a certain high culture had to be adapted to a more egalitarian, socially complex community. He advocated teaching of sociology to creat social awareness to inspire informed political judgements. Karl Mannheims Sociology as Political Education situates Manheim in the Weimar debates about sociology in the university. It shows how his project of political education for democracy informs his work as well as his relations wth liberal, fascist, and orthodox Marxist thinkers.". "Karl Mannheim's Sociology as Political Education is a joint effort by two authors who have written separately on Karl Mannheim's sociology work and who write from different disciplines and traditions of commentary. The Mannheim who emerges from this volume is remarkably contemporary. In particular, he supports arguments that the threat to academic integrity is feared less in sociology than in certain areas of cultural studies. Certainly the issue of academic politicization was better understood by Mannheim in his time than it is by either side of the debate today."--BOOK JACKET.

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