Ideology and sociology: Reflections on Karl Mannheim'sIdeology and Utopia

Ideology was a favourite and much-discussed concept for many sociologists in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Undoubtedly this was mainly connected to Marxism, but Karl Mannheim—as a critic of Marx—had his part to play in this too. Ideology, and with it Mannheim's work, fell into disfavour with the retreat from Marxism in the 1980s and 1990s. But one could argue that much of what Mannheim discussed under the heading ‘ideology’ can now be found under other labels in sociology, such as ‘social constructionism’ and ‘discourse analysis’. Mannheim's treatment of utopias suffered an analogous fate to his treatment of ideology, being caught up in a general suspicion of utopian thinking among professional sociologists. Utopian scholars, for their part, were unhappy with Mannheim's rendition of utopia as revolutionary or messianic social movements rather than the realized picture of the perfect society that they found in the literary utopia. There are many calls for the revival of utopian thought at the present time, but they fail to specify—as Mannheim was always at pains to do—what social and political conditions are likely to favour such a revival.