The Study of China in Universities: A Comparative Case Study of A ...

Evidence shows, ironically, that the value-shifting-emphasis phenomenon in some ways also influenced the fate of Mannheim himself and his theories. Although Mannheim is credited lately by many—for example, Kettler et al. (1982), Hekman (1986), Whitty (1997), and Delanty (2001)—for his profound influence and contribution to the shap-ing of the contemporary sociology of knowledge; nevertheless, his most important work, Ideology and Utopia (1936), is generally regarded in the United States, according to Whitty (1997), as vague and abstract. Whitty, the Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education in the London Institute of Education, in the 50th anniversary memorial lecture for Mannheim in 1997, expressed his admiration for Mannheim’s works but admitted that perhaps he was not understood as much as he should have been in his own time. Whitty acknowledged that there was also a feeling in the United Kingdom of the character of Mannheim’s works being hard to grasp and that some individuals even consider his works inconsistent.

Wolff (1983) thought that Mannheim’s unpopularity in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s arose against a background where pragmatism, social behaviorism, and instrumentalism were prevalent (p. 200). He believed that these were the outcome of a more general and pervasive American outlook: a practical, ameliorative, and future-oriented scientific community. Hekman’s (1986) account of the history of the sociology of knowledge also suggests that interest in this area as a specific field of investigation has not been a pronounced trend of 20th-century social theory, this being particularly so in the United States. This confirms Wolff’s claim of the indifference to Mannheim that existed in the United States. Wolff further pointed out that at the time when the sociology of knowledge was introduced through the translation of Mannheim’s (1936) Ideology and Utopia by Wirth and Shils, as mentioned previously, it was against the background of pragmatism and social behaviorism that was then prevalent in the United States. He believed that such circumstances resulted in American students being discouraged from becoming acquainted with the sociology of knowledge. On the other hand, it has kept the field from developing into a general and systematic sociology of intellectual-emotional behavior.