Reflections on The Sociology of Knowledge: Modernity and Knowlegde

What knowledge is and how it is legitimized is changing through history. Sociology of knowledge focuses on what knowledge is and where it comes from. Because knowledge is historically relative, what it is and where it comes from changes with time. This is one of the essays on the sociology of knowledge in which I will look at how knowledge is legitimized within the university in modernity and post-modernity, and draw upon sociological imaginations of modernity.

Modernity is often considered to start in the late 18th century and last until early 19th century. It is normal to think about modernity as a time and place, but it can also be thought about as a set of ideas. In modernity, industrialisation created a division in labour and created a more capitalist society where production was for the market. The urbanisation also created more cramped living conditions and it created a shift in how people interacted with each other. Society got a new value system where the individual´s freedom became important, this is often called liberalism.

In modernity, the university became the main site for production of knowledge. The modern university had separate departments and disciplines, and the common thought was that scientific knowledge was the best knowledge. The goal for scientists were to find the truth, and they believed that knowledge made your life better. The common thought in modernity was that knowledge was a linear line, which we only got more and more of, and the more we had the better.

Post-modernity is considered to be the second half of the 20th century. The ideas of liberalism and freedom for the individual now grew stronger, and people started to break free from the burden of tradition. The idea that progress was predictable and linear was now challenged. Instead of trying to control nature, the concern turned to the consequences modernity and industrialisation had on nature and the risks modernity had produced.

In post-modernity, the importance of truth and progress was replaced by scepticism and relativism. Instead of focusing so much on progress and knowledge as a linear line, people now started to look back, and started to produce knowledge about what already was. The idea that scientific knowledge was the best knowledge was now challenged, and disciplines like humanity and arts become more important. Other new departments and disciplines also grew bigger within the university and were looked at as more important.

In this essay I have looked at how knowledge is legitimised within the university in modernity and post-modernity. Modernist and post-modernist had a different way of looking at knowledge. For modernist, the focus was on progress, and how to get more knowledge. The idea was that knowledge made life better, and scientific knowledge was the best knowledge. In post-modernity humanity and social science were some of the disciplines that became more important, and scepticism and relativism replaced the ideas of progress and truth. Knowledge was no longer looked at as a linear line, but as something that was relative, and needed to be challenged.