Knowledge Society

This chapter is concerned with the usage of the knowledge concept in the present-day diagnoses of knowledge society. These deal with the thesis of an altered socio-economic and cultural significance of especially scientific, economic, and professional knowledge and clarify the consequences arising from it at the socio-structural level. In the debates led by Daniel Bell, Nico Stehr, and others, the sociology of knowledge approaches play, apparently, no prominent role, despite Stehr’s long-term interest in SK and especially in Karl Mannheim. In so far as here, beyond aggregating statistical data, empirical specifications are made, one deals first and foremost with the usage of scientific knowledge in various domains of practice without referring to concepts and methodological tools from sociology of knowledge. Thus, paradoxically, the ‘sociology of knowledge society’ is not part of the sociology of knowledge. However, it could improve its empirical base considerably by referring to the latter. Conversely, the knowledge society thesis provides sociology of knowledge with an entry point to deal with the macrostructural phenomena of social change, which it has so far neglected.