The Reality of Knowledge: Towards a Critical Realist Sociology of Knowledge

This book proposes a new approach to the sociology of knowledge, providing a cross-section of some of the major theories that have influenced and continue to influence the field.

Through a series of engagements with the history of the discipline, it brings a critical realist perspective to bear on key themes within the sociology of knowledge. Moving away from the notion of critical realism as an under-labourer for the social and human sciences, it seeks to affirm a more fully sociological account of knowledge and, as such, emphasises its social meaning. In addition, this book presents an account of the under-appreciated convergence between critical realism and Norbert Elias’s approach to the sociology of knowledge.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and social theory with interests in the sociology of knowledge and critical realist thought.

Philip D. Walsh is Associate Professor of Sociology and of Social and Political Thought at York University, Toronto. He is the author of Arendt Contra Sociology: Theory, Society and its Science and Skepticism, Modernity and Critical Theory.