Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia is one of the foundational works of the sociology of knowledge.

Within, a study of how ideas are shaped by social position, historical circumstance and political interest. His key distinction is between ideology and utopia. Ideology names forms of thought that stabilise an existing order, often by disguising its contradictions; utopia names forms of thought that exceed the present and imagine its transformation. Mannheim’s more difficult move is to apply this suspicion universally. No thinker stands outside history. Liberalism, conservatism, socialism, religion, even apparently neutral scholarship all emerge from determinate social worlds.

The book can feel structurally old-fashioned and occasionally overconfident in its categories, but really, even now, we are still asking ourselves how is it we can make claims about reality once we understand that everyone, including ourselves, is situated inside it? Essential for readers of political theory, intellectual history, sociology, ideology critique and twentieth-century European thought.

Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. First published in English in 1936; Routledge paperback first published 1960; this copy reprinted 1968. Paperback. Age-toning and general shelf wear to covers, with light rubbing, handling marks and some edge/corner wear. Pages toned but clean and binding sound. Good condition