   the sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies. it is not a specialized area of sociology but instead deals with broad fundamental questions about the extent and limits of social influences on individual's lives and the social-cultural basics of our knowledge about the world.http://www.stthomasu.ca/academic/soci/weeks/3523.htm complementary to the sociology of knowledge is the sociology of ignorance including the study of nescience, ignorance, knowledge gaps or non-knowledge as inherent features of knowledge making.http://www.sociologyofignorance.com the sociology of ignorance   the sociology of knowledge was pioneered primarily by the sociologists Ãmile durkheim and marcel mauss at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. their works deal directly with how conceptual thought, language, and logic could be influenced by the sociological milieu out of which they arise. in primitive classification durkheim and mauss take a study of âprimitiveâ group mythology to argue that systems of classification are collectively based and that the divisions with these systems are derived from social categories.durkheim, emile, and marcel mauss. (1963). primitive classification. chicago: university of chicago press. while neither author specifically coined nor used the term 'sociology of knowledge', their work is an important first contribution to the field. the specific term 'sociology of knowledge' is said to have been in widespread use since the 1920s, when a number of german-speaking sociologists, most notably max scheler, and karl mannheim, wrote extensively on sociological aspects of knowledge. with the dominance of [[fu
Social_epistemology Sociology_of_knowledge Subfields_of_sociology