Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social-scientific and related forms of knowledge about the social world.
The essays collected here tackle a range of previously unexplored questions about the practices involved in the production, assessment, and use of diverse forms of social knowledge. A stellar cast of multidisciplinary scholars addresses topics such as the changing practices of historical research, anthropological data collection, library usage, peer review, and institutional review boards. Turning to the world beyond the academy, other essays focus on global banks, survey research organizations, and national security and economic policy makers. Social Knowledge in the Making is a landmark volume for a new field of inquiry, and the bold new research agenda it proposes will be welcomed in the social science, the humanities, and a broad range of nonacademic settings.

American universities today serve as economic engines, performing the scientific research that will create new industries, drive economic growth, and keep the United States globally competitive. But only a few decades ago, these same universities self-consciously held themselves apart from the world of commerce. "Creating the Market University" is the first book to systematically examine why academic science made such a dramatic move toward the market. Drawing on extensive historical research, Elizabeth Popp Berman shows how the government - influenced by the argument that innovation drives the economy - brought about this transformation. Americans have a long tradition of making heroes out of their inventors. But before the 1960s and '70s neither policymakers nor economists paid much attention to the critical economic role played by innovation. However, during the late 1970s, a confluence of events - industry concern with the perceived deterioration of innovation in the United States, a growing body of economic research on innovation's importance, and the stagnation of the larger economy - led to a broad political interest in fostering invention. The policy decisions shaped by this change were diverse, influencing arenas from patents and taxes to pensions and science policy, and encouraged practices that would focus specifically on the economic value of academic science. By the early 1980s, universities were nurturing the rapid growth of areas such as biotech entrepreneurship, patenting, and university-industry research centers. Contributing to debates about the relationship between universities, government, and industry, "Creating the Market University" sheds light on how knowledge and politics intersect to structure the economy.

本文集的多数主题对《意识形态与乌托邦》既是深化也是补充；不断分化的现代社会和统一精神秩序的崩溃导致了相互冲突的立场和怀疑主义，进而使知识社会学得以可能；在自我欺骗的绝对主义和自我毁灭的相对主义之间寻求妥协；在思想史领域的社会学尝试，把思想模式与竞争和代现象联系起来；实现视角“综合”的可能性和方式；在科层制的日益严密、乌托邦走向终结和林众民主化的过程中，知识分子是否能保持“相对疏离的”社会位置。
这些主题在被称为“后现代”的今天仍具有其生命力；与此同时，北美和西欧的社会文化理论发展的新方向以某种方式印证了曼海姆宽泛的研究理路。因此，重要曼海姆会使我们感觉到：曼海姆仍然是我们的同时代人。