‘Sociology’ is the study of society and youngest of all the Social Sciences. ‘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 a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. The term first came into widespread use in the 1920s, when a number of German-speaking theorists, most notably Max Scheler and Karl Mannheim, wrote extensively on it. With the dominance of functionalism through the middle years of the 20th century, the sociology of knowledge tended to remain on the periphery of mainstream sociological thought. It was largely reinvented and applied much more closely to everyday life in the 1960s, particularly by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in ‘The Social Construction of Reality’ (1966) and is still central for methods dealing with qualitative understanding of human society. 

In this book, apart from the basic concepts of sociology, we have broadly covered the ‘social institution’, ‘social stratification’, ‘social control, order and stability’, etc. This book provides a short cut to the students of the 5 year law degree course to enable them to get a broad understanding of the topics that would be covered under the revised syllabus with effect from the academic year 2009-2010.