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This chapter shows that, despite some important differences, Norbert Elias and Émile Durkheim shared common ground in their respective sociologies of knowledge. Though so far overlooked by commentators, the parallels between Elias and Durkheim are significant: both developed sociological theories that conceive knowledge as a historical accumulative process, and both delineated their work in this field as critiques to Kantian epistemology. Their divergences, nonetheless, are meaningful as well. Elias emphasized the linkage between power and knowledge (something absent in Durkheimian theory); while Durkheim accentuated the "dynamogenic" quality of beliefs and underlined the role of emotions in knowledge creation (two aspects neglected by Elias). A critical appraisal of the commonalities and discrepancies between Elias and Durkheim can help us to foster a more robust conceptual apparatus for a theory that stresses the historical and processual dynamics of human cognition and provides the foundation of a historical sociology of knowledge.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137312112_9

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