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The sociologist Karl Mannheim moved from an initial concern with philosophical issues concerning cultural change, via the development of an original approach to the sociology of knowledge, to a concern with social planning and the sociology of education. He is most enduringly known for his sociology of knowledge, and in particular for his book Ideology and Utopia (1936). Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge is concerned with an analysis of how groups develop specific forms of knowledge based on more general styles of thought during processes of competition over power. He distinguishes ideological forms of thought, which seek to defend the existing order, from utopian forms that attack it.