TITLE:
How Knowledge Influences Culture
AUTHORS:
Kevin Patrick Barman
KEYWORDS:
Knowledge, Culture, Social Influence
JOURNAL NAME:
Sociology Mind,
Vol.16 No.4,
October
16,
2026
ABSTRACT: This essay provides a comprehensive review of the sociology of knowledge. In particular, it explores whether knowledge in any specific culture is socially determined or whether knowledge itself is constituted as a social order. It will examine how language may influence how knowledge is practiced and distributed, and assess how individual members of a society incorporate their knowledge and relate it to the collective whole. This investigation includes an analysis of how the Marxist, French, and American sociological traditions define knowledge. This paper will identify the influence of gender, especially how women contribute to the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Further, this paper reviews how a Feminist perspective may contribute to the production of truth, or what we commonly refer to as science, while studying the sociology of knowledge in historical context and how knowledge is socially constructed. Finally, it reviews how various classical sociologists, philosophers, and anthropologists in the field of behavioral and social sciences define the sociology of knowledge and examine how knowledge influences culture.