FROM "LEGITIMACY" TO "LEGITIMATIONS"*

Abstract

In this essay two conceptions of social order maintenance have been examined in the light of Mannheim's argument that concept use reveals the perspectivistic base of all knowledge. The perspectives from within which Weber evolved the concept of legitimacy and Berger and Luckmann the concept of legitimations have been "imputed" from these concepts' idiosyncratic use. It has been found that legitimacy only has meaning within an "ideological" perspective which values the stabilization of existing institutions while legitimations has meaning within a "utopian" perspective which values the transformation of existing institutions. The concepts of order maintenance examined in this essay have a political function. They not only illuminate order, they seek to alter order by stabilizing or transforming it.