The sociology of intellectual life is a relatively underdeveloped subfield of sociology. While sociological classics and key twentieth-century authors pioneered and developed the sociology of knowledge, few of their studies looked critically at the world of intellectuals and intellectual production. It is only in the course of the past two decades that the subfield of the sociology of intellectual life has become more prominent, mainly due to three important developments: Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology (Bourdieu 1988, 1991, 1996, 2000), Randall Collins’ network approach (Collins 1998) and Charles Camic’s new sociology of ideas (Camic 1983, 1987). From different perspectives, all three developed theoretically or methodologically sophisticated attempts to study intellectuals, in particular philosophers. What is striking, however, is that these approaches tend not to address the phenomenon of public intellectuals or, more broadly, how intellectuals engage with communities outside the narrow confines of the academy. On the contrary, they very much explore social mechanisms within academic institutions and within intellectual circles. There is little interest in how ideas, held by a small circle of specialists or experts, eventually reach a broader audience, or how interaction with that audience might affect intellectual projects and exchanges.