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In this fresh look at the serious challenges posed to sociology by poststructuralist philosophy, Clayton W. Dumont Jr. maintains that disempowered, marginalized peoples have much to gain from a poststructuralist interrogation of sociology's philosophical and theological presuppositions. He argues that debates among American sociologists in the 1980s and 1990s over the value of difficult poststructuralist writings failed to examine cultural assumptions rooted in the discipline's extended Greek and Christian inheritances. Writing in an accessible style, the author situates complex poststructuralist ideas in tangible examples drawn from everyday life. The book concludes with analyses of the heated political conflict surrounding the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 and affirmative action programs, illustrating the promise of increased political efficacy and civic responsibility of a poststructuralist-informed sociology.

What does it mean to be an expert? In Rethinking Expertise, Harry Collins and Robert Evans offer a radical new perspective on the role of expertise in the practice of science and the public evaluation of technology. Collins and Evans present a Periodic Table of Expertises based on the idea of tacit knowledge—knowledge that we have but cannot explain. They then look at how some expertises are used to judge others, how laypeople judge between experts, and how credentials are used to evaluate them. Throughout, Collins and Evans ask an important question: how can the public make use of science and technology before there is consensus in the scientific community? This book has wide implications for public policy and for those who seek to understand science and benefit from it. “Starts to lay the groundwork for solving a critical problem—how to restore the force of technical scientific information in public controversies, without importing disguised political agendas.”—Nature “A rich and detailed ‘periodic table'of expertise... full of case studies, anecdotes and intriguing experiments.”—Times Higher Education Supplement (UK)

Rethinking Knowledge Management: From Knowledge Objects to Knowledge Processes readdresses fundamental issues in knowledge management, leading to a new area of study: knowledge processes. These integrate research across a variety of fields, thus reasserting the fundamental insights of knowledge management in organizations and societies. Knowledge processes go far beyond traditional information acquisition and processing by stressing the importance and creative potential of human expression, communication, and learning for successful economic planning and meaningful personal and social existence. McInerney's and Day's superb authors from various disciplines offer new and exciting views on knowledge acquisition, generation, sharing and management in a post-industrial environment. Their contributions discuss problems of knowledge acquisition, handling, and learning from a variety of perspectives. Rather than the traditional notion of stores of knowledge that we hold in our mind, the view presented in this book is that of a constantly changing notion of what we know, of feelings related to that knowledge, and of a more holistic understanding of the act of knowing.

′The book is a theoretically rich and sophisticated contribution to the development of knowledge society studies and to the analysis of the many puzzles of intellectual innovation. It will surely become a sourcebook for anyone interested in creativity and knowledge production′ - Karin Knorr Cetina, University of Chicago and University of Konstanz ′Gathers together some of the most interesting social-scientific thinking currently underway in Europe and North America… presents sociology in its most engaging and contemporary form′ - Canadian Journal of Sociology Knowledge, communication and creativity are obsessions of contemporary modern societies. The rhetoric of information, imagination, improvisation and play have invaded our daily lives and work spaces. However, little attention has been paid to the sociological relationships among these elements, let alone their impacts as processes driving social change. This book offers penetrating explorations into the creative processes that are tied to knowledge production, shedding new light on:'the impact of a general increase in knowledge on individuals, lifestyles, institutions and technologies;'how new communication and information technologies are transforming social relationships, communities and the international public sphere; and'understanding the ties between creativity, communication and the production of knowledge.

A new collection in the IAU Issues in Higher Education Series that deals with the major tensions between education and science. Drawing on experiences from a range of countries and regions, the book demonstrates the need to find new avenues for the management of knowledge production to ensure that it can meet increasingly global goals and demands.

La société fondée sur les savoirs constitue depuis le milieu des années 1990 le programme mobilisateur de la mondialisation, l'objectif d'un développement désormais global. On dispose aujourd'hui d'une salutaire distance critique pour apprécier la consistance de ce lien entre connaissance et développement. Ces contributions, en français et en anglais, examinent différents aspects de la relation entre les deux termes, entre les concepts qu'ils sous-tendent et les pratiques qui en découlent.

This highly original book provides an engaging and critical introduction to the knowledge economy. The knowledge economy is a potent force pervading global and national policy circles. Yet few people outside the field of economics understand its central ideas and practices. This book makes these accessible. But it does much more. It provokes'conversations'between the knowledge economy and those marginalized economies that haunt it: the risk, gift, libidinal and survival economies. These illuminate the knowledge economy's shortcomings and point to alternative possible systems of exchange and sets of values. This multi-disciplinary study takes the knowledge economy out of the hands of the economists and brings it into creative tension with the ideas of key thinkers from sociology, anthropology, philosophy and ecology. Illustrating the benefits of conversing with the ghosts of alternative economies, this provocative book will unsettle the way in which the knowledge economy is understood. Groundbreaking and globally applicable, it has been authored by internationally respected authors and its conceptual breadth pertains to a range of disciplines and gives it its wide appeal.

People—especially Americans—are by and large optimists. They're much better at imagining best-case scenarios (I could win the lottery!) than worst-case scenarios (A hurricane could destroy my neighborhood!). This is true not just of their approach to imagining the future, but of their memories as well: people are better able to describe the best moments of their lives than they are the worst. Though there are psychological reasons for this phenomenon, Karen A.Cerulo, in Never Saw It Coming, considers instead the role of society in fostering this attitude. What kinds of communities develop this pattern of thought, which do not, and what does that say about human ability to evaluate possible outcomes of decisions and events? Cerulo takes readers to diverse realms of experience, including intimate family relationships, key transitions in our lives, the places we work and play, and the boardrooms of organizations and bureaucracies. Using interviews, surveys, artistic and fictional accounts, media reports, historical data, and official records, she illuminates one of the most common, yet least studied, of human traits—a blatant disregard for worst-case scenarios. Never Saw It Coming, therefore, will be crucial to anyone who wants to understand human attempts to picture or plan the future. “In Never Saw It Coming, Karen Cerulo argues that in American society there is a ‘positive symmetry,'a tendency to focus on and exaggerate the best, the winner, the most optimistic outcome and outlook. Thus, the conceptions of the worst are underdeveloped and elided. Naturally, as she masterfully outlines, there are dramatic consequences to this characterological inability to imagine and prepare for the worst, as the failure to heed memos leading up to both the 9/11 and NASA Challenger disasters, for instance, so painfully reminded us.”--Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Swarthmore College “Katrina, 9/11, and the War in Iraq—all demonstrate the costliness of failing to anticipate worst-case scenarios. Never Saw It Coming explains why it is so hard to do so: adaptive behavior hard-wired into human cognition is complemented and reinforced by cultural practices, which are in turn institutionalized in the rules and structures of formal organizations. But Karen Cerulo doesn't just diagnose the problem; she uses case studies of settings in which people effectively anticipate and deal with potential disaster to describe structural solutions to the chronic dilemmas she describes so well. Never Saw It Coming is a powerful contribution to the emerging fields of cognitive and moral sociology.”--Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University

The sociology of knowledge is generally seen as part of the sociology of cultural products. Along with the sociology of science, it explores the social character of science and in particular the social production of scientific knowledge. Knowledge in all its varieties is of crucial importance in social, political, and economic relations in modern society. Yet new realities, the editors argue in their introduction to this second edition, require a new perspective.In the past half century, the social role of knowledge has changed profoundly. The natural attitude toward scientific knowledge in science that assigned a special status to science's knowledge claims has lost its dominance, and the view that all knowledge is socially constructed has gained general acceptance. Science increasingly influences the political agenda in modern societies. Consequently, a new political field has emerged: knowledge politics.These fourteen essays by social scientists, philosophers, and historians cover fundamental issues, theoretical perspectives, knowledge and power, and empirical studies. Eight of the fourteen contributions were part of the first edition of Society and Knowledge, published in 1984, and most of these have been updated and revised for this new edition. Included in this edition are six new contributions by Robert K. Merton, Steve Fuller, Dick Pels, Nico Stehr, Barry Schwartz, and Michael Lynch.This second, revised edition builds on its predecessor in presenting cutting-edge theoretical and empirical efforts to transform the sociology of knowledge. Professionals, policymakers, and graduate students in the fields of sociology, political science, and social science will find this volume of interest and importance.

Globalization, modernization and colonialism have played a pivotal role in the social transformation of Southeast Asian societies. The essays in this volume examine three aspects of this transformation: social change and development, the role of intellectuals, religion and cultural values. The volume honours the distinguished Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas and his seminal contributions to the sociology of Southeast Asian societies. They have been written by his present and former colleagues, friends and students. Their contributions, reflect, complement and extend the influence of his ideas on contemporary research and social science scholarship.

Social surveillance and regulation of knowledge will be one of the most important issues in the near future, one that will give rise to unending controversy. In The Governance of Knowledge, Nico Stehr predicts that such concerns will create a new political field, namely, knowledge policy, which will entail regulating dissemination of the anticipated results of rapidly increasing knowledge. The number and range of institutionalized standards for monitoring new knowledge has hitherto been relatively small. Only in cases of technological applications has social control, in the form of political regulation, so far intervened. All modern societies today have complex regulations and extensive concerns with the registration, licensing, testing, and monitoring of pharmaceutical products. The increasingly important and extensive area of intellectual property legislation and administration is an example of social control in which certain measures selectively determine the use of scientific finds and technical knowledge. The Governance of Knowledge assembles a range of essays that attempt to explore the new field of knowledge politics for the first time. It is divided into four parts: The Emergence of Knowledge Politics: Origins, Context, and Consequences; Major Social Institutions and Knowledge Politics; Case Studies on the Governance of Knowledge; and Issues in Knowledge Politics as a New Political Field. Individual chapters concern the emergence of knowledge policy, the embeddedness of such regulations in major social institutions, and offer case studies of the governance of knowledge and discuss controversial issues that are bound to accompany efforts to regulate new knowledge. Professionals and graduate students in the fields of scoiology, political science, social science, and law, including policymakers and natural scientists, will find this book extremely informative.

`This is a very fine text, a powerful piece of work that deserves to be read widely. The analysis is truly panoramic. It ranges across central concerns in the fields of social theory, political theory, and science studies and engages with and/or draws upon the ideas of key classical and contemporary thinkers, including Tocqueville, Weber, Schumpeter, Polyani, Habermas, Foucault, Schmitt and Beck′ - Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth What are the political implications of ′expert′ knowledge and especially scientific knowledge for liberal democracy? If knowledge is not evenly distributed upon what basis can the philosophy of equal rights be sustained? This important book points to the crisis in knowledge in liberal democracies. This crisis, simply put, is that most citizens cannot understand, much less judge, the claims scientists make. One response is the appointment of public commissions to provide conclusions for policy-makers to act upon. There are also `commissions from below′, such as grass roots associations that quiz the limits of expert knowledge and power and make rival knowledge claims. Do these commissions represent a new stage in the development of liberal democracy? Or is it merely a pragmatic device of no political consequence. The central argument of the book is that in a `knowledge society′ in which specialized knowledge is increasingly important to politics, more has to be delegated because democratic discussion can′t handle it. This limitation in the scope of liberal democracy threatens its fundamental character. The book will be required reading in the fields of social theory, political theory and science studies.

In France, a country that awards its intellectuals the status other countries give their rock stars, Michel Foucault was part of a glittering generation of thinkers, one which also included Sartre, de Beauvoir and Deleuze. One of the great intellectual heroes of the twentieth century, Foucault was a man whose passion and reason were at the service of nearly every progressive cause of his time. From law and order, to mental health, to power and knowledge, he spearheaded public awareness of the dynamics that hold us all in thrall to a few powerful ideologies and interests. Arguably his finest work, Archaeology of Knowledge is a challenging but fantastically rewarding introduction to his ideas.

Science and Social Work is a critical appraisal of the strategies and methods that have been used to develop knowledge for social work practice. It identifies the major ways in which social workers have drawn upon scientific knowledge and techniques, placing each one in historical perspective by explaining the nature of the problems it was designed to solve and the philosophical, political, and practical questions it raised. Kirk and Reid offer a balanced appraisal of the promises, accomplishments, and limits of such approaches, demonstrating how the fruits of scientific research can aid clinical practice with individuals, families and groups.

This timely, comprehensive analysis of the latest advances in group processes research shows how cutting edge technologies, such as laboratory experiments, simulations, and complex systems combine with the rigor of cumulative research programs to change the way we see the social world. Group processes researchers study society scientifically, and have used sociological theory to build scientific, cumulative knowledge about the social world. Over the last 20 years, they have been extremely successful in advancing this knowledge through the reciprocal interplay of theory and experiment. The synthesis of such knowledge—uniting theory, simulation, and experiment—provides substantive explanations for social phenomena and predictions about events in complex social systems. This volume explores aspects of this synthesis from the perspective of group processes research.Providing deep analyses of methodological issues related to the synthesis of the theories, simulations, and experiments of group processes research, the authors also offer empirical examples of various studies that have been conducted. They investigate the ways in which theoretical research programs coordinate theory and empirical research in sociology to produce scientific progress and how computer simulations have evolved into an important component of theoretical research programs. This illustration of the relationships between theory construction and the method of theory verification advances our understanding of the field and may lead to a radical shift in the methodology and substance of modern social science.

Although much recent social science and humanities work has been a revolt against simplification, this volume explores the contrast between simplicity and complexity to reveal that this dichotomy, itself, is too simplistic. John Law and Annemarie Mol have gathered a distinguished panel of contributors to offer—particularly within the field of science studies—approaches to a theory of complexity, and at the same time a theoretical introduction to the topic. Indeed, they examine not only ways of relating to complexity but complexity in practice.Individual essays study complexity from a variety of perspectives, addressing market behavior, medical interventions, aeronautical design, the governing of supranational states, ecology, roadbuilding, meteorology, the science of complexity itself, and the psychology of childhood trauma. Other topics include complex wholes (holism) in the sciences, moral complexity in seemingly amoral endeavors, and issues relating to the protection of African elephants. With a focus on such concepts as multiplicity, partial connections, and ebbs and flows, the collection includes narratives from Kenya, Great Britain, Papua New Guinea, the Netherlands, France, and the meetings of the European Commission, written by anthropologists, economists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and scholars of science, technology, and society.Contributors. Andrew Barry, Steven D. Brown, Michel Callon, Chunglin Kwa, John Law, Nick Lee, Annemarie Mol, Marilyn Strathern, Laurent Thévenot, Charis Thompson

Re-Thinking Science presents an account of the dynamic relationship between society and science. Despite the mounting evidence of a much closer, interactive relationship between society and science, current debate still seems to turn on the need to maintain a'line'to demarcate them. The view persists that there is a one-way communication flow from science to society - with scant attention given to the ways in which society communicates with science. The authors argue that changes in society now make such communications both more likely and more numerous, and that this is transforming science not only in its research practices and the institutions that support it but also deep in its epistemological core. To explain these changes, Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons have developed an open, dynamic framework for re-thinking science. The authors conclude that the line which formerly demarcated society from science is regularly transgressed and that the resulting closer interaction of science and society signals the emergence of a new kind of science: contextualized or context-sensitive science. The co-evolution between society and science requires a more or less complete re-thinking of the basis on which a new social contract between science and society might be constructed. In their discussion the authors present some of the elements that would comprise this new social contract.

This book argues that knowledge is now central to the modern economy and its productive processes. It is also essential for social relations, social cohesion and conflict resolution. We have moved from a society based around heavy commodities to symbolic goods, from situated markets to non-place-specific locations, from machines to software and from things to ideas. These changes produce new forms of social interaction and new perspectives on identity, practice and association. This penetrating book slices through the cliches and blind alleys of discussions around the knowledge society to reveal the tendons of contemporary change. Written with insight and panache the book explains the momentous nature of the changes associated with the knowledge society.

Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) was publicly launched as a think tank in March 2011 and took up the task of following a transdisciplinary approach to the research generated within the organisation. The projects initiated by MISTRA integrate various streams of knowledge and expertise when examining complex issues such as nation formation, economic growth, social equity, adaptable science and technology, and other strategic topics related to South Africa's development as a democracy. Serving in part as an intellectual movement and in part as a research institution, activities are structured around diverse topics that require the opening up of intellectual space for strategic research and reflection specific, but not exclusive, to the African continent. A project was launched: The concept and application of transdisciplinarity in intellectual discourse and research. The intent of the study was two fold: in the first place the need for better theoretical understanding of a transdisciplinarity approach was identified as a necessity; and in the second place MISTRA intended to apply transdisciplinarity towards the opening up of an African approach - guided in part by the Afrikology principles of the late Professor Dani Nabudere. By orientation Transdisciplinarity is an approach that recognises a united and borderless intellectual terrain. It is an attempt to formulate an integrative process of knowledge production and distribution in reaction to the twentieth century narrow discipline focus and hyper-specialisation. It responds to the multi-layered challenges of diffused disciplines, interlinked socio economic problems, the impact of globalisation, the de-terretorialised nation state, technological advancements, environmental concerns, agriculture and food security and health. And it recognises that, in history, some of the most revolutionary breakthroughs in science and technology in fact happened on the margins of narrow disciplines.

This volume brings together a number of authors that see themselves as contribu­ tors to, or critical commentators on, a new field that has recently emerged within the sociology of knowledge. This new field is'the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge'(SPK). Studying philosophers and their knowledge from broadly sociological or political perspectives is not, of course, a recent phenomenon. Marxist writers have used such perspectives throughout the twentieth century, and, since the sixties, feminist authors have also occasionally engaged in sociological analysis of philosophers'texts. What distinguishes SPK from these sociologies is that SPK is not engaged in a political struggle; indeed, SPK remains, in general, neutral with respect to the truth or falsity of the doctrines it studies. In doing so, SPK follows the'strong programme'in the sociology of scientific knowledge. In'Wittgenstein as a Conservative Thinker', David Bloor draws on the work of the sociologist Karl Mannheim in order to situate Wittgenstein's philosophy. Mannheim distinguished between two important styles of thought in the nine­ teenth century. The first, the'natural law'ideology was associated with ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. It emphasized individualism, progress, and universal reason. The second style of thought was'conservatism'.

In If Only We Knew John Willinsky uses current social issues and historical precedents to demonstrate that the social sciences can and should contribute far more to public knowledge than they have in the past. We have the technologies, Willinsky demonstrates, and need only the determination to create a public resource out of social research that can extend democratic participation and self-determination, as well as improve research's focus and public support. If Only We Knew offers examples of why and how this is not only possible but necessary, in the face of knowledge-based economies and a withering public sector. This book inspires the public to demand far more of research; it also shows researchers how to deliver far more of knowledge's value to the public.

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced “a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally” (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.

Max Weber and Michael Foucault are among the most controversial and fascinating thinkers of our century. This book is the first to jointly analyse them in detail, and to make effective links between their lives and work; it coincides with a substantial resurgence of interest in their writings.The author's exciting interpretative approach reveals a new dimension in reading the work of Foucault and Weber; it will be invaluable to students and those researching in sociology and philosophy.

This volume serves as both an introduction to the field of the sociology of knowledge and an interpretation of the thought of the major figures associated with its development More than a compendium of ideas, Stark seeks here to put order into what he regarded as a diffuse tradition of diverse bodies of thought, in particular the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the study of the political element in thought identified here with Karl Mannheim and the investigation of the social element in thinking associated with the work of Max Scheler.The sociology of knowledge is primarily directed toward the study of the precise ways that human experience, through the mediation of knowledge, takes on a conscious and communicable shape. While both schools dealt with by Stark assume that the pursuit of truth is not purposeful apart from socially and historically determined structures of meaning, the tradition extending from Marx to Mannheim seeks to expose hidden factors that turn us away from the truth while that of Weber and Scheler attempts to identify social forces that impart a definite direction to our search for itIn order to reconcile opposing theoretical positions, Stark seeks to lay the foundations for a theory of the social determination of thought by directing his inquiry to the philosophical problem of truth in a manner compatible with cultural sociology. Stark's theoretical legacy to the sociology of knowledge is that social influences operate everywhere through a group's ethos. From this, many systems of ideas and social categories emanate, revealing partial glimpses of a synthetic whole.The outcome of Stark's work is a general theory of social determination remarkably consistent with contemporary interests in the broad range of cultural studies, whose focus is best described as the use of philosophical, literary, and historical approaches to study the social construction of meaning. The Sociology of Knowledge will be of great interest to social scientists, philosophers, and intellectual historians.

In this seminal contribution to the sociology of knowledge, first published in 1940, Florian Znaniecki develops a typology of the variety of specific social roles that scholars have played, and investigates the normative patterns that govern their behavior. A central tool for the investigation of these problems is the notion of “social circle”, the audience to which intellectuals address themselves. Znaniecki shows that thinkers do not speak to the total society but address selected segments and markets. Specific social circles bestow recognition, provide material or psychic support, and help shape the self-image of the thinker.

The Culture and Power of Knowledg.

By controversially turning away from the current debates which surround social theory, this book provides an historical analysis of the profound burden of sociology and its implications today.

This book addresses the question of what it takes to develop social indicators that genuinely influence important public decisions. It looks historically at the processes of creating and using three important social indicators in the United States: unemployment rates, standard budgets, and crime rates. It then develops principles f

Drawing on the Marxist, French structuralist and American pragmatist traditions, this is a lively and accessible introduction to the sociology of knowledge.

Meddling with Mythology examines the role of research in the construction of modern mythology or folklore surrounding HIV/AIDS. Researchers from a variety of disciplines reflect on the insights gained and the impact of their work, in light of the initial panic surrounding the prediction of an AIDS epidemic. Issues discussed include:- • power • representation • the politics of text • understanding research relationships • impact of research on researchers and responders • potential for change.Meddling with Mythology takes the reader from the theoretical to the practicable and from the public to the personal in the representations of AIDS. The issues raised here also have great significance for those concerned with the social construction of knowledge, theory building and the research process more generally.

Property and power perform a key role in social and political theories of class inequality and social stratification, however, theorists have yet clearly to define these concepts, their mutual boundaries and scopes of application. This book answers the property/power puzzle by undertaking a broad historical inquiry into its intellectual origins and present-day effects through a series of case studies, including:Marxism vs. anarchism• the fascist assertion of the primacy of the political• social science as power theory• the managerial revolution• the knowledge society and the new intellectual classes

Dorothy Smith is considered one of the most original sociologists and theorists of our time, and her writings have attracted much attention in Europe and the US as well as in Canada. This collection of original essays, written by scholars who worked or studied with Smith, exemplifies Smith's approach to social analysis.Each author takes an empirical approach. Some analyse texts (the maps and documents of land-use planning, photographs, an influential history of British India, reports of a task force on battered women); some draw on interviews (with clerical workers, with Japanese corporate wives), while others (an AIDS activist, a teacher of adult literacy, a social worker) reflect on personal experiences. In each case we are introduced to specific themes in Smith's approach. The essays put Smith's method to work in diverse ways and in the process offer intriguing insights into their topics.This tribute to Smith's empowering contribution as a thinker and teacher reveals how empirical studies can illuminate concepts usually presented in the abstract. As the first compilation of applications of Smith's methodology, this is a landmark work in the developing field of the social organization of knowledge.