Helga Nowotny

Democratising expertise and socially robust knowledge

This paper presents arguments for the inherent ‘transgressiveness’ of expertise. First, it must address issues that can never be reduced to the purely scientific and purely technical, and hence must link up with diverse practices, institutions and actors. Second, it addresses audiences that are never solely composed of fellow-experts, whose expectations and modes of understanding reflect the heterogeneous experience of mixed audiences. Recent demands for greater accountability have created a vast site for social experimentation, especially on the supra-national level, which are briefly reviewed. However, the democratisation of expertise also creates tensions, especially on the institutional level. Moving from reliable knowledge towards socially robust knowledge may be one step forward in negotiating and bringing about a regime of pluralistic expertise. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Time : the modern and postmodern experience

Foreword by J. T. Fraser. Introduction. 1. The Illusion of Simultaneity. 2. From the Future to the Extended Present. 3. Cronosa s Fear of the New Age. 4. Politics of Time: The Distribution of Work and Time. 5. The Longing for the Moment. Postscript. Notes. Index.

The Potential of Transdisciplinarity

A transformation is occurring in the relationship of science and society. A new mode of knowledge production is at the heart of this transformation. Much of the thrust of innovation is coming from new links between traditionally segmented producers and users of knowledge. Contextualization of research around the interests of stakeholders fosters a more “socially robust” knowledge that transgresses disciplinary and institutional boundaries. The ancient Greek agora is a model for a new transdisciplinary forum.

Über den Umgang mit Unsicherheit

Mit dem Blick auf die Beziehung von theoretischem Wissen und gesellschaftlicher Praxis versuchen wir das Handeln sozialer Akteure im historischen Prozes als den Versuch zu verstehen, herausfordernde Verunsicherungen zu bewaltigen und Sicherheiten zu schaffen, gesellschaftliche Entwicklung auf diese Weise zu stabilisieren bzw. auf eine bestimmte Ordnung hinzufuhren. Die Rolle des Wissens ist in solchen Prozessen so vielfaltig wie die Aspekte, die dieser weite Begriff umfast. Sicherheit im weiteren Sinne konnen das Wissen des Mythos, des Glaubens, gesellschaftlich geteilte, kulturelle patterns und tradiertes Erfahrungswissen liefern. Die Rolle des theoretischen sozialwissenschaftlichen Wissens als Teil des sozialen Wissens interessiert uns besonders. Denn mit der Entstehung der modernen industriellen Marktgesellschaft und ihrer sozialstaatlichen Uberformung haben die Sozialwissenschaften die verschiedenen Ebenen und Dimensionen der Suche sozialer Akteure nach Sicherheit deutlich beeinflust. Das gilt fur die kulturellen Orientierungen ebenso wie fur sozialpolitische Strategien und Institutionen. Sowohl deren technische Elemente (wie Systeme der Sozialversicherung und sozialen Hilfe) als auch die politischen (Regeln der Konfliktaustragung und Kompromisbildung, der Definition von Rollen und Verantwortlichkeiten von Organisationen und Akteuren) haben sich im Rekurs auf das von Sozialwissenschaften zur Verfugung gestellte Wissen zu legitimieren und orientieren gesucht.

Transgressive Competence The Narrative of Expertise

Relying on a powerful collective narrative through which political, legal and social decision-making is guided in the name of science, the authority of scientific experts reaches beyond the boundaries of their certified knowledge base. Therefore, expertise constitutes and is constituted by transgressive competence. The author argues that (1) changes in the decision-making structure of liberal Western democracies and changes in the knowledge production system diminish the authority of scientific expertise while increasing the context-dependency of expertise - thereby altering the nature of its predictive claims; (2) the societal distribution of expertise, while displaying emancipatory features of empowerment of citizens, also raises issues of quality control; and (3) in order to regain a balance between public and private, i.e. individual-based societally distributed expertise, future expert systems will need to adopt a longer time-perspective. The author also reflects on directions in which future expert systems might evolve.

The place of people in our knowledge

The science system of Western civilization is facing irreversible transformations. These transformations will affect the relationship between the public image of science and the actual practice within the sciences. In a situation in which scientists are increasingly asked ‘what have you lately done for us’, the alleged purity and objectivity of the sciences have to be reconsidered and we have to rethink the place of people in the knowledge produced by the sciences. Bringing together insights from social and historical studies of science, this article argues for the awareness of a more local, historically and socially contingent knowledge production, which – due to this local embeddedness – can lead to a socially more robust science.

Socially distributed knowledge: five spaces for science to meet the public

By definition, science meets the public in a space which is public. This paper rests upon the assumption that this space has been considerably extended, and continues to differentiate. Imparting scientific knowledge is highly dynamic, and has led to a process of socially distributed knowledge through which an increasing number of heterogeneous sites in society are being created where knowledge is produced. Five public spaces are presented, ranging from the space of individual scientific creativity drawing upon cultural representations available in society, to a space in which ethno-scientific knowledge and practices encounter scientific ones, followed by the space in which the process of professionalization of expert knowledge and standards interlinks with protoprofessional knowledge and standards. The last two public spaces of encounter, the market and the hybrid space of public forums, are perhaps the most familiar. While the concrete patterns of interaction take very different forms, ranging from cooperative or reinforcing to confrontational, it is claimed that the boundaries separating the public from science are becoming more fluid. As a result, not only the publics knowledge of science, but also scientific and technological knowledge, are transformed through these structures.

Wie männlich ist die Wissenschaft

Ausgehend vom Elias’schen Ansatz,Etablierte und Ausenseiter in ihren wechselnden Abhangigkeiten gegenuberzustellen, zeige ich,vor welchen Problemen Frauen als Ausenseiter in einer vom mannlichen Establishment gepragten Wissenschaft stehen. Die Institution Wissenschaft bezeichne ich als mannlich und nicht — wie sie selbst zu sein wahnt — als merito-kratisch und geschlechtsneutral, weil sie,ausgehend von ihren naturwissenschaftlichen Anfangen im 17. Jahrhundert,in ihrem kognitiven Programm konsequent Frauen als Teil einer zu zahmenden Natur ausgegrenzt hat. Dieses, zunachst von Bacon klar formulierte Programm wurde in der Aufklarung analog auf die beginnenden Sozial-und Humanwissenschaften ausgedehnt.

Striking Gold in the 1990s: The Discovery of High-Temperature Superconductivity and Its Impact on the Science System

The article retraces the social and institutional circumstances that in 1986 led two researchers at the IBM laboratory near Zurich, Müller and Bednorz, to discover high-temperature superconductivity. After confirmation of the unexpected breakthrough an unprecedented mobilization of research groups all over the world took place while simul taneously high-temperature superconductivity (HTS) turned into a subject of intense media interest. The authors discuss these events under three perspectives: the closer interlinkage capacity of researchers and the relationship between the social organization of research and unforeseen cases of scientific creativity.

A New Branch of Science, Inc.

Those responsible for science policy occasionally run the risk that a piece of unanticipated reality may be lurking behind the metaphorical imagery they have constructed in order to accommodate a broad spectrum of differ-ent ideas. The conventional link between science and public policy is to think in terms of public policy for science a long-standing concern among a small circle of experts drawn from the natural sciences, the policy sciences, and politicians as to how to find optimal ways of funding research and of guiding the innovative process of scientific-technological development. Yet, the converse combination is also possible, namely to think of science for public policy. This has, as I will try to show, both an obvious ring of familiarity, asking us to restate and perhaps clarify the directive mission contained in the pronoun, but at the same time a more provocative meaning inviting us to overcome the de facto Separation of science from public policy.