Knowledge

Is Knowledge Power?

Marian Adolf, Nico Stehr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138685673
• eBook ISBN: 9781134864874
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

As we move through our modern world, the phenomenon we call knowledge is always involved. Whether we talk of know-how, technology, innovation, politics or education, it is the concept of knowledge that ties them all together. But despite its ubiquity as a modern trope we seldom encounter knowledge in itself. How is it produced, where does it reside, and who owns it? Is knowledge always beneficial, will we know all there is to know at some point in the future, and does knowledge really equal power? This book pursues an original approach to this concept that seems to define so many aspects of modern societies. It explores the topic from a distinctly sociological perspective, and traces the many ways that knowledge is woven into the very fabric of modern society.

1

Classical sociological conceptions of knowledge

The idea that all of our knowledge is a social construct is of recent origin. As a matter of fact, sociology itself could only arise after the dogma of the congruence between natural and social inequality had fallen into disrepute. It was one of the great accomplishments of the pioneers of social thought that shapes our societies until today, namely that social differences were also of social origin rather than God-given. From there the social sciences went on to explore how social, economic and political factors shape the genesis, structure and content of human consciousness. However, these early reflections on the effect of social conditions on consciousness did not result in a more systematic examination of the questions that later became a focus of the sociology of knowledge, in particular. Nevertheless, some of these early writings, which either denied or represented first tentative steps in the direction of a sociological examination of knowledge, must be acknowledged as intellectual precursors of such an analysis. At this point, we will make but brief references to the classical social scientific conception of knowledge; however, we will refer to the more specific positions taken by its core representatives, especially Max Weber, Karl Marx, Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim or Georg Simmel, throughout our discussion.

A prominent place in this list must be granted to Karl Marx whose famous sub- and superstructure scheme – i.e. his assertion that there is, at least under certain historical conditions, a primacy of economic realities, a determination of the “ideological superstructure” by socioeconomic processes – has been particularly influential. Perhaps the sociology of knowledge even today represents, as has occasionally been argued, a struggle with this Marxist assertion. Marx’s conception of a close affinity between social structure and culture continues to constitute the primary theme of the sociology of knowledge. The distinctly Marxist response to the central sociology-of-knowledge assertion has resulted in some outstanding sociological analyses of problems of cultural production, for example in the work of Georg Lukács.

The classical French sociologist Emile Durkheim, too, may be regarded as a pioneer of the sociological analysis of knowledge even though he failed to develop a general model of the classificatory process from his assertions about the basic categories of perception and the ordering of experience (space, time, causality, direction), which he saw as derived from the social structure of simpler societies.

Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, but also Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, examined the forms of logical classification prevalent in “primitive” societies and concluded that the basic categories of cognition have social origins. They were not prepared, however, to extend this kind of analysis to more complex societies. Their inquiry into the social foundations of logic generated considerable criticism of their guiding assumptions, and much of this criticism has withstood the test of time and continues to be invoked against a sociologically informed inquiry into knowledge (cf. Crick, 1982). Moreover, Durkheim (e.g. [1955]1983: 48) developed a pragmatic conception of the social origins or the basic motivations that prompt the search for knowledge as a capacity to act, in the first place: “At the origin of the process of knowledge, the idea to be checked is the idea of something to be done.”

Although Max Scheler in the early 1920s first used the term Wissenssoziologie (translated as “sociology of knowledge”), it was Karl Mannheim who, only a few years later, provided the most elaborate and ambitious programmatic foundation for a sociological analysis of cognition, even though Edward Shils (1982: 8), in his typical dismissive sense of others who just do not know, rated this project as something Mannheim had carried out “with half his mind.” Max Scheler extended the Marxist notion of substructure by claiming that different “real factors” (Realfaktoren) conditioned thought in different historical periods and in different social and cultural systems in specific ways. Karl Mannheim, like Scheler, extended the Marxist concept of substructure by referring to the possibility that biological elements (such as race), psychological elements (such as a “drive for power”), and spiritual or even supernatural phenomena, among others, may take the place – provided they were conceived of as contexts of meaning – of primary economic relations (Mannheim, 1971). However, Mannheim’s contribution to the sociology of knowledge also represents exemplary research into the social conditions associated with different forms of knowledge.

Even today, Mannheim’s analyses of competition as a cultural form, of conservative thought, of the problem of generations, and of economic ambition, among others, remain examples of the kind of first-rate analysis that the sociological analysis of knowledge has to offer. For Mannheim, the sociology of knowledge is destined to play a considerable role in the intellectual and political life of society, particularly in an age of dissolution and conflict, by sociologically examining the very conditions that gave rise to competing ideas, political philosophies, ideologies and diverse cultural products. According to Mannheim, the sociology of knowledge must also be a diagnosis of its time and provide practical solutions in an age of disenchantment and disorientation. Other sociological traditions, even those without any direct link to the sociology of knowledge, which pursue similar – often explicitly critical – goals, also feature the (implied) importance of the foundations of knowledge and its significant role in and for social relations. This applies, for example, to the current critique of consumerism that rests on the assumption of the overwhelming power of marketing and advertising (or, more generally, on the power of the media) to tell people what to think, want and desire.

Mannheim’s project, while achieving considerable critical acclaim, nevertheless also foreshadowed the subsequent reception and transformation of the sociology of knowledge. The latter developed into a sociological specialty, as sociology itself evolved increasingly into a professional activity clearly differentiated from philosophy, history, anthropology, economics and linguistics, and was transplanted into other societies and reflected the commitments of disciplinary traditions that differed considerably from those found in Germany at the time when its intellectual and political mission had first been formulated.

After this review of some of the classical conceptions of knowledge, the next part of our examination of the nature of knowledge must deal in greater depth with the core concept of our analysis, namely “knowledge.” We therefore offer a range of observations concerning the knowledge about knowledge.

2

Knowledge about knowledge

As we have stressed already, the concept of knowledge is one of the most widely used concepts in everyday life and in scientific discourse. This applies even more specifically to contemporary conditions. The notion that modern economy is irrevocably based on knowledge and that the world of work is both transformed by and based on knowledge and information has become textbook reality and is widely accepted in society.

By the same token, the idea that knowledge generated in the sciences is a producer of many of the problems with which modern society has to deal is gaining currency. Thus, Max Scheler (1960 [1925: 17) emphasizes that our identity and our existential conditions are profoundly affected and produced by knowledge.

Although the idea that knowledge is of crucial and growing importance in social, political and economic relations in contemporary societies is increasingly accepted in the social sciences and in society in general, the most serious theoretical deficiency of present-day theories of knowledge and theories of modern society that assign a central role to knowledge, for example the theory of modern society as a network society or the idea of contemporary society as a risk society, is their still rather undifferentiated and ambivalent treatment of the concept of (scientific) knowledge (and information).

The important role that knowledge plays in these theories has not yet been matched by an extended and enlightened discussion of the concept and the social role of knowledge. As a result, we will start our inquiry into knowledge with an examination of our knowledge about knowledge, and of various significant and often unique attributes of knowledge.

2.1 Attributes of knowledge

Precisely what knowledge is and how it may differ from information, human capital and other cognitive skills and social competencies is an essentially contested matter (Gallie, 1955–56). As we have noted, the concept of knowledge, let alone its production, distribution and consequences, cannot be taken for granted – at least by the scientific observer. Thus, it is almost self-evident that one needs to devote time and care to examine the central notion of the term of knowledge. This requires, at least from our perspective, as we will try to argue, a genuinely sociological conception of knowledge.

A sociological approach does not treat knowledge as rules that “reduce environmental uncertainty through connections between ideas and facts” (Tywoniak, 2007: 53), or, as is more common, as justified or true (incontestable) knowledge, as would be the case, for example, in the philosophy of science, but conceives of it as a deeply social, a human-made category. In addition, we will discuss the difference between knowledge and information, acknowledging the fact that the two concepts are routinely conflated and contested in everyday as well as scientific discourse (cf. Ancori et al., 2000).

A sociological conception of knowledge as opposed to a philosophical or epistemological notion of knowledge is about social actors who share knowledge rather than about referents or warrants of knowledge that certify that knowledge claims are valid or objective, for example. A sociological conception of knowledge is not only concerned with its social bases, as is the case in the sociology of knowledge, but also with the kind of “work” knowledge performs in the context of social action in general; that is, with the real impact knowledge cultures and forms of knowledge have on social, cultural and economic processes. A sociological conception of knowledge furthermore includes reflections on where knowledge resides. All of this of course involves consideration of issues such as at what point knowledge acquires a function in social action, that is, becomes connected to different fields of practices, how knowledge may assimilate to power and how it is distributed as well as accessed.

What is it, then, that we know, and what does knowing mean that we know? Some examples, taken from the Oxford Dictionary of Current English, are: “Every child knows that two and two make four.” “He knows a lot of English.” “Do you know how to play chess?” “I don’t know whether he is here or not.” These examples show that knowledge is always the knowledge of someone and that knowing is a relation to things and facts, but also to laws and rules. In any case, knowing is some sort of personal participation: knowing things, facts and rules means to “appropriate” them in some manner, to include them in our field of orientation, competence and skills.

Rather than suggesting that knowledge is something that people have in their possession or are able to obtain with relative ease – a notion that may be more appropriate for the term of “information,” as we will see, or for the fact that knowledge refers to the relation between the knower and the referent (object) of knowledge – we will describe knowing as an activity, as something that individuals do. Knowledge can be treated, using a term John Dewey (1948: 197) employs in an even more general sense, as a transaction, that is, as a collective entity that does not exist apart from human participation. In this sense, different forms of knowledge can be distinguished on the basis of the kind of participation that happens to be involved.

Knowledge can, of course, be objectified. The crucial innovation of recording knowledge first occurred some 4,000 years ago in China, India, Egypt and Mesopotamia, and later in classical Greece. As Donald (1991: 344) observes, “for the first time in history complex ideas were placed in the public arena, in an external medium, where they could undergo refinement over the longer term, that is, well beyond the life-span of single individuals.” In short, the intellectual appropriation of things, facts and rules can be established and articulated symbolically, so that in order to know, it is not necessary to get into direct contact with the things themselves, but only with their symbolic representations. This is the social significance of language, writing, printing, data storage and the Internet – of the media in general.

Modern societies have made dramatic advances in the intellectual appropriation of nature and society. Knowledge may be embedded and objectified in materials, equipment, apparatuses, instruments and other artifacts. Capital goods represent embedded knowledge on how to produce such commodities (see Baetjer, 2000). As Giovanni Dosi and Marco Grazzi (2009: 1) therefore suggest, it is useful “to begin by thinking of a technology as something like a ‘recipe’ entailing a design for a final product which, much like a cookbook recipe, concerns a physical artifact together with a set of procedures for achieving it. The recipe specifies a set of actions that need to be taken to achieve the desired outcome and identifies, if sometimes implicitly, the inputs that are to be acted on and any required equipment.”

There is an immense stock of such objectified knowledge that mediates our relation to nature, society and to ourselves. In a general sense, this advancement used to be called, in earlier contexts, modernization or rationalization and, more recently, globalization, allegedly leading to a “unity of civilization.”¹

This secondary nature is overgrowing the primary nature of humans. The real and the fictional merge and become indistinguishable; theories become facts, but not vice versa. Facts, for example, cannot police theories. In other words, as Emile Durkheim emphasizes in his classical The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1965 [1912]), the world out there does not name and classify itself (cf. Barnes, 1995: 96). A sociological concept of knowledge has to accept the intrinsic “impurity” of knowledge, its rootedness in all social institutions (including science) and cultural processes, its entanglement with power and interests, its enormous variability and its lack of zero-sum attributes.

It is only after a sense of the societal significance of such opposites and oppositions has been acquired that the full sociological significance of knowledge begins to emerge. Such a perspective leads to the realization that knowledge is increasingly not only the foundation of authority but also of resistance, and that access to knowledge becomes a major societal resource and an occasion for political and social struggles.

Although knowledge has always had a social function, it is only recently that scholars have begun to examine the structure of society and its development from the point of view of the production, distribution and application of knowledge to knowledge itself (e.g. Malinowski, 1955; Machlup, 1962, 1981, 1984; Drucker, 1993b: 53). Applied to present-day society, the question is whether knowledge can provide the principle for social hierarchies and social inequality, for the distribution of opportunities of social and political influence, for societal conflicts and for the nature of personal life; and, finally, whether knowledge may also prove to be a normative principle of social cohesion and integration, even though the variations and alterations in the reproduction of knowledge appear to be considerable. Paradoxically, efforts to entrench necessity in history, or to eliminate chance from history, have produced its opposite, at least at the collective level. The role of chance, ambiguity and – as we will stress – “fragility” at the collective level continues to be an increasingly important part of the way society comes to be organized.

One of the first comprehensive sociological analyses of societies in which the knowledge-producing sector attains decisive importance for the dynamics of social relations is Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973; also Lasch, 1992). Radovan Richta et al.’s (1969) theory of the scientific-technical revolution, formulated at roughly the same time, constitutes the then “socialist” counter image to Bell’s theory of modern society as a post-industrial society. It is worth noting that Bell (1973: 212) argues that post-industrial society is a knowledge society for two major reasons: 1 “the sources of innovation are increasingly derivative from research and development (and more directly, there is a new relation between science and technology because of the centrality of theoretical knowledge)”; and 2 “the weight of the society – measured by a larger proportion of Gross National Product and a larger share of employment – is increasingly in the knowledge field.” The pace and scale of the translation of knowledge into technology provide the basis for the possibility of modernity. Thus, if there is a “radical gap between the present and the past, it lies in the nature of technology and the ways it has transformed social relations and our ways of looking at the world” (Bell, 1968: 174).

Science has been the site where most of the currently circulating concepts of knowledge originated during the past centuries, but in its attempt to elaborate and come to a shared understanding of knowledge, scientific discourse has developed a taken-for-granted attitude toward its own knowledge. The number of well-explicated categories of knowledge has therefore been limited. We have not moved far beyond the different forms of knowledge proposed by Max Scheler (1960 [1925) in his essays on the sociology of knowledge in the 1920s: namely, the distinction between: 1 knowledge of salvation (Erlösungswissen); 2 cultural knowledge, or knowledge of pure essences (Bildungswissen); and 3 knowledge that produces effects (Herrschaftswissen).

Even those scholars who, like Daniel Bell, have elevated knowledge to some kind of new axial principle of modern society actually treat knowledge as a black box, and more particularly as a disembodied phenomenon. Bell and many sociological theorists before him saw every reason, typically in polemically charged circumstances, to defend positive knowledge as non-problematic: inherently practical, uncontested, efficient, truthful, objective, powerful and even ethical. Many of the past discussions of knowledge in science have limited their assessment of the reasons for the legitimacy and the societal power of scientific knowledge by simply noting that such knowledge has been successfully utilized in practice.

However, knowing is grosso modo participation in the cultural resources of s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Table
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Classical sociological conceptions of knowledge
• 2. Knowledge about knowledge
• 3. The knowledge of the powerful
• 4. Non-knowledge
• 5. Policing knowledge
• 6. Forms of knowledge
• 7. Global knowledge
• 8. Digital worlds and knowledge/information
• 9. Functions of knowledge
• 10. The price of knowledge
• 11. The benefits of knowledge
• Bibliography
• Index