Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior
eBook - ePub

Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior

The Debate over Power Without Knowledge

  1. 374 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior

The Debate over Power Without Knowledge

About this book

In Power Without Knowledge: A Critique of Technocracy (2019), Jeffrey Friedman presented a sweeping reinterpretation of modern politics and government as technocratic, even in many of its democratic dimensions. Building on a new definition of technocracy as governance aimed at solving social and economic problems, Friedman showed that the epistemic demands that such governance places on political elites and ordinary people alike may be overwhelming if technocrats fail to attend to the ideational heterogeneity of the human beings whose control is the object of technocratic power. Yet a recognition of ideational heterogeneity considerably complicates the task of predicting behavior, which is essential to technocratic control—as Friedman demonstrated with pathbreaking critiques of the homogenizing strategies of neoclassical economics, positivist social science, behavioral economics, and populist democratic politics.

In Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior, thirteen political theorists, including Friedman himself, debate the implications of Power Without Knowledge for social science, modern governance, the politics of expertise, post-structuralism, anarchism, and democratic theory; and Friedman responds to his critics with an expansive defense of his vision of contemporary politics and his political epistemology of ideationally diverse human beings.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Critical Review.

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Yes, you can access Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior by Paul Gunn in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Politics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Table of Contents
  6. Citation Information
  7. Notes on Contributors
  8. Introduction: Political Epistemology Beyond Democratic Theory
  9. 1 Exit, Voice and Technocracy
  10. 2 Disagreement, Epistemic Paralysis, and the Legitimacy of Technocracy
  11. 3 A Family Affair: Populism, Technocracy, and Political Epistemology
  12. 4 Technocracy, Governmentality, and Post-Structuralism
  13. 5 Social Science and the Problem of Interpretation: A Pragmatic Dual(ist) Approach
  14. 6 The Spiral of Responsibility and the Pressure to Conflict
  15. 7 Architects and Engineers: Two Types of Technocrat and Their Relation to Democracy
  16. 8 What Follows from the Problem of Ignorance?
  17. 9 Power, Knowledge, and Anarchism
  18. 10 Why Do Experts Disagree?
  19. 11 Political Epistemology, Technocracy, and Political Anthropology: Reply to a Symposium on Power Without Knowledge
  20. Index