Table Of ContentKnowledge Politics
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Knowledge Politics
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First published 2005 by Paradigm Publishers
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright © 2005 Nico Stehr
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Contents
Preface vii
Overview 1
Introduction: A Millsian World of Knowledge 5
1. Knowledge about Knowledge 19
Knowledge as a Capacity to Act 24
Additional Knowledge 27
Knowledge and Information 31
The Contingency of Knowledge 36
The Self-Realization of Knowledge 37
The Self-Protection of Knowledge 40
Knowledge Becomes Superfluous 44
The Power of Ideas 45
Knowledge and Power 49—The Disappearance of Human
Agency 56—Moral Indifference, Power, and Science 59
2. The Governance of Knowledge 71
On Machinery and Class Interests 80
The Ascendancy of Knowledge Politics 82—Regulating
Knowledge 86
Knowledge as a Weapon 93
The Social Regulation of Inquiry 96—The Social Control of
Knowledge in Science 102—Knowledge Politics 104
Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis 109
Dangers, Risks, and Opportunities 112—Technology
Assessment 119—Knowledge Management 122—The
Societal Regulation of Knowledge 125
v
vi Preface
Committees for Knowledge Affairs 126
The Public and Science 130
The Haeckel-Virchow Controversy 135
3. Rules, Regulations, and Restrictions 151
Work-in-Progress or the Development of Social Controls 152
Regulatory Practices 154
Bioethics or Governing the Genome 155
Expert Control 157—Participatory Control 158—Hybrid Control
Mechanisms 160—The Limits of Knowledge Politics 162
4. The Moralization of the Market 171
The Civilization of Capitalism 174
The Logic of Modernity 175
The Knowledge-Based Economy 176
Affluence and Consumer Sovereignty 178
Biotechnological Processes and Products 180
Conclusion 182
5. Globalization and Knowledge Politics 189
Mass Societies 190
The Globalization of the World 191
Economic Development and Knowledge Politics 197
Outlook 203
Bibliography 209
Name Index 237
Subject Index 241
Preface
Anxieties and concerns about the harmful social consequences of new scientific
knowledge and novel technologies are not of recent origin. Nor are elusive prom-
ises of the blessings of science for humankind and the mitigation of human suffer-
ing that scientific advances will bring. Indeed, few individuals are ready to reject
the most common rationale for spending public monies on scientific projects huge
and small. The widely shared rationale was and is that scientific projects have the
potential to transform our lives into healthier, longer, wealthier, safer, and gener-
ally more pleasant lives. In a word, the advancement of knowledge functions to
improve the human condition.
But a persuasive case can be made that we have reached a new stage in our
understanding of the social role of new knowledge. The first controlled genetic
experiment did not occur until 1972. The first human being conceived outside a
woman’s body was born in 1978. We are now in the midst of controversial discus-
sions about recombinant DNA and embryonic stem cells; genetically modified
foods and “precision agriculture”; the prospects of lethal and “nonlethal” biotechnol-
ogy weapons; neuroscience, neurogenetics, and genetic engineering of the human
germline; reproductive cloning and the reconstruction of the human ancestral genome;
and, last but not least, visions of a fusion of nanotechnology, biotechnology, informa-
tion technology, transgenic human engineering, and cognitive science whose prod-
ucts may, as its boosters claim, someday cure disease, slow the aging process, elimi-
nate pollution, and generally enhance human performance. Although for now we have
to live with much smaller and mundane gains such as stain- and wrinkle-resistant
slacks, the more general prospects and promises exemplify the novel issues we are
confronting in vigorously contested scientific and public debates.
While many are persuaded that utopias have been relegated to the dustbin of
history—perhaps as recently as a couple of decades ago with the collapse of the
empire that attempted to put them into practice—utopian and dystopian visions are
resurfacing that bet on biology and its ability to transform forms of life.
vii
viii Preface
Concerns about the societal consequences of an unfettered expansion of (natu-
ral) scientific knowledge are being raised more urgently and are moving to the
center of disputes in society—and thus to the top of the political agenda. In the
preamble to the charter of fundamental rights in the draft of the treaty establishing
a Constitution for Europe, which was adopted by consensus by the European Con-
vention in the summer of 2003, we find the following statement. It can be inter-
preted both as an affirmation of the need by the European Union to engage in
knowledge politics and also as an expression of anxiety about the impact of sci-
ence and technologies on individuals and society: “It is necessary to strengthen the
protection of fundamental rights in the light of changes in society, social progress,
and scientific and technological developments, by making those rights more vis-
ible in a Charter.”
Governments will have to engage in new political activity and will be held ac-
countable to new standards. But the state clearly will not be the only relevant actor
in the context of knowledge politics. And public conflicts, frictions, and disputes
over the implementation of knowledge, which are seen by at least some as attacks
on science and the deliberate creation of excessive fear among the public, will no
longer take place mainly a posteriori.
For it is no longer uncommon that the discussion of the role of new scientific
knowledge in modern societies leads to demands that such knowledge and its im-
pact be in some way managed, regulated, or even suppressed. The question that has
now become pertinent—and that is no longer prompted only by the possible con-
sequences of nuclear science and technology—is: How can we avoid being de-
voured by a marvelously powerful science? It would be too easy to dismiss calls
for intervention as an irrational or antimodern response. The questions being raised
and the resistance being mobilized refer back, of course, to the image that we have
of ourselves, according to which we arrange our lives—an image that appears to be
under threat.
In listing only some of the perplexing issues that will characterize and constrain
knowledge politics, it is evident that we are just at the beginning of unprecedented
and challenging disputes and decisions: Which knowledge needs to be regulated,
and whose responsibility is it? Are the regulatory regimes now in place to control
the risks of chemicals, for example, sufficient in the case of emerging forms of
knowledge in biotechnology? And what knowledge do we require in the context of
regulative knowledge politics? Do we need to regulate new scientific knowledge
as closely as, or even more strictly than, one regulates traffic, for instance? If not,
on what grounds? If so, for what reasons, and to protect what interests? How do we
resolve conflicts about competing goals that knowledge should serve? If strict re-
strictions apply, could absolute prohibitions, for example, of human germline gene
therapy, be enforced? Is knowledge about to become a private good (again)? What
will be the identity of some of the major actors involved, and how will knowledge
politics be organized?
Critics will be prompt to argue that knowledge politics is neither new nor dis-
similar from other fields of contemporary or past regulatory political activity. So-
Preface ix
cial scientists not only have to confront this argument, but also must acknowledge
the sense in which the critics are correct. If the world of phenomena that social
scientists confront deserves to be differentiated from phenomena constructed by
and attended to by other disciplines in the scientific community, the differentia-
tion, in my view, stems from the extent to which the social sciences are always
challenged and embarrassed by the noncontemporaneity of the contemporaneous.
It is impossible to escape the dilemma of the simultaneity of conflicting manifesta-
tions of social phenomena. What is argued here is that knowledge politics is a
societal process that gradually supersedes (in the sense of aufheben) existing ways
of dealing with new capacities of action or knowledge.
I am interested in the bases of the clashing approaches and perspectives in de-
bates about the policing of knowledge, as well as the methods and chances of
regulating new knowledge in modern and increasingly fragile societies. Decisive
for the possibilities and limits of knowledge politics are dynamic social, cultural,
political, and economic settings, often at the macro rather than micro level, such as
laboratories, theories, and experiments. The context-specific matrix changes rap-
idly, for example, as a result of the loss of power of large, modern societal institu-
tions, such as the state, the church, corporations, or science. Yet large social insti-
tutions continue to present themselves, despite their growing weaknesses, as systems
of effective societal control. Robust scenarios for knowledge politics are difficult
to generate and are not at all obvious. The burden of this study is nevertheless to
show on the one hand, how and why knowledge politics is set to emerge as an
arena of significant political activity and choices, and on the other, that much can
be anticipated. Knowledge politics will have a major impact on what future societ-
ies will look like.
A substantial part of this study was finished during fellowships at the Hanse
Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, Germany, and the Kulturwissenschaftliche
Institut, Essen, Germany, from 2000 to 2004. The productive atmosphere in these
two centers for advanced study contributed greatly to this work. I am also grateful
to a large number of friends and colleagues who have read and commented on parts
of or the bulk of the manuscript, to patient audiences who listened and responded
to public presentation of some of the issues discussed in this volume, and also to
readers of brief newspaper and magazine articles that addressed one or another
issue dealing with modern knowledge politics. I would like to thank Gernot Böhme,
Aant Elzinga, Andrew Feenberg, Steve Fuller, Reiner Grundmann, Kevin Jones,
Maurice Richter, Gene Rosa, Barry Schwartz, and Justin Stagl for their critical and
constructive comments. The remaining deficiencies are my responsibility.
