Making Sense of Expertise

Current debates about experts are often polarized and based on mistaken assumptions, with expertise either defended or denigrated. Making Sense of Expertise instead proposes a conceptual framework for the study of expertise in order to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the role of expertise in contemporary society.

Too often different meanings of experts and expertise are implied without making them explicit. Grundmann’s approach to expertise is based on a synthesis of approaches that exist in various fields of knowledge. The book aims at dispelling much of the confusion by offering a comprehensive and rigorous framework for the study of expertise. A series of in-depth case studies drawn from contemporary issues, including the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, provide the empirical basis of the author’s comprehensive approach.

This thought-provoking book will be of great interests to students, instructors and researchers in a range of fields in the humanities, social sciences, and science and technology studies.

Reiner Grundmann is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. His main research interests lie in the relationship between knowledge and decision-making. In recent years, he has studied the public discourse on climate change and how scientific experts, decision makers, the mass media and the general population have framed their views on the issue in different ways. Grundmann also researches the social, political, and cultural dimensions of climate change, including the ethics of climate research, the dilemmas of scientists between advocacy and honest brokering, and the relevance of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies to the climate change debate. He is author of Transnational Environmental Policy: Reconstructing Ozone (Routledge, 2001) and co-author of Experts: The Knowledge and Power of Expertise (Routledge, 2011) and The Power of Scientific Knowledge: From Research to Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2012). He is also chief editor for the specialty section Climate and Decision Making in the Frontiers in Climate journal and co-editor of Economic Life in the Modern Age (Transaction, 2001), Knowledge (five volumes, Routledge, 2005) and Society (four volumes, Routledge, 2008).