The Politics of Knowledge

Social scientists often refer to contemporary advanced societies as ‘knowledge societies’, which indicates the extent to which ‘science’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowledge production’ have become fundamental phenomena in Western societies and central concerns for the social sciences. This book aims to investigate the political dimension of this production and validation of knowledge.

In studying the relationship between knowledge and politics, this book provides a novel perspective on current debates about ‘knowledge societies’, and offers an interdisciplinary agenda for future research. It addresses four fundamental aspects of the relation between knowledge and politics:

• the ways in which the nature of the knowledge we produce affects the nature of political activity

• how the production of knowledge calls into question fundamental political categories

• how the production of knowledge is governed and managed

• how the new technologies of knowledge produce new forms of political action.

This book will be of interest to students of sociology, political science, cultural studies and science and technology studies.

Patrick Baert is Reader in Social Theory at the University of Cambridge, and also Fellow and Director of Studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His publications include Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (with F. Carreira da Silva, 2010), and Conflict, Citizenship and Civil Society (with S.Koniordos, G.Procacci and C.Ruzza, 2010).

Fernando Domínguez Rubio is a Postdoctoral Marie Curie Fellow at New York University and the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the Open University.