Abstract
This chapter explores the multiple linkages between knowledge, civil society, governance, and democracy. Broader questions about relations between knowledge and freedom are placed in the context of whether these linkages are codetermined by an enabling of the knowledgeability of modern actors. Emphasis is placed on the growing opportunities for reflexive cooperation in civil society organizations, for social movements, and for an increasing influence on democratic regimes by growing segments of society. The specific aim of this chapter is more modest. Access to knowledge and the command thereof are at the core of its inquiry. Both access to knowledge and its command are stratified. Three barriers to access to knowledge are examined and questions raised about whether expertise and civil society can be reconciled, whether reconciling civil society and knowledge can be conceived of as a private good, and, finally, whether the social sciences and humanities are a source of enabling knowledge.
A democratic system in which knowledge is made the focus of continuing public concern is the only basis, under modern conditions, for government which is both effective and responsible.
Sanford A. Lakoff, Knowledge, Power, and Democratic Theory (1971, p. 12)
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- 1.
The historian James Harvey Robinson (1923, p. 76) stresses, in a treatise entitled The Humanizing of Knowledge—that is, of ensuring that the “scientific frame of mind” and specialized scientific knowledge are not an esoteric enterprise confined to a small number of members of the scientific community—that the “divisions of knowledge … form one of the most effective barriers to the cultivation of a really scientific frame of mind in thee young and thee public at large.” The solution therefore lies in “re-synthesizing” and “re-humanizing” knowledge.
- 2.
Applying an economic logic to the question of the lack of knowledge among ordinary citizens with respect to policy issues or, for that matter, any issue in everyday life, Olson’s observations raise the question of the incentive of ordinary citizens to learn enough about issues that require a decision from them. If the acquisition of relevant knowledge entails costs and the consequences of their decisions or informed participation are obscure, citizens presumably have little incentive to acquire relevant knowledge—at least according to the “economic theory of democracy” proposed by Anthony Downs (1957). However, it would be shortsighted to limit the possible incentives to acquire knowledge to mere economic considerations.
- 3.
Aside from the ability to enter a field of discourse, there is also the question of the desire to enter a field of discourse in an active manner. Ability and desire likely interact on a psychological level, and desire and ability do vary from person to person as well as from issue to issue (cf. Mulder, 1971).
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Russell Hardin (2002, p. 214) argues that the answer to this question requires, first of all, what he calls a “street-level epistemology”. Unlike standard philosophical epistemology, street-level epistemology attends to what counts as knowledge among ordinary citizens, not to what justifies truth claims. For Hardin, a street-level epistemology is essentially an economic theory of knowledge since it is not about justification but about usefulness; relevant consequences that are part of such an economic theory of knowledge include all of the costs and benefits of acquiring knowledge and deploying it.
- 6.
To begin with, I use the term “knowledge” as a generic term that encompasses all forms of knowledge and not only knowledge produced in the scientific community. In the context of the discussion of “enabling knowledge,” knowledge generated in science is in the forefront of the discussion, last but not least because the scientific community in highly differentiated societies is the main institution in charge of generating “additional knowledge” (including negating or destroying knowledge claims) rather than merely reproducing existing and often widely shared forms of knowledge (i.e., common knowledge). In other words, aside from other differences in the forms of knowledge in different social institutions (e.g., with respect to dissemination, accessibility, formalization), what counts in most modern social institutions, such as those of education, religion, and the economy, are the processes designed to transmit common knowledge.
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Today, we are constantly engaged—whether deliberately or in response to the unintended consequences of deliberate conduct—in remaking not only our social but most significantly our natural environment. It follows that the boundaries between social and natural constructs are constantly and deliberately shifting in favor of social constructs.
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For the record, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, and Karl Marx do not share the positive assessment of the role of (scientific) knowledge in rationalizing political action and enhancing democracy, let alone with regard to happiness or controlling human passions.
- 9.
Foucault’s assertion about the affinity between the powerful and knowledge brings to mind the thesis that an increase in collective human capital, though it “raises the people’s ability to resist oppression,” also “raises the ruler’s benefits from subjugating them” (Barro, 1999, p. 159).
- 10.
The justification for concern about a gap between expertise and democratic governance in the political sphere is of course based on the premise that the right to democratic governance should not be restricted and that the expert should be no more influential than the layperson. In the case of organizational governance (e.g., in industrial or governmental organizations), other norms such as employee satisfaction or productivity gains may be employed to legitimate and assess broad participation in organizational decision-making processes. In other words, is it feasible to equalize power in organizations? After reviewing a range of empirical studies of organizations, Mohr (1994, p. 55) concluded that such a goal is a utopian ambition on account of the attendant costs of power equalization.
- 11.
Despite the lack of detailed scientific and technical knowledge held by the public, Collins and Evans (2007, p. 138) stress that the public’s interest and involvement in any regulation of genetically modified technologies, for example, remain unaffected; what “we should be celebrating is this political right in a democratic society, not the spurious technical abilities of the public.”
- 12.
The alleged dominance of scientific knowledge in society and the respect granted to scientific knowledge to the exclusion of other forms of knowledge provoked Paul Feyerabend (2006) to ask how society can be defended against science. His answer is with the help of an education system that is more inclusive in its intellectual pursuits.
- 13.
Robinson (1923, pp. 16–17) refers to a list of occupations and professions serving as mind-makers in modern society: “mind-seekers” are the questioners (of the taken-for-granted or the commonplace) and the seers. We classify them roughly as poets, religious leaders, moralists, storytellers, philosophers, theologians, artists, scientists, and inventors. But Robinson (p. 17) also raises a significant follow-up question: “What determines the success of a new idea; what establishes its currency and gives it social significance by securing its victory over ignorance and indifference or older rival and conflicting beliefs?” In this context, he stresses that the “truth of a new idea proposed for acceptance plays an altogether secondary role” (p. 20). Robinson’s question about the conditions for the success of a new idea must of course be extended to the question of why new ideas are incapable of displacing the commonplace and the taken-for-granted, or what ideas established by “social labor” exactly accomplish, and under what circumstances.
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Stehr, N. (2015). Enabling Knowledge. In: Meusburger, P., Gregory, D., Suarsana, L. (eds) Geographies of Knowledge and Power. Knowledge and Space, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9960-7_3
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