Cognitive Assemblages and the Production of Knowledge

Abstract

This chapter aims to examine how assemblages can develop the concept of epistemic communities for a technological era. It begins by briefly outlining the two concepts, and then constructs the notion of a cognitive assemblage: those assemblages that have the function of producing some piece of knowledge. Particularly in politics, this is becoming an increasingly important factor for our perceptions of the global, with the spread of big data, computer modelling, and data analytics. The main section of the chapter demonstrates how epistemic communities fail to account for this material aspect of cognitive assemblages, and how cognitive assemblages can provide a lens for explaining and theorising these new actors. It concludes by briefly highlighting the political issues that emerge in this new world of cognitive assemblages.