Social Epistemology
Special issue on the Commercialisation of Epistemology, Winter 2001
That knowledge is power and ultimately money is a dictum that has been
around since the scientific revolution turned into an industrial one. Few
would dispute that knowledge of resources and markets can be turned into a
profit. A recent twist to this link between knowledge and money is the
turning of 'knowledge about knowledge production' into a commercial product
in its own right, sometimes more successfully than knowledge about a
specific subject. For instance, under the heading of Knowledge Management,
marketable principles are now derived for commercially applied knowledge
creation, validation and dissemination. At the same time, in very much the
same way that Taylorism revolutionised manufacturing by rendering the
process of work an object of systematic study, principles for knowledge work
are increasingly becoming described, manipulated and commercialised. The
journal Social Epistemology is planning a special issue devoted to critical
reflections on this phenomenon, its roots in intellectual history, its
current practices and implications, and its future. While we expect people
in the field of organisational studies to take a particular interest in the
subject, we would especially like to encourage submissions by researchers
from a variety of perspectives in the social and policy sciences and the
humanities. Typical papers may address:
· The implications of commercial technologies of knowledge for a social
theory of knowledge, and vice versa.
· The implications of these new developments for those fields that have
specialized in the study of knowledge: the history and philosophy of
science, as well as various perspectives in science and technology studies
(STS).
· The relation between the traditional scientific expert and the knowledge
professional.
· Case studies on the role of knowledge workers in the commercialisation of
epistemology, inside and outside academe.
· The implications of markets for 'knowledge of knowledge' for philosophical
and social theories of value, and of power, and for debates on the expansion
of 'the market' into new domains.
· The implications of attempts to Taylorize knowledge production for a range
of legal, political and policy issues such as intellectual property,
knowledge-based economic development, etc.
· Explorations of alternative future scenarios related to this phenomenon.
Please submit a 250 word abstract to Sujatha Raman ([log in to unmask])
and Tomas Hellström ([log in to unmask]) by October 15, 2000. We expect
to complete the selection of abstracts by the end of October. The deadline
for completed papers will be 1 March 2001, with publication expected by the
end of 2001.
Rebecca Dale
Research Fellow
Business Processes Resource Centre
tel.: (024) 76524 344
fax: (024) 76524 307
email: [log in to unmask]
http://bprc.warwick.ac.uk
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|