Knowledge and Power

Part 1 – The changing concept of knowledge

1.1 Challenging the tradition of a “unified science”

1.2 New ways of knowing

1.1 The “unity of science” and its erosion (1)

UYK Istanbul 2011

• Questioning the notion of a homogeneous and uniform concept of knowledge
• Sources and manifestations of change
• Towards a more differentiated and contingent conception of knowledge
• The casualties of change: Objectivity, certainty, prediction, quantification

1.1 The “unity of science” and its erosion (2)

• General vs. specific and nomothetic vs. ideographic statements
• Explanation vs. understanding
• Cognitive, normative, and aesthetic knowledge

1.2 New ways of knowing

• Epistemology and the opening of the institutional structures of knowledge production
• The rehabilitation of “suppressed forms of knowledge”
• A “third culture” between scientific and literary analysis of social reality

Part 2 – The politics of knowledge

2.1 Hierarchies in the production and dissemination of knowledge

2.2 Knowledge and power: A relationship of reciprocal legitimation

2.3 The transnational knowledge system and the international division of labor

2.4 The political economy of the commercialization of knowledge

2.5 The politics of knowledge: 3 discourses

2.1 Hierarchies in the world of knowledge

• Hierarchies of knowledge: “Higher” and “lesser” forms of knowledge
• Hierarchies of knowledge institutions: national and international
• Hierarchies within institutions: Knowledge and status
• Challenges to established knowledge hierarchies

2.2 Knowledge and power

• Knowledge is in need of legitimation, too
• Knowledge and power: A relationship of reciprocal legitimation
• Literary images of expertise: Ethan the historian (Stefan Heym)