At 11:52 AM 3/5/97 +0000, David Byrne wrote:
>Finally, there is a serious addressing of the issue of the
>collapse of disciplinary boundaries in relation to =91fields=92
>as the objective of social science. If I have a criticism
>of the report it is that it really only recognizes
>developments in the academy here. In other words it
>emphasizes fields of the kind represented by =91Area Studies=92
>and doesn=92t recognize the profound significance of the
>application of the social sciences to areas of policy
>implementation. In the UK =91Urban Studies=92 and =91Health
>Studies=92 stand in this kind of relationship to the academy.
>In relation to this omission, the report singularly fails to
>address the issues raised by the conception of social
>science as =91action-research=92 - the role of the soal
>scientist in active transformation of that which is the
>object of study. The report is outstandingly clear on the
>antinomies of past / present and nomothetic / idiographic,
>but really doesn=92t handle at all the antinomy of pure /
>applied and the related but distinctive antinomy of engaged
>/ observational.
>
>I have written this piece because the report does seem
>profoundly important. Obviously it is an immediate response
>and subject to modification in detail but I would appreciate
>other=92s views as they read the document. The main intention
>locally at least, is to get people to read the thing for
>themselves.
While I share the report's recommendations to abolish the institutional
boundaries in social science, I also believe that the narrative of the
social science development, as told by the report's authors, ends too soon,
namely in the late 1970s and then only selectively focuses on the input of
feminist and pomo critique of positivism. By so doing, it misses an
important and extremely onerous development that occurred, or rather
accelerated, during the 1980s and 1990s. Had they taken those developments
seriously, their optimism for the development of a universalistic science
would have been muted, and the report would have taken a more alarming=
flavour.
The development in question is what call "epistemological privatisation of
knowledge." To understand what epistemological privatisation of knowledge
is, let us contrast it with its opposite, the ontological privatisation of
subject matter -- as described in the historical narrative of the report.
The development of idiosyncratic sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften, was
accomplish through the following theory-building strategy. First, certain
areas of the subject matter were ontologically separated from other areas of
the subject matter. The former which, using Max Weber's terminology, can be
described as "historical individuals" called for the use of different
methods of study (namely historical analysis and description, focus on their
uniqueness, etc.) than the other subject matter area that can be
characterised, using Leibniz terminology, as the "population of monads" or
virtually identical elements which required nomothetic methods of analysis
(i.e. aiming at uncovering universal laws governing the behaviour of those
monads). However, these two different methodologies were supposed to
produce a universally valid and recognised knowledge. =20
This theory building approach, known as hermeneutics or learning something
that is universal from the insight into what is particular, can be
schematically represented as follows:
ontological separation of subject matter:
Historical individuals vs. population of monads
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produces two different methodological approaches:
idiographic methods vs. nomothetic methods
(Geisteswissenchaften) (natural sciences)
\ /
\ /
which merge of the epistemological level as:
universal and intersubjectively accepted knowledge
(even if pretences to universalism are parochial).
This is the process the Gulbenkian Comission describes in its historical
narrative. The narrative ends in late 1970s when the challenges to the
ontological (and institutional) separation of the subject matters were
challenged from the epistemological positions. That is: different
viewpoints produce different classification of what is, in fact, a single
subject matter. Therefore, why do not we pull those different point of view
together is a form of a dialog to produce a better, that is, more
universalistic, knowledge of that single subject matter?
While based on their historical narrative, Wallerstein & Co. call for a
greater universalism in social sciences, the production of science itself
took a sharp turn in the opposite direction to that depicted in the
narrative -- toward the epistemological privatisation of knowledge.
Unlike the hermeneutical approach described above, the anti-hermeneutic
approach of episemological privatisation of knowledge reverses the the
hermeneutic process "from particular subject to universal knowledge" and
goes "from universal subject to particular knowledge." The epistemological
privatisation claims no special subject matter, in fact, it studies the
mundane, the everyday, the ordinary (cf. the marketing studies of everyday
shopping behaviour, or public opinion polls). What it aims to accomplish,
however, is knowledge that is not universal, but PROPRIETARY. That is,
knowledge whose main value lies not that it is shared by others, but in that
it is NOT shared by others. In fact, the dissemination of that knowledge to
others would strip it of its value to the owner.
The proprietary knowledge gives the owner a strategic advantage over
competitors, to be sure, but its epistemological importance goes well beyond
its short-term market utility. It is the mode of knowing that ultimately
epitomizes the Foucauldian ideal of "seeing without being seen." My power
comes from my knowledge and from my material resources. Both are my private
property. Just as no-one can question what I choose to do with my material
possessions, nobody can question what I choose as knowledge. Proprietary
knowledge guides the owner's actions -- perhaps in the right way, perhaps in
a wrong one -- but that is for no one but the owner himself to decide.
Proprietary knowledge is exempt from any public scrutiny not just on the
level of application (e.g. the owner may decide to use his knowledge of
atomic theory to build a bomb or a power plant), but on the level of
production and verification as well. It is the owner, not the public, who
decides not only what knowledge is to be produced, but how the validity of
that knowledge is to be judged.
The eptiome of epistemologically privatised knowledge is marketing research.
Marketing research is devoid of any theorizing, save for the most
rudimentary assumptions about human behaviour. In fact, marketing research
is nothing more than a collection of measurement techniques and a collection
of measurements that are sold, in chunks, to the clients. Each measurement
(e.g. a study of market appeal of a product) does not have a slightest
pretence of being universally valid, in fact, such an assumption would
quickly put the marketing researchers out of business, as their clients
would say "since I bought from you what is universally valid, why should I
buy more of the same?" Furthermore, the study has a value if an only if its
results are known to the client but are NOT known to her competitors. Had
the competitors known the results, the competitive advantage of proprietary
knowledge would disappear.
More importantly, the proprietary character of marketing research results in
a situation that goods and services are manufactured solely on what the
owner of the knowledge in question knows, without any input from the public
(other than being "laboratory humans" manipulated by the researchers). That
is, the marketing researcher may be utterly wrong (or not) in how she
determines "public tastes" -- but because the knowledge is declared and sold
as private -- it is not subject to any public scrutiny, as the universal
knowledge hitherto produced in universities is. Therefore, the corporate
execs' claims that the shit their companies produce serves some "public
demand" should be (but is NOT) qualified "public demand as depicted in
private knowledge that is exempt form any scrutiny, except by its owner."
Of course, private knowledge was not an invention of the 1980s. It is a
well known fact that professions (especially doctors) use a different set of
principles to diagnose cases than the formal body of knowledge taught at
universities (A. Abbott, _The System of Professions_, 1988). The
"diagnostic knowledge" is a private property of the doctor, or perhaps the
medical profession. The fact that the language of medieval theology was
Latin means NOT that that Latin was a lingua franca, but that using language
different from that of everyday discourse effectively made medieval theology
a private property of the experts, while the populace was effectively
excluded in participating in theological discourse.
The same principle is used in modern economics. Its use of incomprehensible
jargon to discuss matters that can be explained by common-sense discourse
without losing any of the contents, effectively bars non-expert from
participation and renders economics a private knowledge of the experts.
However, both medieval theology and modern economics can be, in principle,
understood by anyone who takes the effort to learn the jargon. This,
however, is not the case of knwoledge that has been privatised by
classifying it as off limits to the public by the so-called "public"
authorities. Thus, national security policy decisions are based almost
exclusively on private knowledge gathered by intelligence agencies, and that
knowledge is declared off limits and cannot be verified by anyone. A CIA
report may be a result of an honest and meticulous study, or a fiction
concocted by operatives with literary talents -- but the public and its
so-called "representatives" have no way of knowing that, because that
knowledge has been classified as private property of a supposedly "public"
agency.
The privatisation of the US universities is a well documented fact (see, for
example an article in the last issue of Dollars&Sense on that subject). By
providing research grants to universities, private corporations are given,
by university administrators, the right not just to use the findings for
their own profits, but also to:
- have a say what research are being pursued; and
- decide whether and how the results of that research can be published.
That such practices are not wide-spread (yet) in social sciences is mainly a
result of the relative insignificance of these sciences in the political and
commercial arenas. In bio-medical research the corporate control of the
production and dissemination of knowledge is much more widely-spread and
tight, as some serious corporate interests are at stake. Those interested
in details can read the article in the last issue of Dollars & Sense on that
subject.
Another example of private knowledge is the whole area of research
pertaining to tobacco smoking. What private tobacco companies know about
the addictive properties of tobacco is declared proprietary knowledge and is
exempt from any public scrutiny. In other words, tobacco manufacturers are
*LEGALLY PROTECTED* by "our" government from disclosing any information
about the product they are selling to the public. Other examples may
include public domain data (statistics, legal information) handed over by
"our" government to provate distributors who become the private gatekeepers
of what used to be public knowledge, or various credit-worthiness report
that are collected without public knowledge and with only nominal oversight
by private agencies.=20
With recent trends toward privatisation of both, institutions producing
knowledge (universities and research institutes) and the knowledge itself,
the history of scientific development comes to a full circle when it began
in prehistoric or medieval times. Back then, knowledge was jealously guarded
secret of shamans and priests, and handed down to the masses in a simplified
pictorial form =96 e.g. as myths and legends depicted on the stained glass=
of
medieval churches. Today we approach that stage, as knowledge again is
being jealously guarded by private corporations, and handed down to the
stupefied public in the form of color graphs, charts and ads on the "stained
glass of the modern church" =96 the TV screen.
>From that perspective, the institutional divisions among social sciences
Wallerstein & Co. write in the Gulbenkian Commission report are of secondary
importance. What we face here is a disappearance of social sciences
altogether, as the privatisation of universities progresses. That is, the
research of human collective behaviour is increasingly carried not as a part
of building a universally accepted body of knowledge (regardless of how
parochial those claims to universality are) =96 but as a part of private
research endeavour designed to produce private knowledge of interest to the
paying clients: how to affect the outcome of the upcoming election, how to
manipulate public opinion on this or that issue, how to boost the market
appeal of a product, etc.=20
That proprietary knowledge, legally exempt from any public scrutiny, is the
ultimate form of the Foucauldian knowledge-power, a fusion of knowledge and
the ability to intervene into the subjects of that knowledge (both their
lives and their bodies). What bio-medical and, increasingly, social science
researchers are producing is what Max Horkheimer (the founder of the
Frankfurt School for Social Research) aptly called the "Herrenwissenschaft"
- or the science of the master race (a clear reference to the Nazi ideology
of "herrenvolk" or "master race" ) - a knowledge about us produced and
applied without us and serving as a tool of the ruling corporate class to
control us.
That probably does not concern academic superstar celebrities like
Wallerstein (whose work I otherwise highly respect) who have a secure place
in the academia, can pursue their own research agenda, and publish the
results in the medium of their choice. But for the academic peons like
myself and thousands of others who toil as temporary mental workers in
private teaching and research factories called universities =96 this is a
serious concern. An that concern did not even get an honorary mention in
the Gulbenkian Commission report.
wojtek sokolowski=20
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax: (410) 516-8233
**** REDUCE MENTAL POLLUTION - LOBOTOMIZE PUNDITS! ****
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|Wenn ich Kultur hoere, entsichere ich meinen Browning.|
| -Hanns Johst |=20
| |=20
|When I hear "family values," I reach for my revolver. |
| (no apologies to Hanns Johst) |
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