Social Epistemology Special issue on the Commercialisation of Epistemology, Oct-Dec 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 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 might 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 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) and Tomas Hellstrom (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) 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. Tomas Hellstrom Institute for Management of Innovation & Technology Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sujatha Raman Centre for Science Studies University of Lancaster, England [EMAIL PROTECTED]
