Historical studies on the relationship between knowledge and politics have mostly focused on the narrower interplay between scientific knowledge and political institutions: the role of experts and advisors in policy making or the impact of the modern state on scientific institutions, theories, practices, and projects. Borrowing from Foucauldian discourse analysis, others have departed from the constitutive interrelationship between knowledge and power in order to reconstruct the epistemic regimes of governmentality. Taking up recent accounts in political theory, such as those by Jacques Rancière, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe, we argue for an antifoundationalist understanding of both the political and the epistemic beyond institutionalized frameworks. The distinction between science, knowledge, and the realm of the political is thus not imbued with a clear-cut dividing line; instead, the relationship is characterized by ongoing and contested boundary work performed by various actors with different resources, strategies, intentions, and interests. The historically shifting scope of the political relies on contested fields and foundations of knowledge, and vice versa. For a more thorough understanding of the political aspects of knowledge production and circulation we therefore suggest considering the nonfoundational and agonistic conditions in which knowledge emerges in an ever-changing power play of forms and social contexts.
{"title":"The Political and the Epistemic in the Twentieth Century: Historical Perspectives","authors":"Kijan Espahangizi, Monika Wulz","doi":"10.1086/710344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710344","url":null,"abstract":"Historical studies on the relationship between knowledge and politics have mostly focused on the narrower interplay between scientific knowledge and political institutions: the role of experts and advisors in policy making or the impact of the modern state on scientific institutions, theories, practices, and projects. Borrowing from Foucauldian discourse analysis, others have departed from the constitutive interrelationship between knowledge and power in order to reconstruct the epistemic regimes of governmentality. Taking up recent accounts in political theory, such as those by Jacques Rancière, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe, we argue for an antifoundationalist understanding of both the political and the epistemic beyond institutionalized frameworks. The distinction between science, knowledge, and the realm of the political is thus not imbued with a clear-cut dividing line; instead, the relationship is characterized by ongoing and contested boundary work performed by various actors with different resources, strategies, intentions, and interests. The historically shifting scope of the political relies on contested fields and foundations of knowledge, and vice versa. For a more thorough understanding of the political aspects of knowledge production and circulation we therefore suggest considering the nonfoundational and agonistic conditions in which knowledge emerges in an ever-changing power play of forms and social contexts.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117326607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates the entangled history of the propaganda battles waged during World War II, focusing on Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States. It asks how and to what extent these three political regimes conceptualized propaganda as a knowledge-based practice and what kind of expertise they mobilized. Although American propaganda strategists were the only ones to make use of modern social science methods as part of their activities, under the difficult circumstances of ongoing war operations, the practices of knowledge production by military intelligence did not fundamentally differ between the three countries. The war profoundly changed the way knowledge was systematically mobilized for political and military purposes, and transnational entanglements, perceptions, and observations (but also misperceptions and projections) played a crucial role in that development. This directly connects World War II developments to the emergence of a Cold War regime of producing and using scientific knowledge for strategic purposes.
{"title":"Knowing the Enemy: Propaganda Experts, Intelligence, and Total War (1941–1945)","authors":"Ben Nietzel","doi":"10.1086/710328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710328","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the entangled history of the propaganda battles waged during World War II, focusing on Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States. It asks how and to what extent these three political regimes conceptualized propaganda as a knowledge-based practice and what kind of expertise they mobilized. Although American propaganda strategists were the only ones to make use of modern social science methods as part of their activities, under the difficult circumstances of ongoing war operations, the practices of knowledge production by military intelligence did not fundamentally differ between the three countries. The war profoundly changed the way knowledge was systematically mobilized for political and military purposes, and transnational entanglements, perceptions, and observations (but also misperceptions and projections) played a crucial role in that development. This directly connects World War II developments to the emergence of a Cold War regime of producing and using scientific knowledge for strategic purposes.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125279986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the “long 1970s,” measuring well-being or quality of life was high on the agenda of international organizations, governmental agencies, and social science research centers. The article examines how their endeavors to monitor and quantify people’s quality of life spawned a new world of ideas, concepts, numbers, graphs, and facts that transformed the meaning of welfare and the postwar foundations of social and economic policy. By focusing on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s quality of life program of the 1970s, the article brings into view a variety of epistemic actors, including social scientists, governmental officials, and the bureaucrats of international organizations, and analyzes how their interactions shaped the production and circulation of new, policy-relevant knowledge in this nascent field. The article argues that the quality of life endeavors of the 1970s mark an epistemic and political shift away from the postwar concepts of material well-being and toward psychological notions of well-being; and, too, that this opened up new horizons for political intervention and paved the way to the “happiness boom” in the early twenty-first century.
{"title":"The Quality of Life Turn: The Measurement and Politics of Well-Being in the 1970s","authors":"Pascal Germann","doi":"10.1086/710511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710511","url":null,"abstract":"In the “long 1970s,” measuring well-being or quality of life was high on the agenda of international organizations, governmental agencies, and social science research centers. The article examines how their endeavors to monitor and quantify people’s quality of life spawned a new world of ideas, concepts, numbers, graphs, and facts that transformed the meaning of welfare and the postwar foundations of social and economic policy. By focusing on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s quality of life program of the 1970s, the article brings into view a variety of epistemic actors, including social scientists, governmental officials, and the bureaucrats of international organizations, and analyzes how their interactions shaped the production and circulation of new, policy-relevant knowledge in this nascent field. The article argues that the quality of life endeavors of the 1970s mark an epistemic and political shift away from the postwar concepts of material well-being and toward psychological notions of well-being; and, too, that this opened up new horizons for political intervention and paved the way to the “happiness boom” in the early twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121204312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the history of statistical knowledge about economic inequality in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the twentieth century. It presents a chronology of knowledge regimes that underwent several transformations from the postwar knowledge regime to the social-democratic knowledge regime in the mid-1970s to the neoliberal knowledge regime in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, it highlights the dominating position of civil servants and government statisticians in shaping official statistics that informed public debates, imaginations of society, and political decision making on issues of poverty, income, and wealth distribution. Methodologically, the article contends that the concept of knowledge regimes provides a useful analytical tool to investigate changing historical configurations of knowledge production. Analyzing knowledge regimes focuses attention on historical social orders, practices, norms, hierarchies of authority, and power relations that have bearing on the production and dissemination of knowledge. The article argues that developing the analytical tool kit will also help to build a more distinctive profile for the history of knowledge as a historical subdiscipline.
{"title":"Evolving Knowledge Regimes: Economic Inequality and the Politics of Statistics in the United Kingdom since the Postwar Era","authors":"Felix Römer","doi":"10.1086/710513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710513","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the history of statistical knowledge about economic inequality in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the twentieth century. It presents a chronology of knowledge regimes that underwent several transformations from the postwar knowledge regime to the social-democratic knowledge regime in the mid-1970s to the neoliberal knowledge regime in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, it highlights the dominating position of civil servants and government statisticians in shaping official statistics that informed public debates, imaginations of society, and political decision making on issues of poverty, income, and wealth distribution. Methodologically, the article contends that the concept of knowledge regimes provides a useful analytical tool to investigate changing historical configurations of knowledge production. Analyzing knowledge regimes focuses attention on historical social orders, practices, norms, hierarchies of authority, and power relations that have bearing on the production and dissemination of knowledge. The article argues that developing the analytical tool kit will also help to build a more distinctive profile for the history of knowledge as a historical subdiscipline.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116268010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Who gets to interpret why “ordinary” citizens abstain from voting? Usually perceived as a model democracy, Switzerland already experienced declining turnout rates from the 1960s onward, which worried elites and gave way to a political demand for expertise on nonvoting. Focusing on scientific studies and media pieces, this article charts the emergence of various (and possibly conflicting) forms of knowledge and interpretative frameworks on electoral turnout in postwar Switzerland, as well as their circulation in the public sphere and their potential influence on political action. Against all odds, the numerous academic and commercial studies dedicated to this topic did little to quell the relative helplessness of politicians and journalists. In fact, the decline in turnout fundamentally challenged dominant representations of civic behavior and political participation, which centered on voting and was modeled on the ideal of a (male) citizen-soldier.
{"title":"Knowledge on a Democratic “Silence”: Conflicting Expertise on the Decline in Voter Turnout in Postwar Switzerland (1940s–1980s)","authors":"Zoé Kergomard","doi":"10.1086/710510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710510","url":null,"abstract":"Who gets to interpret why “ordinary” citizens abstain from voting? Usually perceived as a model democracy, Switzerland already experienced declining turnout rates from the 1960s onward, which worried elites and gave way to a political demand for expertise on nonvoting. Focusing on scientific studies and media pieces, this article charts the emergence of various (and possibly conflicting) forms of knowledge and interpretative frameworks on electoral turnout in postwar Switzerland, as well as their circulation in the public sphere and their potential influence on political action. Against all odds, the numerous academic and commercial studies dedicated to this topic did little to quell the relative helplessness of politicians and journalists. In fact, the decline in turnout fundamentally challenged dominant representations of civic behavior and political participation, which centered on voting and was modeled on the ideal of a (male) citizen-soldier.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129816906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article proposes an interpretation of the intellectual origins of neoliberalism. Influenced by scientific modernism, its founders held that knowledge, being indeterminate and uncertain, was fragile. They feared that the authority of science could be corrupted and made to serve political aims opposed to liberal values. As a result, early neoliberals endeavored to rebuild the principles of liberalism from a moral-epistemological position. They put forward a moral and legal framework that could stabilize the market economy and embed liberal values in the process of science. Later neoliberals, however, set forth a more instrumental vision of morality and knowledge that unraveled the early neoliberal project.
{"title":"Fragile Knowledge, Moral Pitfalls: Early Neoliberalism and Its Demise","authors":"Martin Beddeleem","doi":"10.1086/710311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710311","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes an interpretation of the intellectual origins of neoliberalism. Influenced by scientific modernism, its founders held that knowledge, being indeterminate and uncertain, was fragile. They feared that the authority of science could be corrupted and made to serve political aims opposed to liberal values. As a result, early neoliberals endeavored to rebuild the principles of liberalism from a moral-epistemological position. They put forward a moral and legal framework that could stabilize the market economy and embed liberal values in the process of science. Later neoliberals, however, set forth a more instrumental vision of morality and knowledge that unraveled the early neoliberal project.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125604479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay reconsiders a little-known collection of Latin alchemical recipes from the fifteenth century attributed to one “Leonard of Marburg.” Preserved today in only one manuscript (MS Latin 14005, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris), these recipes were collected over the course of the narrator’s arduous travels ranging from Italy, to Poland, to Armenia—or so Leonard claims. Are we supposed to believe him? Reading this alchemical text alongside other medieval travel narratives, I show how this travel narrative signals its affiliations with that genre and, in so doing, invites us to regard it as a literary experiment rather than a record of a medieval traveling alchemist’s alchemical practice.
这篇文章重新考虑了一本鲜为人知的15世纪拉丁炼金术食谱，这本食谱被称为“马尔堡的伦纳德”。今天仅保存在一份手稿中(MS Latin 14005，法国国家图书馆，巴黎)，这些食谱是在叙述者从意大利、波兰到亚美尼亚的艰苦旅行过程中收集的——至少伦纳德是这么说的。我们应该相信他吗?将这篇炼金术文本与其他中世纪旅行叙事一起阅读，我展示了这种旅行叙事是如何表明它与这种类型的联系的，这样做，邀请我们将其视为文学实验，而不是中世纪旅行炼金术士炼金术实践的记录。
{"title":"An Alchemist’s Travels, according to Himself","authors":"Joe Stadolnik","doi":"10.1086/708222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/708222","url":null,"abstract":"This essay reconsiders a little-known collection of Latin alchemical recipes from the fifteenth century attributed to one “Leonard of Marburg.” Preserved today in only one manuscript (MS Latin 14005, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris), these recipes were collected over the course of the narrator’s arduous travels ranging from Italy, to Poland, to Armenia—or so Leonard claims. Are we supposed to believe him? Reading this alchemical text alongside other medieval travel narratives, I show how this travel narrative signals its affiliations with that genre and, in so doing, invites us to regard it as a literary experiment rather than a record of a medieval traveling alchemist’s alchemical practice.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"54 7-8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114033618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
By making a distinction between two kinds of histories, this article attempts to chart the fine line between “actions in the past” and “subsequent records” within the multilayered process of humankind’s practices. One might call “History B” the efforts by later writers to impose some “continuity” onto history, embodying a kind of discursive power; similarly, one might give the name of “History A” to the indelible historical vestiges left by humans who lived in the past. History A constitutes a kind of “counter-power” that constantly challenges existing historiographic discourses. Focusing on the complex yet paradoxical relationship between these two kinds of histories, this article discusses the achievements and pitfalls of contemporary historiography, particularly Chinese.
{"title":"On the Subversive Nature of Historical Materials","authors":"Liu Dong","doi":"10.1086/708368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/708368","url":null,"abstract":"By making a distinction between two kinds of histories, this article attempts to chart the fine line between “actions in the past” and “subsequent records” within the multilayered process of humankind’s practices. One might call “History B” the efforts by later writers to impose some “continuity” onto history, embodying a kind of discursive power; similarly, one might give the name of “History A” to the indelible historical vestiges left by humans who lived in the past. History A constitutes a kind of “counter-power” that constantly challenges existing historiographic discourses. Focusing on the complex yet paradoxical relationship between these two kinds of histories, this article discusses the achievements and pitfalls of contemporary historiography, particularly Chinese.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123946095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article interrogates the sermon as a genre of religious media designed to capture and mediate divine knowledge. It does so in order to better understand the complex nature of sermon authorship, particularly the way that it elicits a uniquely spiritual conception of ownership in the sermon as an object of intellectual property. By exploring recent debates about sermon stealing, or pulpit plagiarism, the article concludes that sermon authors have generated unique defenses of sermon ownership grounded not in legal entitlement but rather in theological arguments balancing an inalienable relationship to the divine with the imperative to distribute God’s word.
{"title":"The Sermon’s Copy: Pulpit Plagiarism and the Ownership of Divine Knowledge","authors":"Andrew Ventimiglia","doi":"10.1086/708119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/708119","url":null,"abstract":"This article interrogates the sermon as a genre of religious media designed to capture and mediate divine knowledge. It does so in order to better understand the complex nature of sermon authorship, particularly the way that it elicits a uniquely spiritual conception of ownership in the sermon as an object of intellectual property. By exploring recent debates about sermon stealing, or pulpit plagiarism, the article concludes that sermon authors have generated unique defenses of sermon ownership grounded not in legal entitlement but rather in theological arguments balancing an inalienable relationship to the divine with the imperative to distribute God’s word.","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"333 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116359649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1086/709955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/709955","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":187662,"journal":{"name":"KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124127631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：