Download A `New Paradigm` for Sociological Knowledge

A ‘New Paradigm’ for Social Science Knowledge?
Liliana Deyanova
In the last few years people from universities and other stakeholders have been talking more
and more about the need for a new type of sociological knowledge defined as ‘practical
knowledge.’ This is a formula that encompasses different things, different aspirations and
dreams, and, not least, different interests: ‘professional knowledge’, ‘applied science’,
‘marketable disciplines’, orientation towards ‘actual practice’, with ‘more practical disciplines
in the curriculum’, ‘opening up to society’ and to the ‘job market’; shifting focus from
theoretical teaching to ‘research-based teaching’ and ‘interdisciplinarity’; or, briefly put,
ensuring ‘quality education.’ Of course, no one could question the need for all this nor, for
that matter, its radical departure from the ideas espoused by socialist scientific apparatchiks
and student ‘masses’ of providing education in social sciences that are ‘close to life’, in a
‘people’s university’ with ‘high-quality scientific workers.’
Still, this is hardly enough to explain the excessive repetition of several things in interviews
with social science researchers and teachers in the last five years1: ‘diversification of
education’, ‘educational investments and services’, ‘quality of education’, ‘partner
institutions’, opposition between academic and applied sociology (obvious in statements like
‘Doctoral students must work on research and not on theory projects’), interdisciplinarity (or
even ‘transdisciplinarity’ – which I must admit I’d never heard of before). That’s ‘the spirit of
the times,’ one might say and leave it at that. Still, how come there is such a ‘spirit’ if we do
not accept the dogmatic Marxist postulate of the infrastructure and superstructure? That is
why here I will try to interpret some symptoms of the changes occurring in the ‘university
field’ and in the field of social sciences in Late Modernity. My purpose, however, is not to
1
The empirical material for this paper comes from several sources: (1) A study conducted under the
direction of Ivan Chalukov by the Institute for Critical Social Studies and financed by the Open
Society Institute – Sofia: Ot mrezhi kam mrezhi/ From Networks to Networks (forthcoming); (2)
“Sociology of sociology of interethnic relations”, in: Jacques L. Boucher, Joseph Yvon Theriault
(eds.), Petites Societes et minorites nationales, Presse Universitaire de Quebec, 2005, pp. 97–109 ; (3)
expert evaluations of educational inequalities, reported at the conference “Educations pour tous,’
Kozlodui, April 2004.
examine systematically this problem of key importance to our discipline but only to interpret
one of the conspicuous, in my view, narrative lines in the interviews in question.
In this sense, the title of my paper is misleading. It implies mainly what one of the ‘global’
experts in the sphere of university education and science has termed a ‘new paradigm of
knowledge’ (Gibbons 1998: 43) and the questions worth asking in this context. But it does not
imply a systematic investigation of the new situation which Kolyo Koev, in his excellent
study on the subject through the lens of the ‘elementary forms of everyday life’ and Weber’s
time, describes as a ‘classical situation’: a situation that brings about ‘a disruption of the
monotony of scientific knowledge caused by inconsistence between the conceptual apparatus
and the social reality subject to research’, a situation that outlines a ‘new “vision” of the world
and new “consolidation” of scientific knowledge’ (Koev 2003: 30).
Indeed, as Weber notes in the text quoted at the beginning of this paper, there comes a time
when the until then self-evident content of our scientific knowledge begins to elude us and our
knowledge becomes ‘uncertain’: The ‘value scale’ according to which we have conducted our
‘value-free’ research changes before our very eyes but the new ‘landscape’ does not have
sufficiently clear outlines, with the outlines themselves depending on the way we will
designate them and explain the new types of unpredictability and uncertainty. (Weber 1998:
84) Because one of the critical tasks of social scientists is, according to Weber,2 ‘to help the
individual recognise the supreme norms and ideals that are manifested in the concrete valuejudgement…’ As regards the question whether the individual should accept those norms and
ideals, this ‘can never be the task of an empirical science.’
§1. The ‘New Paradigm’ for University Science
Books like The New Production of Knowledge by Michael Gibbons et al point out that there is
a fundamental change in the production and role of knowledge today. That globalisation is an
‘engine of change in the University’ and that this change consists in the emergence of a new
set of research practices but also in the spread of research as a recognisably competent activity
that is practiced beyond the walls of academe (Gibbons 2003: 118). The new mode of
2
Weber.
knowledge production is labelled ‘Mode 2’, as opposed to the structure of the old,
Humboldtian university or ‘Mode 1’. ‘Mode 1 is disciplinary while Mode 2 is
transdisciplinary’ (Gibbons 2003: 120). Today knowledge is produced in a context of
application, in the context of the usability of knowledge, and not in a context governed by the
interests of a specific community. It is characterised by ‘heterogeneity of skills’. Mode 1 is
hierarchical, whereas in Mode 2 ‘the preference is for flatter hierarchies using organisational
structures which are transient’. In comparison with Mode 1, ‘Mode 2 is more socially
accountable and reflexive.’ There is also a difference in the type of quality control, as Mode 2
involves not only peer review but also ‘a much-expanded system of quality control’. In a
‘knowledge society’ the sites of knowledge production are much more in number, whereas the
‘knowledge society’ itself is ‘transdisciplinary, application-oriented and diversified,’ and
socially accountable (Gibbons 1998). As well as profit-making. The ‘new paradigm of
knowledge’, discussed by Gibbons in his 1998 study, implies a new view of university
relevance where ‘economic imperatives will sweep all before it’ (here Gibbons quotes Hague,
noting that ‘if the universities do not adapt, they will be by-passed’).
Because knowledge is ‘inherently transgressive’, Helga Nowotny explains, advancing the
same argument, ‘nobody has anywhere succeeded for very long in containing knowledge’:
‘Knowledge seeps through institutions and structures like water through the pores of a
membrane.’ And like water, it ‘seeps in both directions, from science to society as well as
from society to science’ (Nowotny 2001). As regards the question of quality control, she
admits that it is a very tricky criterion because the context varies; that is why in their first
book they had readily admitted that quality control is the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of knowledge
production. But she calls on us to keep in mind the ‘main thing’: that if in disciplinary
knowledge there are standards that will allow us to evaluate someone as, for example, a good
biologist, now we should start to speak of ‘value-integrated’ quality, of something like ‘a
societal value that needs to be integrated into the definition of good science’ (to the extent that
society and science are ‘engaged in co-evolutionary processes’). And that there is something
like an agora, which ‘is everywhere’.
It follows, then – and here I quote the third author from this group, Peter Scott – that
‘expertise is no longer the preserve of experts’; furthermore, as a result of these new
configurations of knowledge producers, ‘these “activist” knowledge organisations challenge
notions of evidence, objectivity, balance, debate which have typically been regarded as
fundamental to the University (even if these high ideals have not always been met)’ (Scott in
Breton 2003: 243).3
The problem of ‘the new production of knowledge’ is discussed not only in the eponymous
book by Michael Gibbons et al or in another book by almost the same team (Re-Thinking
Science. Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty). But as Gibbons is one of the
experts in transnational commissions tasked to re-think and revise the role of knowledge and
higher education and the author of well-known papers and studies (such as his paper on
‘Globalisation and the Future of Higher Education’ presented at the UNESCO conference
‘Globalisation: What Issues are at Stake for Universities?’ in Quebec, Canada, 18 – 21
September 2002, or the World Bank paper Higher Education Relevance in the 21st Century),
he is one of the strangely often cited authors in this connection. And as I am not an expert in
sociology of science and innovations nor is the novelty of this theory my subject of interest
here, this summary is based less on the extensive theses expounded by Gibbons, Nowotny,
Scott in their major books than on their short papers presented and published in proceedings
of international conferences reformulating the role of university knowledge in the new global
society, a ‘knowledge society’.
However, I find plausible the explanations offered by sociologists of science in a series of
papers in the journal Actes de la recherche en Sciences Sociales as to the ‘inexplicable echo
of this book’ considering that it has a ‘modest scientific place in true academic circles’
(Schinn 2002: 22), that in it ‘there are no real questions but there are a significant number of
answers’, that the claims of the authors do not rest on concrete analyses and none of them has
conducted concrete research, that their approach is not connected with a scientific paradigm
(notwithstanding Latour’s superficial influence on some of them), that there are less popular
but much more interesting models of explaining the science-government-technology nexus.
Briefly put, according to experts in sociology of science this is a performative discourse of
‘the firm believer in a new social and cognitive order’ working actively for the latter’s
establishment. The authors of The New Production of Knowledge, who have become the core
of ‘a community where one of the binding characteristics is the use of a series of words’
(Schinn 2002), do not ask themselves questions about the institutional realities in Africa or
Eastern Europe, about the mediating and authoritative units between ‘academics’ and society,
3
Scott in Gibbons.
about the possibility that their new epistemology may actually clear the way for ‘a neocorporatist vision of the world’.
Yet precisely such views of the knowledge society and ‘knowledge-based economy’ (the
subject of a 1996 OSCE report – cf. Milot 2003) are becoming a basic paradigm of the new
educational and public policies of the OSCE, the World Bank, UNESCO and other
institutions concerned with knowledge management, with reconsideration and redefinition of
the role of university science in higher education. It is they that determine the definitions of
‘global public goods’ and the norm of ‘good practices’ which knowledge managers should
bear in mind because ‘knowledge management’ (which differs from the old term
‘administration’, notes Gibbons) is a profession that has its own logic.
I was wondering precisely about this logic when I had to comment on an interview with a new
Bulgarian university ‘entrepreneur’ who otherwise probably had liberal views of the world.
Because his language was driven by the logic of the education market: ‘Students pay and
expect services that are good value for money’; they rightfully want to receive such services
‘at minimum cost, time and efforts’; ‘we’ must produce marketable, convertible knowledge
(admittedly, the word ‘marketable’ was used less frequently than ‘convertible’ but likewise
referred to a quantifiable equivalent); university education must be ‘diversified’, allowing the
pursuit of different professional careers. If ‘the client’ wants it, then the ‘decision-maker’
must act adequately instead of offering ‘heavy courses’ of the ‘methodology-and-theory’ type;
incidentally, those who want to may choose to take such courses without expecting too much
credits for them, but each must take responsibility for his or her choice; we must ‘take more
doctoral students’, making them do research and not ‘theories’; there already is a ‘market for
doctoral and masters students’, and university faculty approve of it…
I have ventured to quote extensively from this interview with a Bulgarian scholar made by a
French colleague of mine in 2002 not because the language is representative and commonly
used but because remnants of what is ultimately the same logic recur more or less in the
majority of interviews in question. Even when the interviewees are criticising the new reforms
in education and the ‘incompetent experts’ conducting them. We are acting as if there really
were a market of knowledge services, of doctoral or masters students and as if this ‘market’
were selecting the best and referring them to ‘the global companies providing the best value
for money’ (Gibbons quoted by Milot 2003: 72). As if the above statement concerning
biomedical knowledge applied also to social knowledge and university-industry (enterprise)
partnerships; as if there were no problem in what are being proposed to us as role models or
best practices; or in the amalgam in documents which often equates ‘knowledge-based
economy’ with ‘knowledge-based society’ where there are supposed to be ‘new providers of
higher education’ and ‘advancement of the higher education market and the emergence of a
global market of high-quality human capital’ (Salmi on Breton 2003: 55 ff). I think there is
also a problem in that doctoral degrees are, paradoxically, becoming more dependent on the
logic of the market and on the ‘world of professions’ (as if it were one) than on the logic of
the relevant scientific discipline. Incidentally, those who are against the classical disciplines
in Mode 1 and insist on a multidisciplinarity that would supposedly decrease ‘narrow
specialisation’ are at the same time, paradoxically again, in favour of ‘greater
professionalisation’ – which is in fact a much narrower form of specialisation than the
classical disciplinary specialisation. Moreover, their multidisciplinarity is not based on
interdisciplinary complementarity and dialogue between disciplines but on accounting criteria
and is designed to improve cost-effectiveness.4
The new ideological language of education reformers in general and university reformers in
particular is indeed very interesting: explicit or implicit, ‘left’ or ‘right’, primitively alterglobalistic or politically correct and non-catastrophic, it merits a longer review which I cannot
do here – not only because I am not an expert in sociology of education but simply because I
am a sociologist from the age of Mode 1 who is interested in sociology of sociology.
However, I cannot omit giving an extreme example of the Bulgarian contribution to the
assertion of the new ideas of a ‘knowledge society’ and of ‘education for all’. I am referring
to a publication titled Obrazovanie za vsichki /Education for All presenting the results of the
Bulgarian part of an eponymous international project.5 The publication abounds in unverified
ideological claims about presumable success and achievements in the democratisation,
innovation and humanisation of the education system (p. 9), about autonomy and personal
choice. There are also quite a few contradictions, such as the conclusion about ‘achievements
in the decentralisation of education’ followed by the proud statement that ‘progress of
4
Cf. ABELARD 2004. Universitas calamitatum: Le livre noir des réformes universitaires describes
results of empirical studies on the professional careers, exclusion, paradoxes of ‘life long learning’
provided under international student mobility programmes. The authors of the book are experts in
sociology of education in France who are close to Pierre Bourdieu’s Centre de Sociologie Européenne
[Centre for European Sociology}
5
See the works of Ivan Krastev, Roumen Avramov; Stefan Popov’s statement.
decentralisation [sic] is controlled by the Ministry of Education and Science’ (p. 25). I do not
know if the ‘agora’ (in the sense in which the term is used by Helga Nowotny, quoted above)
has reacted to this ‘expert publication’. I am also wondering if the agora itself makes sense in
the new social situation of Mode 2 where science is governed by the imperative of ‘practical
knowledge’ with its ‘urgency’, ‘transience’ and so on. I can only cite an opinion about
eponymous internationally-financed projects related to privatisation of health care: ‘Our
project was not the only one; as far as I know, there were sixteen similar ones but none of us
knew about them, about their arguments, their hypotheses and concepts, about their results…
each one of us started from scratch as if nothing had been done before’ (2002).
§2. Sociologists and the Polity (Polis)
Indeed, what is the agora today and what is the role of sociologists in the polity, that is, in the
civic community? It is not just cases like the one discussed above that have made me wonder
where, exactly, lies the boundary between ideological and non-ideological language, why
researchers choose to study one rather than another scientific or social problem, why the
problem in question is worded as it is, what is the connection between wording and the
priorities of the different financial and political institutions; who recommends the study and to
whom do the results belong.
And something more general: How was the knowledge about ‘the transition’ produced, which
theories and ideological constructs underlie the discourse on ‘the transition to democracy’
and, more specifically, which are the influential theories and the influential ideological
constructs (“ideologemes”); how have sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists
contributed to the elaboration of this language of the Bulgarian ‘transitions’, of the
transformations on the Balkans. (Considering that we are talking about a destabilised region
where there are many struggles, including ‘struggles over words’ as Bourdieu puts it. A
region where expertises quickly become an ontology of the social world and even ‘selffulfilling prophecies’.)
Before giving an example of another type of ‘details’ that are worth noting , let me say that
my utopia of sociological critique is the difficult to achieve the balance between neutrality
and engagement (something which the Bourdieu school calls ‘engaged neutrality’). Of course
this balance is not a problem only of Bourdieu’s critical sociology. The tension between facts
and values, facticity and normativity, positive knowledge and normative knowledge, expertise
and critique ‘is’ and ‘should be’ a constitutive element of the ‘sciences of culture’ themselves.
Because people often associate Bourdieu only with his political rather than with his scientific
arguments in favour of a struggle against ‘imperialist reason’, I will cite Weber as well. As
noted earlier, Weber also inquires into the value-neutrality of science (Wertfreiheit or ‘valuefreedom’) but also into the relationship to values and the ‘value scale’ according to which
value-free research of the social situation can and must be conducted (Koev 2003: 60). As you
know, for Weber these are interlinked aspects of the common process of rationalisation of
life, disenchantment (Entzauberung), value polytheism – which has made it possible for the
question of the ascertainment of facts and the question of the way of practical action in a
given cultural community to be two different questions, two ‘heterogeneous problems’. That
is why practical action cannot be scientifically determined (by an ‘empirical’, in Weber’s
sense, ‘science’). This, however, does not mean that the relationship to values is not the
significant problem. As Weberian scholars demonstrate, the main thread running throughout
his work is the question of the ‘quality of the person’, the question of which social formation
gives what type of chances to what type of person (Koev 2003, Hennis) (« Toute organisation
des rapports sociaux, de quelque nature qu’elle soit, doit sans exception, quand on veut la
juger axiologiquement, être jugée en fin de compte sur le type d’humanité auquel elle donne
les meilleurs chances de devenir dominant, par le biais d’une sélection de caractères internes
ou externes. Car, par ailleurs, l’étude empirique n’est pas vraiment exhaustive, et on ne
dispose pas de tout de la base empirique nécessaire pour un jugement de valeur – que celui-ci
soit délibérément subjectif ou qu’il revendique une valeur objective. » /ETS 148/…)
Thus, sociological knowledge, sociological expertise is not ‘pure technocratic expertise’; it
involves relationship to values. Incidentally, in this paper I often use the terms ‘study’,
‘research’ and ‘expertise’ synonymously. This is due to the fact that I assume every
sociological research involves expertise, that is positive knowledge, along with normative
knowledge, that is critique: expertise limits empty critique, whereas critique limits pure
expertise; expertise limits ideological critique, whereas critique limits technocratic expertise.
Sociological expertise, then, is a peculiar expertise, an inseparable element of the two aspects
because, to paraphrase Kant, expertise without critique is blind, but critique without expertise
is empty (Lahir 2001: 134).
My entire commentary so far has been based on another presupposition too: that sociology is
a science born of the spirit of Enlightenment. It is during the Enlightenment that conditions
were created for what is known as ‘institutionalisation of critique’. The sociological field
gradually became autonomous. The institutions of knowledge are by definition autonomous,
as well as public. The scientific public sphere is an inseparable part of what Habermas calls
the public sphere. (In this sense it is a collective, public good, it is accessible, freelycirculating, controllable by the civic community.) But precisely this public sphere is in crisis
today.
And a last presupposition. Sociologists do not merely ‘expose’, ‘unveil’ or ‘reveal’ some
existing hidden realities that are external to and independent of sociological research itself.
On the contrary, social scientists ‘cause the appearance of until then invisible essences and
become their legitimate and incontestable articulators and spokespersons’ (Callon 1999).
Sociologists contribute to their visibility and constitution, they represent them, intervene on
their behalf and in their name, mobilise them, make us see them; in sum, sociologists make
visible some new forms of collective action.
Needless to say, a new series of questions arises here. But I will move directly to the ‘details’
which I believe are significant in the context of the present redefinition of the role of
knowledge and of university science. I became aware of them almost by chance, when I
needed to find several studies devoted to ethnic ‘identities’, tensions and inequalities. I had
reason to presume that this was most probably not the only case in which a researcher
encounters insurmountable – and, moreover, not only epistemological – obstacles. Many of
the studies can hardly be defined as public, as publications or even less as something that
becomes a fact in the scientific public sphere. Their disturbing non-transparency is at different
levels and of a different nature. They cannot be found in academic journals or in public
libraries. Even experts on the problems of minorities from state institutions have difficult
access to them (as in the case of the studies before the health care reform, noted above). The
results are rarely subjected to critique by the academic community. Their knowledge is not
accumulated, therefore every next study starts, as it were, from scratch. Arguments do not
clash, criticising and refuting each other.6
For a complete argumentation of this thesis, see Deyanova, Liliana (2000). ‘The Impossibility of a
Critical Public Sphere (Sociological and Political Science Discourse in the Media)’ at
<http://www.mediacenterbg.org/library/LilianaDeyanova.doc> and also at the web site of the project
6
Also obvious is the strange polarisation between university or academic research and research
conducted by various NGOs. The two sides ignore each other in both senses of the word –
they do not know and do not recognise each other. They do not cite each other. (One of the
few commentaries on a study conducted by an NGO, which I found [in connection with my
above-mentioned ‘ethnic’ interest] in the annals of academic journals – the journal
Istoricheski Pregled – was the ‘argument’ or, more precisely, the allegation of Prof. S.D. that
Antonina Zhelyazkova’s International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations
had conducted the study in question because it had been generously financed by Soros and the
West.)
There is undoubtedly another tendency too: ‘mimo-professionalisation’ of many
nongovernmental research centres. (According to sociologist and historian of science Joan
Heilbron, mimo-professionalisation is pseudo-professional discourse, discourse for external
use, for external presentation and representation.) Also visible are the relevant mimoscientific conferences reported to ‘donors’. But such conferences are conducted not only by
NGOs, nongovernmental research centres or a specific group of experts called ‘think-tanks’.
On the contrary, mimo-scientific conferences are also conducted by academic institutions,
which have likewise contributed to the assertion of the new language of the transition, to the
new ‘ideological marketing’.
These are only part of the questions concerning the role of social sciences in the ‘post-’ age. I
will end with a diagnosis from the section of the study cited in footnote 1 dealing with the
relations between sociologists from opinion and market research agencies, think-tank experts
and academic sociologists (defined as “data factories”, “argument factories” and “knowledge
laboratories”). There I was again concerned with the question of the production of knowledge
about the transition, the expansion of the schemes of neo-liberal thinking and their impact on
reforms in countries from the former communist bloc.
The humanities and Social Sciences on the Periphery: Sciences or Technocratic Instruments?
<http://www.mirovni-institut.si/hssp/>.
§3. Fragmentation of Knowledge
Here I cannot describe the interesting relationships of the institutions mediating between
different networks in the changing field of public opinion research. I will focus only on one
question and one conclusion.
The question: What, in the case under review here, would constitute the so-called ‘embedded
autonomy’ involving, according to Stark and Bruszt, extended accountability?7 In other
words, ‘extended accountability’ in the interaction between the three types of agents in the
field of public opinion research – data factories, argument factories and knowledge
laboratories – ensuring that the short-term adaptation of each one of them to the present
major transformation will not undermine their long-term adaptability.
The answer is, accountability that is extended in time too. (Which presupposes debate on the
choices made, deliberation, free circulation of information and so on; in a sense also what I
call conditions for the possibility of a ‘critical public sphere’.) Because the three types of
intellectual institutions discussed here have made choices, they have left trajectories, they
have depended on and will depend on their past choices. The problem is to see what
intellectual resources those ‘agents’ have at their disposal, what autonomous and embedded
autonomous positions they have in the transition. And how they could react to future
uncertainty and insecurity. (Because, I repeat, one of the major deficits today is the deficit of
predictability and certainty owing to the heteronomy of the field in question. This deficit is
compensated for by new networks, which are the result of a similar deficit not only in this
sphere…)
I am trying to demonstrate the theoretical possibility of applying Stark and Bruszt’s concept of
extended accountability beyond the political and economic spheres. In their view, extended
accountability involves the embeddedness of the decision-making centre in networks of autonomous
political institutions, whereby political authorities are monitored by other state institutions and held
accountable by other organised societal actors. This is different from the vertical accountability of
competitive elections because it extends accountability horizontally, providing checks and balances
through which executives are held accountable, reducing the likelihood of precipitous policy swings
and ensuring policy coherence. This accountability is also extended in time – that is, it entails debate
and deliberation (the embeddedness of the decision-making centre in networks of autonomous political
institutions extends the time horizons of policy-makers and of the public); it entails a programmatic
pragmatism and binding agreements at multiple sites throughout the polity and the economy.
7
The conclusion: An alarming fragmentation of the field of knowledge, which is tangible
also in the field of post-socialist empirical research, ought to worry, I think, those who
believe in the Bourdieuian utopia of ‘Enlightenment of the Enlightenment’, the utopia of
reason as a constant collective achievement and the imperative of the autonomy of scientists
or of objective social-scientific reflection in general, as a collective achievement. (According
to Bourdieu, the autonomy of social scientists or of social thinkers in general is conditional on
collective reflection and collective action aimed at creating rational conditions of
communication in the scientific field; in other words, Bourdieu holds that there are
institutional forms which facilitate reason, that critical reflection is institutionalised in the
mechanisms of the scientific field itself.)
Given this fragmentation, each of the agents in the field of public opinion research – data
factories, argument factories and knowledge laboratories – involuntarily add their own power
to other power relations that privilege urgency or urgent response to the markets of
knowledge, of information, of other knowledge ‘services’ (key term: ‘service’!). Which leads
to urgent response through more and more reforms:
- The ‘Academy’ (including the ‘University’) resents those who have turned sociology into a
‘private business’ (but fails to notice the ‘private businessmen’ within its own ranks);
- Opinion and market research agencies are disappointed by the conservatism and abstract
theorism of the Academy (but forget that the majority of their employees hold positions in the
‘Academy’ as well and therefore have a chance to reform it; on the other hand, the majority of
them do not feel uncomfortable to say that ‘the difference between detergent marketing and
political marketing is nil’, that what they are actually doing is producing data only and that
any analysis was an ‘additional product’);
- Think-tanks create new, private, academies (and often mediate successfully, flexibly –
another key word in the transition! – between private and non-private agents);
- PR agents say that political elections (that is, elections for the polity, which by definition
means living together) are a ‘war’ therefore one should employ any means necessary to
achieve the desired ends;
- Brokers and media intermediaries have become ubiquitous, offering information services
and ‘securing appearance’ on radio and television;
- There are all sorts of rumours about think-tank and other unions;
- Opinion and market research agencies are being bought and ‘become the property of
political brokers’ (to quote one prominent journalist, Ivan Garelov; and there is a growing
chorus of criticism against ‘the prostituting cohort of sociologists and political analysts’, to
quote another;
- Meanwhile, the profession is becoming, as sociologist Tsvetozar Tomov puts it, ‘a fenceless
yard where anyone may enter and call themselves authors of sociological research’;
- Different universities offer (this particular reform is still on the drawing board) their services
– ‘education services’ – to wandering voucher-holders in an unstable and still mostly oral
intellectual tradition;
- Guest scholars (‘guest stars’, as Janos Kornai puts it) travel around, offering their symbolic
capital not to those who can comment on them professionally but to those who can
accommodate them and capitalise their symbolic capital, rightfully appropriating their
symbolic added-value.
All this is occurring in the context of a fundamental deficit of the modern age, ‘the age of
risk’: the deficit of certainty and previsibility. (Which, most symptomatically and entirely
logically, is seen by some media figures (Ivo Prokopiev) as a ‘deficit of reforms’, and by most
students and some faculty members as a lack of a sufficient number of ‘practical trainings’).
That is why the following questions are critically important: Could the, roughly speaking,
‘entrepreneurial initiative’ (not in Gibbons’s sense!) of the new agents of knowledge prove to
be ‘rentier activity’ (as Ivan Chalukov puts it) rather than an activity that creates possibilities
for new forms of a visibility and new combinations? Will it enable fair acquisition of the
results of future entrepreneurial efforts? In an age of what some call ‘a spirit of urgency’
(tyranie de l’urgence), ‘re-enchantment of the world’, such questions are definitely worth
asking.
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