Download Ur inledningen till The Politics of Intangible Capital

Ur inledningen till The Politics of Intangible Capital:
"In contemporary political discourse, the concept of the Knowledge society is prominent.
Largely, it signifies an ongoing change towards a future economic and social order, the
fundamental characteristic of which is the organisation of economy and society around the
abstract commodity of knowledge. This change is commonly defined as driven by information
technology and ultimately the micro processor, but leading to processes of globalisation,
individualisation, and flexible specialisation; changes that are assumed to have far-reaching
implications in terms of a crisis of the welfare state 'as we know it', the demise of the political
and institutional solutions developed to deal with industrial capitalism, and the need to
develop new institutions and politics to create the circumstances of transition. Commonly this
need of sweeping change is referred to as a process of modernisation.
...
any discussion of the idea of the Knowledge society in political discourse needs to consider,
on the one hand, the content of it as an economic and social vision and future, and, on the
other, how the process of change is construed and articulated by the social forces and political
actors who create the future. As critics like Fred Block or Bob Jessop have argued, while
changes in productive forces arguably form the basis for the ongoing transformation of our
economic and social institutions, the idea of the Knowledge society also forms the basis for
how these processes are interpreted and framed, and thus the way in which change is managed
and steered (Block, 1990, Jessop, 2002). In a similar way to how the idea of the industrial
society functioned as a 'template' for social struggles in fordist societies, the notion of a postindustrial society shapes notions of change and defines the role and scope of 'modern' politics.
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This paper critically discusses the discourse of the Knowledge economy and the Knowledge
society as an economic and social future vision. It argues that the idea of the Knowledge
society in contemporary politics, and the modernisation narrative that it gives rise to, is
dependent on a highly specific conceptualisation of knowledge as capital, which identifies
knowledge as an economic and social good that resides in individuals and in social relations.
This is a concept of capital that redraws the boundaries between the economic and the social.
Specifically, this paper argues that the idea of knowledge as capital gives rise to a threefold
modernisation narrative. First, interpretations of knowledge as a driver of change lead to a
reframing of the sphere of politics and a narrative that we might call the modernisation of
politics. Second, the idea of the knowledge driven economy makes specific claims to the need
for a modernisation of the social sphere and in particular the welfare state. Third, the paper
argues that the conceptualisation of knowledge as a specific kind of intangible capital, located
within individuals, leads to a particular outlook on the politics needed to create the
knowledgeable and learning citizen and a modernisation narrative that focuses on the
individual - modernisation within. The paper begins with a discussion of key ideas of the
Knowledge society and the themes of progress and crisis, good and value, that it contains."
Jenny Andersson
OBS - work in progress - får ej citeras utan författarens tillstånd