The Future of Expert Knowledge - Lecture by Andrew Abbott

The conjuncture of a number of historical forces, operating at several different time scales, conspires to create a crisis in expert knowledge and in “knowing” more broadly. These forces include unidirectional phenomena like the social democratization of education, the development of automated forms of knowing, the imposition of neoliberal management on the world of expertise, and the drift away from discursive towards imagistic embodiments of knowledge. But it also involves cyclical phenomena like the maturation of the twentieth century knowledge paradigm and the demographic transition in expert populations. In this talk Professor Abbott enumerates and relates these various historical rhythms and speculates on the possible futures of expertise. Andrew Abbott is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Abbott’s major research interests lie in the sociology of occupations, professions, and work, the sociology of culture and knowledge, and social theory. Abbott also has longstanding interests in methods, heuristics, and the philosophy and practice of sociology. Introduction: Martina Franzen, WZB, Research Group Science Policy Studies Moderation: Fran Osrecki, University of Osnabrück The lecture is part of the second meeting of the DFG Research network “The sociology of sociological knowledge”.