The technicization of knowledge: Georges Gurvitch’s warnings applied to the case of nudge

Abstract

ABSTRACT For over a century, social theorists have analyzed how technical thinking and knowledge have colonized forms of thinking and knowledge for which they are unfit, and become valued for their own sake, rather than being treated as a means to an end. Georges Gurvitch made important contributions to this line of thought. This paper explicates Gurvitch’s sociology of knowledge, focusing on his argument that managerial-capitalist societies have a structural preference for technical knowledge and analysis of how six distinct types of knowledge have become increasingly ‘technicized’: perceptual knowledge, social knowledge, common sense knowledge, political knowledge, scientific knowledge, and philosophical knowledge. We demonstrate Gurvitch’s continuing relevance by applying his framework to examine the theory and practice of ‘Nudge’, a more genteel and subtle approach to the technocratic control of human behaviour.