Knowledge Elite Research Articles

Anarchy Is Order

Anarchy Is Order

Information Technology and the Knowledge Elites

I study a model where Information Technology, while typically increasing overall inequality, is likely to harm some people at intermediate and high levels of the distribution of income but to benefit people at the bottom. Within a given occupation it may harm some workers while benefitting others; and it may either reduce or increase the proportion of workers in employment. In my model, (in a broad sense) is an input into the production function of human capital, and is also a good in the sense that one cannot buy it from several low-quality producers instead of one high-quality one. People differ in their exogenous ability and ability is complementary with the quality of the input in the production of human capital. An improvement in IT is modelled as an increase in the number of people who can buy from one producer. I show that the economy organizes itself in a succession of clusters of ability levels, called knowledge ladders, where a member of a given ladder buys from a worker in the subsequent ladder and sells it to a worker of the preceding ladder. The return to human capital increases as one moves up the ladder. The economic mechanism considered here rests on the view that IT makes the acquisition of cheaper, which intensifies competition among workers specialized in production. Those who lose in such competition end up displaced to occupations with a lower intensity; their wages fall, which reduces inequality between them and the least skilled. Those who win can spread their ability over a larger market and because of that enjoy a larger increase in wages than the least skilled, which tends to increase inequality. The least skilled do not participate in this competition, as they are not specialized in production; they gain in absolute terms because of their cheaper access to knowledge.

Mediated political communication, the Internet, and the new knowledge elites: prospects and portents

This paper argues that the phenomenal growth of the Internet requires a re-thinking of our assumptions about both the nature of political communication and the role of elites in the political process. We suggest that the Internet functions in a paradoxical manner. On the one hand, the Internet provides important opportunities for interactions between candidates and voters as well as new arenas for voter-to-voter discussion and interaction. On the other hand, the volume of political information available on the Internet, as well as the continued growth of other forms of mediated political communications, suggest that voters may be overwhelmed by the quantity and dubious quality of information on political candidates and issues. A likely outcome of this situation is the emergence of a new form of “information elite,” which challenges the traditional view that elites reflect considerations of power and wealth. We suggest that this elite can have a strong positive effect on democratic processes. We utilize Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion as a guide to understanding political communication and voter decision making in contemporary society and the role of the new information elite therein [ Petty and Cacioppo (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In: Berkowitz, L., (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 19. Academic Press, New York, pp. 123–205]. ©

Achieving partnership: the contribution of nursing education to the production of a flexible workforce.

This paper examines education's contribution to labour force reform in the nursing profession within the United Kingdom. In a globalized society there is increasing demand for more flexible forms of working. Nursing faces radical change in its employment characteristics if it is to continue to meet the health care needs of the population in the new century. ORIGINS OF INFORMATION AND DATA ANALYSIS: Key sociological texts and contemporary analysis of nursing skill have been analysed and synthesized to identify the dynamic of change in nursing and nursing education's contribution to these changes. Patterns of upskilling and multiskilling are leading to the breakdown of professional role boundaries in the broader workforce. These patterns can also be seen in nursing. Upskilling is associated with increased stress and 'risk' for the individual, therefore achievement of flexibility is not without cost. Changes in the skill level in nursing lead many to conclude that the profession will become divided into a core and periphery distinction. This simplistic analysis does not account for the complexities of nursing and nursing skill although there is clearly a growing need for a 'knowledge and technical elite'. The core-periphery distinction is too simplistic to analyse nursing skills and the dynamic of change in the workforce. A radical perspective of nursing characterized by workers with a range of skills and competencies is less likely to lead to rigid professional boundaries. There is a clear need for multiskilled and knowledgeable workers; the 'technical and knowledge elite'. These nurses may be recognized as advanced practice nurses. High quality education is required to prepare these practitioners. Adaptation of nursing to the postmodern world needs to be facilitated by changes in current educational policy and practice.

The Struggle for Knowledge: The Case of Emergent Oromo Studies

Taking the Oromo as historical actors, the emergent Oromo studies identify some deficiencies of “Ethiopian studies” that primarily focus on the Amhara and Tigray ethnic groups and their rulers, and ignore the history of the Oromo people. Many Ethiopian and Ethiopianist scholars do not recognize the positive cultural achievements of this people. As Shack (1994, 642) notes, “The lack of critical scholarship has inadvertently distorted the human achievements of conquered peoples like the Oromo, including transformations of their social, cultural, and political institutions.” Although the Oromo have no political power, they are the largest ethnonation in the Ethiopian Empire, comprising about half of the 52 million Ethiopian population. Ethiopia (former Abyssinia), with the help of the European colonial powers, colonized and annexed the Oromo people during the last decades of the 19th century, when Africa was partitioned among the European colonial powers (Jalata 1995a). Since then they have been treated as colonial subjects and second-class citizens. With their colonization and incorporation into Ethiopia (Jalata 1991, 1993a; Holcomb and Ibssa 1990), the Oromo could not develop independent institutions that would allow them to produce and disseminate their historical knowledge freely. Currently, they are fighting for national self-determination: to regain their political freedom and rebuild independent institutions. The Ethiopian knowledge elites have treated the Oromo as historical objects or have ignored them because of their subordination and powerlessness. Current publications on Oromo cultural and social history challenge a top-down paradigm to historiography and make the Oromo subjects rather than objects of history. Studying people as subjects or agents helps scholars avoid producing false knowledge. As Haraway (1991, 198) expounds, “Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent, not a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as slave to the master that closes off the dialectic in his unique agency and authorship of ‘Objective’ knowledge.” The emergent Oromo studies attempt to replace colonial history by a history of liberation, and to refute historical myths that have been produced to justify Ethiopian colonialism. This essay explores how the emergent Oromo studies have identified some deficiencies of Ethiopian studies, and how many Ethiopian and Ethiopianist knowledge elites have reacted to these fields of study.

Enlightenment for Emancipation: A Critical Theory of Self-Formation

Family life education is a profession that endeavors to support families in their everyday challenges. Implicit in this mission is notion that there may be discrepancies between actual and ideal family life. Historically, family life educators have assumed that if information is disseminated and foundation skills are taught, changes in everyday life will emerge (Brown, 1980; Morgaine, 1992a). Although these instrumental/technical approaches may be somewhat helpful, they tend to be limited in that they (a) teach only skills and facts, (b) assume an asocial perspective or presume that discrepancies are evidence of a family defect (Prilleltensky, 1990), (c) accept a single view of everyday realities, and (d) rely on model in which professionals (a knowledgeable elite) tell family members how to improve their situations. Due to family life educators' current emphasis on respecting diverse realities (Fine, 1993) and empowering families (Morgaine, 1992c), many social services professionals are beginning to question indiscriminate use of instrumental/technical approaches. Osmond (1987) and Prilleltensky (1991) urge all human services professionals to adopt a theoretical perspective that is macro-sociopolitical--one in which influence of global and political forces on everyday actions is considered. Previously, I have claimed that when appropriate knowledge paradigm is coordinated with actual needs, praxis, the action emerging from informed, integrated, and rational understandings (Morgaine, 1992a, p. 13) is more likely to emerge. Likewise, our professional preparation of family life educators must move away from an indiscriminate reliance on instrumental/technical paradigms. Banks (1993) argues that students should learn to understand all forms of knowledge. Miller (1992) claims that teachers need to excavate, reflect on, and analyze underlying assumptions, expectations, and constructions (p. 103) of everyday life in order to become insightful about complexities involved. Walker (1993) provides suggestions as to how family life educators can value diverse realities when teaching about families. DuBois (1993) claims that feminist approaches can illuminate ways in which dominant members of society have perpetuated hierarchical assumptions in all aspects of institutional norms. EMERGENCE OF A CRITICAL THEORY This article presents a critical theory of self-formation. It has emerged from my use of critical social science, or a critical/emancipatory paradigm (Morgaine, 1992b, 1994), when contributing to professional preparation of early childhood and family life educators. After a brief narrative of emergence of this theory, I will present an overview of theory and implications for its use by family life educators. Critical social science assumes that contemporary societies are oppressive in that they systematically encourage development of certain societal groups at expense of others. Feminist in its philosophical assumptions (Fay, 1977; Lather, 1991), critical social science seeks to expose ways in which social and cultural realities may be hindering human potential of all people. This exposure is accomplished by encouraging oppressed group members to examine societal structures as well as their own values, beliefs, and assumptions about everyday life. Critical social science is based on belief that individuals do not need an expert to tell them what to do; they are capable of becoming enlightened about hidden influences in their own personal and social situations. It is assumed that praxis, or emancipative action toward making change, will occur once people are enlightened. I turned to critical social science when I experienced a discrepancy between my lived reality and my desired ends. My goal was to facilitate development of early childhood and family life educators who would be capable of contributing to holistic development of children and families. …

ENVIRONMENTALISM IN IRELAND: TWO VERSIONS OF DEVELOPMENT AND MODERNITY

The paper proposes a conflict interpretation of environmentalism, seeing it as a vehicle through which the cultural politics of Irish development are reproduced and enacted. Contrasting two environmental movements in Ireland, one based around established conservation organisations and a developing environmental `knowledge elite', the other located within populist movements for rural community development, the author argues that these articulate opposed understandings of recent Irish history: as a process of cultural modernisation or as one of peripheral (under)development. The two movements are also characterised by very different attitudes to the part played in environmental matters by the Irish state. The paper ends by discussing how recent intervention into environmental management by the state itself may ironically be providing the ground on which some dialogue between the two movements is becoming possible.

The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy.

The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy.

The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy. By Eva Etzioni-Halevy. Allen & Unwin, 1985. 136 pp. Cloth, $18.50; paper, $9.50

The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy. By Eva Etzioni-Halevy. Allen & Unwin, 1985. 136 pp. Cloth, $18.50; paper, $9.50

Intellectuals and policy studies

Eva Etzioni‐Halevy, The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy, London, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.136. $16.95 (paper)

Book Reviews : THE KNOWLEDGE ELITE AND THE FAILURE OF PROPHECY. Eva Etzioni-Halevy. London, George Allen and Unwin, 1985. 136 pp. $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 paper

Book Reviews : THE KNOWLEDGE ELITE AND THE FAILURE OF PROPHECY. Eva Etzioni-Halevy. London, George Allen and Unwin, 1985. 136 pp. $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 paper

The Changing Nature of Professional Control

The traditional view of the professions is that they are largely free of the hierarchical forms of social control characteristic of other kinds of occupations; instead, they are self-regulating, subject only to informal collegial control. As a result of events in the past few decades in the United States, analysts now believe that the traditional autonomy of professions is eroding. This paper reviews two theories that emphasize this process, one focusing on deprofessionalization and the other on proletarianization. It concludes that the available evidence does not support either theory sufficiently to make them analytically useful; it advances an alternate theory that emphasizes the formalization of professional social control. This third viewpoint is based on the finding that the professions—as corporate bodies—have remained relatively autonomous. Antitrust decisions, political pressure to exercise more control over errant members, and the administrative requirement of greater accountability in large organizations employing professionals are all leading to a formalization of the methods by which professions control their members. An administrative elite of professionals who serve as supervisors, managers, chief executive officers, and owners is being formed in order to guide and evaluate the performance of rank and file professionals. The technical standards employed by such professionally qualified administrators are devised by a separate group of professionals—the knowledge elite—who are based primarily in professional schools. Rank and file practitioners are no longer as free to follow the dictates of their individual judgments as in the past, though quite unlike other workers, their work is expected to involve the use of discretion on a daily basis. Stratification in the professions, which has always existed, has become more formal and overt than in the past. This development may lead to divisions within any given profession as a whole that are too deep to contain within a nominally unified corporate body.

Tribune of the Technostructure: The Popular Economics of Stuart Chase

ideological conflict in the United States in the period between the World Wars. The possibilities and dangers of planning concerned businessmen, politicians, bureaucrats, labor leaders, and intellectuals. The historical literature on this passion for a plan, as Max Eastman termed it, has focused on planning as a solution to the economic problems that beset the nation or as an effort to redefine the relationship between the state and private enterprise. This essay centers, however, on the neglected social dimension to the controversies surrounding planning in this period. The planning debate crystallized a larger set of concerns about the role of the experts or technical intelligentsia in American society that dated from the rapid growth of the new middle class in the late nineteenth century and the political battles of pre-World War I progressive reform. Widespread discussion of planning was, to be sure, a response to the economic difficulties of the interwar decades, but it was also a continuation and intensification of the struggle to establish the terms for the integration of the knowledge elite into American culture.'

Defensive Structuring and Environmental Stress

This essay explores a kind of adaptation, referred to as defensive structuring, that recurs with great regularity among groups that perceive themselves as exposed to environmental stress of long duration with which they cannot cope directly and aggressively. Adaptive elements include: authoritarian control over members, exercised by a small specially knowledgeable elite; a high rate o endogamy; cultivation of cultural identity symbols; and early socialization for impulse control. A defensive adaptation emerges from specifiable kinds both of prior structural characteristics and environmental changes in interaction. Examples are provided from cases examined in some depth. The response syndrome is discussed in relation to social and revitalization movements and closed corporate communities.