Knowledge In Contemporary Society Research Articles

Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston (eds), The Cambridge history of science: vol. 3, Early modern science, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. xxvii, 865, illus., £90.00, $160.00 (hardback 978-0-521-57244-6).

Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston (eds), The Cambridge history of science: vol. 3, Early modern science, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. xxvii, 865, illus., £90.00, $160.00 (hardback 978-0-521-57244-6). - Volume 52 Issue 4

(Medieskabt) Ekspertise i Medierne

(Media created) expertise in the media
 
 The article develops a notion of expertise based on Bourdieu’s notion of
 symbolic capital. This conception of expertise focuses on public recognition of different forms of capital that, through this public recognition, come to be seen as competencies, i.e. as expertise. The article furthermore argues that the transformation of field specific forms of capital - such as academic, intellectual or cultural capital - into symbolic capital increasingly happens in and through the mass media. In other words, journalists’ selections of expert sources legiti-mise certain professions and bodies of knowledge as experts and expertise. This has consequences for universities given the fact that: a) contemporary knowledge society contains many types of research institutions and profes-sions outside universities that can deliver expertise, and b) these institutions tend to be more willing than universities to play up to the mass media in order to secure the legitimisation of their knowledge as expertise.

Consuming, Engaging and Confronting Science

As the distance between science and society is collapsed with the growth of contemporary knowledge societies, so a range of different approaches to the democratic governance of science superseding its Enlightenment government is emerging. In light of these different approaches, this article focuses on the figure of the scientific citizen and the variable dimensions of a new scientific citizenship. Three models of democracy - advanced consumer, deliberative and radical/pluralist - are put forward as both partly competing and partly complementary frameworks within which the new rights and responsibilities of the scientific citizen can be articulated and discussed. In each case the theory and practice of scientific citizenship are viewed against the background of contemporary developments within the field of science communication; the rise of the public understanding of science movement; the new enthusiasm for advancing public engagements with science, and the legitimate place of different forms of public protest and dissent within new designs for democratic governance.