'Good' Knowledge Gone Bad? The Sinister Side of Expertise

by Rommel A. Curaming

A cursory glance at key debates in different branches of the human, social and natural sciences reveals that scholars’ primary, if not the only, focus is on whether or how one gets things right theoretically, methodologically, analytically and empirically. The holy grail of this preoccupation is the notion, and, of course, the attainment of, expertise.

Expert knowledge represents the pinnacle of scholarship’s achievement. To the extent that scholarship is viewed as polar opposite of politics, expertise exemplifies in the highest order the success, or the aspiration to succeed, of the community of scholars in transcending the contaminating influences of the social environment. What is often overlooked, it should be noted, is the possibility that no matter how good scholarship is, it cannot exist in a socio-political vacuum. In many instances expertise is precisely what the powerful and the unscrupulous need and, in fact, use often to advance or justify their interests, usually at the expense of the unsuspecting public.

Any scholar who produces knowledge by undertaking research or by any other means starts with good intentions. The moment the results are published, however, knowledge assumes a life of its own; it circulates and is used in society in ways independent of the original intent. Scholars often absolve themselves of the responsibility by skirting around it, thinking in all honesty that their job ends co-terminus with the boundaries of scientific knowledge production. Easily set aside is the likelihood that exactly it is their expertise that lends knowledge a lasting credibility and power that enable both legitimate use and misuse of knowledge. It ought to be recognized, therefore, that good intentions and strict adherence to established scholarly protocols are not, or cannot be, enough. Knowledge, regardless of accuracy, is not inherently amoral or neutral; it is the fluid contexts of knowledge production, distribution, consumption and evaluation that decide.

 This situation calls for greater and concerted efforts to document, analyse and map out the range of actual and potential uses and abuses of expert knowledge in various fields of human endeavour. As the evolving national, regional and global order increasingly locates knowledge at the centre of almost everything—as exemplified, for example, by the notions of knowledge society and knowledge economy—there is a corresponding demand for a greater accountability in knowledge use. The sustainability and vitality of the public sphere that protects and promotes the welfare of common people hinge on the transparency of knowledge production, distribution and consumption.  At the end of the day, we scholars do not wish to inadvertently inflict harm in our efforts to do good.

What seems needed is to strengthen significantly the early warning mechanism within scholarship itself to help minimize, if not neutralize, the misuse of  knowledge. The scholarly community is not totally oblivious of the need for this mechanism. Awareness has always been there right from the beginning as clearly indicated in the presence of the code of ethics in every profession, including scholarship. Unfortunately, the persistently marginal (or marginalized) status of any field that examines knowledge socio-politics, such as social epistemology and sociology of knowledge (including the sub-fields it spawned such as sociology of scientific knowledge, SSK), and the backlash against or the long receding influence within the academy of  the critique of knowledge that the proponents of postcolonialism-poststructuralism-postmodernism have long underscored, indicate the less than adequate appreciation and efforts of the scholarly community in general to address attendant problems—both potential and actual.

In UBD, a few colleagues and I have formed a group within the Science and Technology Research Cluster precisely for this purpose. Called the Good Knowledge Gone Bad sub-cluster, our group—with members from education, health science and social sciences—seeks to develop a mechanism for monitoring and examining the actual use and abuse of knowledge in our respective fields. We are a new group and we wish to extend an invitation to anyone, in any field of studies, who shares our concern to join us in this undertaking. We shall form an international network of scholars who are keenly interested in helping prevent the misuse of knowledge in our own fields. Anyone interested may signify intention to participate by sending a CV to racuramingubd@gmail.com 

Is our analysis constipated?

by Rommel A. Curaming

The long-standing ambivalence of much of the post-positivist and ‘critical’ social sciences to relativism, the backlash against the ‘linguistic turn’ and the back-tracking among the early proponents of postcolonialism/poststructuralism/postmodernism (particularly within Asian Studies) exemplify a range of attitude among scholars—from fear to hostility to vacillation—towards the idea of pushing the logic of the knowledge-power nexus to its conclusion. To the extent that relativism or knowledge/power is recognised and adopted as analytic frame, it is tempered with moderation, or is forced to moderate its temperament. 

This moderation takes several forms. In the case of Mannheim, he confined his relationism to social sciences thereby excluding the natural sciences among the areas of concern of sociology of knowledge. Foucault (1988) did similar thing when he in effect exempted the whole of the natural sciences as object of his knowledge/power analytics. In the case of Barnes (1976) and Bloor (1991), they pushed for the so-called “value-free” relativism. Knorr-Centina (1982) for her part defends her relativist stance by making a distinction between  epistemic and judgmental relativism. Epistemic relativism, what she considers a defensible type of relativism, is committed to the idea that the basis for identifying ‘objective’ reality is “itself grounded in human assumptions and selections which appear to be specific to a particular historical place and time.” Still another good example is McCarthy (1996) who, while recognizing the social situatedness of knowledge, is quick to rescue his appreciation of Levi-Strauss’s contribution to SSK (sociology of scientific knowledge) by saying: “…to insist, after Levi-Strauss, that everything ‘factual’ is discursive does not require that one embrace a nihilism or an agnosticism about the moorings of these discourses…” He justifies this position by noting that “sociologists from Marx to Durkheim to Mannheim have argued (that) there is an institutional bases to ‘cultural production’” (1996). Friedman and Kenney (2005) nail the point when they declare, totally oblivious of its irony, thus: “Although we argue that all history is subjective, this is not to suggest a kind of relativism.”  Such ambivalence constitutes the most fundamental symptom of what I call ‘analytic constipation’.

Analytic constipation refers to the inability or unwillingness to push the logic of analysis to its ultimate conclusion. It arises from the situation when the logical conclusion carries exceedingly controversial philosophical, moral, religious, academic or political implications. Faced with this situation, scholars often hold back within the permissible zone, maintaining critical stance by continuously teasing the limits using, among other means, intellectually inflationary and involutionary practices of complexifying concepts, theories and methods. In the end seldom one can expect that they would be brave enough to break the barriers. In some cases that they do, penalties are heavy including the possibility of being kicked-out of the scholars’ moral community. The case of Feyarabend whose book Against Method, brilliant as it was, infuriated many scholars for its alleged apostasy against science and scientific method, may be a good example. Derrida’s stinging rebuke of Foucault’s Madness and Civilization offers a glimpse of a less heavier, but nonetheless not negligible, penalty for attempts at crossing a ‘holy’ line.

There are a number of factors that help explain this tendency, which will be explored further in other blog entry. At this point, suffice it to note that scholars belong to a community governed by mostly unwritten rules on ‘proper’ behaviour. The socialization process—with the accompanying systems of motivation, reward and punishment—that scholars undergo instil in them not just fear of the consequences of transgression but also inducement for collective enjoyment of reward and voluntary sharing of responsibility to protect and promote the interests of the community. For all the aspirations to objectivity, impartiality, and being apolitical, scholarship is far from being disinterested as it wishes, or pretends, to be. Anyone whose ideas and actions will endanger its collective interests ought to be dealt with ‘properly’. In Bourdieu’s view, scholarship is one of those fields where, via internal dynamics and interaction with other fields, various forms of capital are generated, social positions shaped, and power relations played out. It is, as some scholars aptly put it, politics by other means. 

In my future posts, I will give concrete examples from Southeast Asian Studies of what may be considered as constipated analysis. Abangan ang susunod na kabanata:)