Abstract

Social surveillance and regulation of knowledge is now one of the most important issues in modern society, one that is giving rise to unending controversy. In The Governance of Knowledge, Nico Stehr and his colleagues predicted that such concerns would create a new political field, namely, knowledge policy, which entails regulating dissemination of the anticipated results of rapidly increasing knowledge. The number and range of institutionalized standards for monitoring new knowledge has been relatively small. Only in cases of technological applications has social control, in the form of political regulation, intervened. For example, all modern societies today have complex regulations and extensive concerns with the registration, licensing, testing, and monitoring of pharmaceutical products. The increasingly important and extensive area of intellectual property legislation and administration shows how social control is manifested, through measures that selectively determine the use of scientific finds and technical knowledge. The Governance of Knowledge assembles a range of essays that explore the new field of knowledge politics. It is divided into four parts: The Emergence of Knowledge Politics: Origins, Context, and Consequences; Major Social Institutions and Knowledge Politics; Case Studies on the Governance of Knowledge; and Issues in Knowledge Politics as a New Political Field. Professionals and graduate students in the fields of sociology, political science, social science, and law, including policymakers and natural scientists, will find this book laid the groundwork for many of the political debates we face today.