Work in Progress
Economy and Environment in the Hands of Experts
1st Edition
Published on 4. October 2018
336 pages
978-3-96238-429-6 (ISBN)
Description
The world we live in has been shaped by expertise. Yet experts were not born with power: they had to struggle to achieve their authority and legitimacy. Experts have framed economic development, the environment, energy, and infrastructure as "work in progress", allowing them to put their specialist knowledge into practice. But who qualifies as the "right" expert for the job? Who decides how expertise is used, and to what ends? This book traces the changing contours of expert cultures, their global diffusion and local resistance. The contributors examine international organisations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Energy Council. They show how experts have tried to manage and navigate the competing demands of scientific knowledge, political power, and the public sphere throughout the last century. Amid the unfolding crises of democracy and climate change, this volume offers a timely, critical analysis of the power of experts and its limitations.
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Frank Trentmann | Anna Barbara Sum | Manuel Rivera
Work in Progress
Economy and Environment in the Hands of Experts
Book
10/2018
oekom verlag
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Persons
Editor
Frank Trentmann is a Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and also at the Consumer Society Research Centre, University of Helsinki. His book "Empire of Things" was awarded the Austrian Science Book Prize in 2018.
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Content
- Work in progress
- List of Contents
- Introduction. Frank Trentmann, Anna Barbara Sum and Manuel Rivera
- The authority of experts - and its dialectic
- The rise and consolidation of experts: state power and 'public service'
- Globalisation and contestation
- Experts vs. experts: scientific disciplines, ideologies, and local contexts
- 'Above politics'? Knowledge and communication in an age of uncertainty
- References
- Learning to Scale: The Case of Victorian Britain. Fredrik Albritton Jonsson
- References
- The Social Life of Energy Futures: Experts, Consumers and Demand in the Golden Age of Modernisation, c. 1900-73. Rebecca Wright and Frank Trentmann
- Pragmatics of forecasting
- Social actors and communities of expertise
- Political ideologies and democratic futures
- Fragmented policy fields
- Users, lifestyles and social values
- Exhibiting futures
- Conclusions
- References
- From American South to Global South: The TVA's Experts and Expertise, 1933-98. Vincent Lagendijk
- Introduction
- Expertise and the TVA
- Transferring ideas and expertise
- TVA expertise and the UN
- TVA expertise and the World Bank
- Conclusion: Cracks in the concrete
- References
- What Makes an Expert? The View from UNRRA, 1943-47. Jessica Reinisch
- Experts and international organisations
- UNRRA's experts
- Expert vs. expert
- Experts and 'technical assistance'
- Conclusion
- References
- Contesting the Official Concept of Progress. John Toye
- Introduction
- Herbert Frankel on the official concept of progress
- C. P. Snow on rich and poor and Leavis's counterblast
- Fritz Schumacher, renegade economist
- The attack on science and experts once again
- The gospel of sustainability
- References
- The Strategy of Expertise: Albert O. Hirschman, Economics and 'Development' in the 1950s. Anna Barbara Sum
- 'Development' experts on the rise
- Different interests, one goal
- The report. The basis of a development program for Colombia (1950)
- A Chinese paper flower from Colombia
- Conclusions
- References
- From the Environment to the Anthropocene: A History of Changing Expertise 1948-2018. Libby Robin
- Introduction
- Science: From 'the environment' to environmental science 1948-62
- Activism: Rachel Carson and the 1970s social movements
- Policy: The precautionary and other principles for managing the environment 1980s-90s
- Justice: Twenty-first century expertise
- Coming full circle? The Anthropocene emerges between Earth system science, justice, and cultural concerns
- References
- The Future and the Environment: A History of Shared Expertise. Deborah Poskanzer
- Margaret Mead, twentieth-century futurist
- The rise of the forecasting state
- War for the future
- Expertise and the problem(s) of the future
- The future and the environment
- References
- Towards the German 'Energiewende': Ecological Problems and Scientific Expertise in West German Energy Policies during the 1970s and 1980s. Eva Oberloskamp
- Introduction
- The Advisory Council on the Environment (Umweltrat) and the Enquête-Commission "Future Nuclear Energy Policy"
- Central ecological problem areas in the energy sector
- Air pollution
- The nuclear waste problem and the risk of a major nuclear accident
- Problems of land use and landscape conservation
- Rival scientific solution approaches aimed at the political field
- Nuclear power as an eco-friendly technology
- Technological solutions to air pollution
- Energy conservation
- Renewable energies
- Accentuation of market forces
- The role of scientists in the conceptualization of the 'Energiewende' in West Germany
- References
- Masters of Uncertainty: Expectations and Expertise in International Finance Organisations after 1945. Laura Rischbieter
- The birth of international finance organisations as institutions of expertise
- Coping with uncertainty
- Muddling through
- New expertise, new futures, different decisions
- Conclusion
- References
- The Discursive Politics of Expertise: What Matters for Geoengineering Research and Governance? Stefan Schäfer and Sean Low
- Science, governance and the discursive politics of expertise
- The politics of aggregation and disaggregation: Making policies, or making worlds?
- The politics of framing: Legitimising and questioning objects of research and governance
- Conclusion: Recasting expertise?
- References
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- Index
