Sociology of Expertise

Aujourd'hui la démocratie participative ne s'affiche plus seule-ment dans les discours, elle s'incarne dans des règles juridiques, des dispositifs participatifs, des services administratifs, des échanges marchands, etc. Les militants d'hier sont pour l'essen-tiel concurrencés par des professionnels (agents publics, consultants , salariés de grandes entreprises d'aménagement) qui vivent de l'offre de participation et ont, à ce titre, intérêt à l'entretenir. La demande de participation tend désormais à devenir la finalité et l'alibi de ce que les auteures qualifient de marché de la démo-cratie participative. En s'intéressant à la construction savante de l'impératif partici-patif, aux luttes d'expertises professionnelles qui l'ont accompa-gnée tout comme à la sociologie et aux pratiques concrètes de ces acteurs auxquels les autorités publiques ont confié la charge d'animer, d'organiser ou encore d'évaluer des dispositifs parti-cipatifs, cet ouvrage rappelle combien la qualité démocratique ne peut à elle seule expliquer le développement des politiques participatives en France. Les dynamiques de professionnalisa-tion y ont joué un rôle majeur. C'est ce que montre cet ouvrage qui éclaire également les logiques sociales et politiques de la sophistication croissante des technologies de gouvernement et plus largement l'ambivalence politique du tournant participatif contemporain. Remise en cause sur le plan symbolique par la promotion du citoyen-expert et des formes participatives de légi-timation politique, la division du travail politique entre le profes-sionnel et le profane semble en pratique plus solide que jamais. Alice Mazeaud est maître de conférences en science politique à l'université de La Rochelle et chercheuse au Centre d'études Juridiques et Politiques (CEJEP). Magali Nonjon est maître de conférences en science politique à Sciencespo Aix et chercheuse au laboratoire Croyance, Histoire, Espace et Régulation (CHERPA). Elle est également chercheuse associée au Laboratoire Biens Normes et Contrat (LBNC).

Sociologists exhibit growing interest in the politics of expertise. Analyses of evaluations, economic paradigms, blueprints, censuses, policy instruments and the like have come to occupy an important position in recent research. While much of this emergent scholarship has drawn on historical methods, a growing number of scholars have turned to ethnography. A close reading of this work reveals that ethnographers have actively tailored rather than passively transposed ethnography to the study of expertise. Departing from traditional conceptions of ethnography, these works exhibit growing attentiveness to movement, mediation, and materials. We argue that this retooling of ethnography is not merely a response to empirical realities but rather stems, at least in part, from the influence of science and technology studies, specifically Actor-Network Theory. This case provides the occasion to make a broader point about ethnography as a ‘theory/method package’: theory does not only shape what ethnographers study, but also how they conduct research.

From a social perspective, the "expert" is an ascription. The kernel or expected value attached to this ascription is the specific knowledge we might share, or specific service we might receive, from the expert. The criteria for considering someone an "expert" vary, from qualifications (e.g., "certified public accountant"), proven experience (e.g., "10 years' experience in turnaround management") or demonstrated performance (e.g., "one of the top-ten tennis players in the world") to roles within an organization (e.g., "responsible for our business in Asia"). Depending on the context, we speak of "expert drivers" as well as "court-appointed experts" or simply "the experts."

Our chapter consists of three parts that draw from different disciplines. From a sociological point of view, expertise has long been professionalized, thus experts are professionals: "Professionalism has been the main way of institutionalizing expertise in industrialized countries" (Abbott, 1988, p. 323). Consequently, the first and main part of this chapter introduces professionalism as an organized and differentiated form of knowledge-based work in current societies. In the second part, we focus on science as the main reference system for knowledge, e.g., for professional knowledge, accepted in current societies. Drawing from the history of science, we depict the evolution of the role of scientists, which itself became professionalized in the 20th century. In the third part, we abstract from professionals and scientists, and reflect on expert roles in general, based on research from social psychology. This results in thinking about relative — even everyday — experts (beyond professions and science), as well as rethinking expertise as a professionalized competence in differentiated domains that display more or less (self-)organization of experts and their communities.

We would like to invite you to submit a paper for a virtual panel at the AAA Annual Meeting, November 9-12, Seattle, WA.

Panel Title:
Living biomedical uncertainties: Patients’ networks of care and obligation beyond expert knowledge

Organizers:
Zeynel Gul, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University

Başak Can, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Koc University

Panel Abstract:
Anthropological studies of biomedical uncertainties (chronic illnesses, occupational and environmental diseases, infectious diseases, and so on) examined people’s fluid and unstable encounters with illnesses, diagnoses, medical institutions along with their familial and societal networks of care and obligation. These studies showed the limits of expert knowledge, questioned biomedicine’s promises in diagnosis, cure, and prevention when a host of unknowns and indeterminacies pervade into the ecology of diseases. They further documented how the very (biomedical) expert knowledge and practices themselves might be implicated in intensification or modification of uncertainties in people’s everyday lives. For example, expert knowledge might contribute to the making of “at-risk subjectivities” (Gammeltoft 2013, Jain 2013); the suffering of minorities can be denied with the claims of “uncertain” evidence (Rouse 2009), or scientific practice confound the impact and cause of environmental exposures or diseases (Lock 2014, Petryna 2013). However, critical analyses of authoritative expert knowledge and their multifaceted impacts rarely exhaust the realm of what is thinkable and actionable for ordinary people in the face of biomedical uncertainties. We ask: how do people’s responses to biomedical uncertainties transform and are influenced by gendered, kin and cultural networks of care, obligation, and reciprocity? For this panel, we invite papers that explore how people with various illnesses and disabilities deal with biomedical uncertainties within the broader context of their everyday lives and struggle to make their lives viable. Questions we invite for further exploration include:

·      How do communities and individuals respond to biomedical uncertainties in expert discourses? How do uncertainties -some of which are strategically manufactured as in the cases of environmental diseases- impact and get informed by the existing social fault-lines across race, class, and gender?

·      What kind of practices of self-care (bodily or otherwise), and care for others are mobilized to counter the impacts of uncertainties? What are the local moral worlds arising from living and being with others when facing several indeterminacies?

·      How do uncertainties give expression to the texture of care within the households of those with chronic conditions? How do social, moral, and cultural networks mark the everyday tactics of individuals suffering from chronic diseases? 

·      How can we think of the ways financial capabilities of households are impacted by the health-related uncertainties? How do regimes of work and health intersect or contradict each other in responding to conditions where one’s ability to work is ambivalent due to the health-related hazards at workplaces?

·      How do bureaucratic and institutional uncertainties define practices, politics, and ethics of waiting for treatment, documentation, prescription? How do bureaucracies contribute to the production and management of uncertainties around chronic diseases and disabilities?

Call for Abstracts:
We invite interested panelists to submit a paper title, abstract (250 words max), current affiliation and contact info to Zeynel Gul (John Hopkins University) zgul2@jhu.edu or Basak Can (Koc University) basakcan@ku.edu.tr by April 2, 2022. Decisions about acceptance of abstracts will be emailed by April 4, 2022. Please note that the panel will convene virtually.

2022 AAA Annual Meeting information:
https://annualmeeting.americananthro.org/


Thank you and best regards,

Basak & Zeynel