2 - Re-conceptualising the Enmeshment of Knowledge and Politics

Summary

Chapter 2 develops the analytical framing of the book. While informed by the concept of co-production in its focus on the tangled relationship between knowledge and politics, it also engages critically with it for its inability to capture phenomena of agency, conflict and change. The chapter argues that the co-legitimation of knowledge and politics is not given; rather it is stabilsed through specific mechanisms. Ideational alignment refers to the coming together of all actors around certain ways of seeing problems. Orchestration refers to the way some governance actors try to orchestrate the production of expert knowledge in order to make it more favourable to their agendas. Calibration refers to the way experts themselves may calibrate the knowledge they produce, in order to meet the needs of the policy process. In a final section it focuses on the specificities of bioethical expertise, shedding light on its double-edged authority and the way its mobilisation plays a unique role in the pre-emption or taming of conflicts on scientific and technological developments.