The changing of expertise

Are the experts then just a relic, and hold no more than just a rhetorical position in contemporary “postmodern” times, based on obsolete notions of objective possessed knowledge? From the “technological populist” soapbox it would be easy to make such a claim. However, if we remember that expertise can be positioned within the broader framework of “knowledge-work”, as was done in the preceding Chapter, we can also argue otherwise: expertise is very much present and salient in our societies – but “what is expertise”

is indeed transforming.

The answer to “what is expertise” depends on one’s ontological premises. If we take a purely relativist and social constructionist view, then expertise as something substantial does not exist. It exists only in relation with others - that is if others attribute expertise to the person or not. This is implied in e.g. Alvesson’s (2004) view on knowledge work when he stresses that knowledge without someone acknowledging it as knowledge does not amount to much, and that expertise requires the social relations within which knowledge workers make the

50 ”Kyllä kansa tietää”, ”The people know”, is a popular phrase used first by a colourful Finnish politician Veikko Vennamo in the 1960’s, made again popular by the populist party Perussuomalaiset.

51”Knowledge politics” is a concept in political economy used to deal with questions such as regulation of knowledge, governance models of knowledge etc. (Stehr & Meja, 2005).

symbolic claim to expertise. Knorr Cetina (1999, 2005) has used the constructivist lens to study “how sciences make science” especially in laboratory settings, and similarly argues that all scientific work is embedded within transscientific fields of interaction and discourse and thus the resulting knowledge should be treated as being socially relative.

In contrast, Collins & Evans (2007) take a realist position, and aim to (still) treat expertise as the real and substantive possession of groups of experts and that individuals acquire real and substantive expertise through their membership in these groups. “Acquiring expertise is, therefore, a social process – a matter of socialization into the practices of an expert group – and expertise can be lost if time is spent away from the group. Acquiring expertise is, however, more than attribution by a social group even though acquiring it is a social process;

socialization takes time and effort on the part of the putative expert… Under our treatment, then, individuals may or may not possess expertise independently of whether others think they possess expertise.” (Ibid. 3.) To advance the realist view on expertise, Collins & Evans have created a “periodic table of expertise” that categorizes the various types of expertise that are used when individuals make judgments on any given topics. The classification distinguishes between general dispositions of expertise, ubiquitous expertise we all have living in our particular societies, different types of specialist expertise as well as “meta-expertise” (expertise such as mine when writing this dissertation). Collins has continued this argument in a later book (2014), and its simplified point is that there are specialists, who have gained their knowledge on a subject “second-hand” from media, documentaries or reading primary sources such as journal articles; and specialists, whose knowledge comes first-hand through training with other experts, or through the social interaction and immersion with experts on a given field.⁵²

Worthy a mention is the concept of “interactional expertise”: according to Collins and Evans, this is expertise that is constituted by a thorough going grasp of the language of a specialism or subject area. Interactional experts cannot make a direct contribution to the discipline - they

52 Collins’ views have been criticized as being reminiscent of “scientism”. Collins & Evans (2007) respond to these claims, and defend their position as an attempt to create a new framework in order to discuss scientific knowledge as still having some normative status. Overall, Collins has put forth an extensive attempt to theorize on the sociology of scientific knowledge in his theory of the three waves in science studies: wave one being the traditional view on the legitimacy of science; second wave “exposed” science as a relativistic and political enterprise; and wave three being “Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE)”.

cannot for example carry out “experiments” as do the contributory experts (contributing directly to the body of knowledge) of the subject - but they have a genuine expertise that enables them to act as mediators. Specialist (science) journalists are the most common examples of this type of expertise.

Overall, Collins & Evans stress the importance of socialization emphasizes the development of complex tacit knowledge in social groups that only humans are capable of. This points us to notions of embodied (tacit) knowledge as being a key element in expertise and knowledge work in general. The centrality of this tacit knowledge and socialization is a strong counterargument to the “folk wisdom” view that argues that “distance least to enchantment”

(Collins & Evans 2007, 6). A similar type of socialization process has also been recognized in the communities-of-practice (CoP’s) –literature, introduced in Chapter 3.2.3: the “tightly knit” groups that have been practising together long enough to develop into a cohesive community with relationships of mutuality and shared understandings (Wenger 1998).

However, the views of Collins & Evans differ from the CoP –orientation in their ontological premises: knowledge development in CoP’s is regarded as being strongly practice-based, and assuming a strong similarity in the epistemological bases of its participants. The expert in a CoP is enculturated into the ways of the CoP, and in this sense the knowledge of experts is decentred and dispersed within the CoP, not so much being regarded as knowledge of the expert as an individual knower. (Lindkvist, 2005.) This is in stark contrast to the realist position taken by Collins & Evans.

Attempting to rise above these ontological debates (without wanting to diminish their foundational importance), I conclude the following: to be an expert in our times means not being able to rely on some specialist “Knowledge” or status it has previously provided⁵³. Research would indicate that it in fact means having skills and capabilities that are related to image-building, inter-personal skills, communicative abilities and persuasion tactics. In

53 Similar findings were reported by Björklund (2010, 517) in a study of product development projects’ success factors and knowledge-work within: ”Collaboration and cognitive‐motivational factors such as trust, attitude, and intrinsic motivation‐related issues formed the most common classes of discovered critical factors behind product development project success, along with the mediating categories of goal and autonomy‐related factors.

Furthermore, product development specific skills or knowledge accounted only for a small minority of the identified factors.”

addition, in order to gain the (if only rhetorical and symbolic) claim to expertise, the individual needs to have been extensively socialized within an “own” social community.