Global in the Local, Local in the Global, 5 cr

In recent years, social scientists have been increasingly interested in scientization of societies and policymaking. As to why science expands, different explanations exist. Much of the existing literature emphasizes the practical value of science. In this tradition, it is argued that science expands and is frequently referred to because it “works” and provides functional advantages in explaining the world and designing policies. Another explanation emphasizes the role of scientists in the development. It is argued that science expands due to the interests of scientist themselves and the scientific organizational system. According to this logic, scientists perpetuate their own necessity to justify their professional standing, hence encouraging further sponsorship of their activities and social status. The third explanation sees expansion as built into the nature of scientific activity itself. Science is seen as reflecting a natural human curiosity and creating endless new arenas for this quality. Science thus endogenously feeds itself, providing agendas and incentives for autonomous expansion. Neoinstitutional world society scholarship rejects the idea of science holding instrumental utility or the power of any interest groups to independently enhance the authority of science in the contemporary societies. Instead, the theory attributes the rise and expansion of science to the emergence and diffusion of world culture. The theory asserts, the culture of world society encompasses norms and knowledge shared across state boundaries, most of them rooted in 19th-century Western culture, but subsequently globalized and born along by the infrastructure of world society. As a shared cultural frame extending far beyond states or nations, world culture as the culture of world society constitutes us as actors, with the result that we all find the same arguments and discourses appealing. One of these globally shared premises is a firm belief in science and rationality, which is why actors substantiate their claims by referring to empirical evidence and to the authority of science. This, according to the scholarship, has spawned numerous scientific organizations and expert communities tasked with jointly pursuing the interests of world society – that is, of solving ostensible problems on behalf of individual actors. Consequently, policymakers are consulted about the functional requirements of modern society, organizations and individuals, thereby justifying the assumption that there is basically only one correct, or research-based, way to organize society and its institutions. In recent years, public attitudes towards science have started to decline currently evident in the emergence of anti-scientific populist discourses and counter knowledge movements around the world.

In this course, we will discuss existing literature on scientization, science-denialism, and policymaking. We will particularly approach these phenomena from the perspective of neoinstitutionalist world society theory emphasizing the cultural authority of science in contemporary world polity. This viewpoint will be complemented by alternative theories such as epistemic governance scholarship that emphasises the role of individuals in the process in which the authority of science accumulates or crumbles.

The course consists of five lectures each of which discusses the role of science in contemporary societies from a different angle. The themes of lectures will be further debated in intensive seminars in which we will read relevant literature related to the topics.