Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(5): 713-734 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.5.120

How Are Ideas Privatised? The Neoliberal Regime of Knowledge and Its Appropriation of the Postmodern 'Weltbild'

Jan Balon
Institut sociologických studií, Fakulta sociálních věd UK, Praha

This essay is about the disappearance of postmodernism from the debates on the nature of science, conditions of knowledge, targets of higher education, and prospects of interdisciplinarity. It is argued that postmodern declarations of the end of ideological battles, together with the critiques of universalising concepts related to science, knowledge, and education, have been recaptured in 'new' vocabularies promoted by neoliberal approaches. While postmodernism dismissed many of the meanings previously attached to knowledge and education, it also opened up space to expand on them in terms of their exchange value. The essay shows how neoliberal approaches attacked this space and developed a systematic conception that links knowledge and education to the rationality of the market. The 'new' vocabulary clearly expresses universalising claims, as this is evident in the usage of such concepts as the knowledge revolution, the knowledge economy, public relevance, social impact, or excellence. This essay concludes with a discussion of how these tendencies are affecting sociology and its disciplinary identity in terms of both its educational and its research activities. In general, it is claimed that the regressive effects of the neoliberal regime of knowledge on sociology cannot be avoided, as the overall academic, institutional, and material context now being constructed by the 'new' knowledge ideology does not overlap with the intellectual claims on which sociology was founded. The essay also discusses the possible dissipation of sociology within applied social studies and the changing relation of sociology and its publics.

Keywords: postmodernism, neoliberalism, university, knowledge, sociology as a discipline

Published: October 1, 2014  Show citation

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Balon, J. (2014). How Are Ideas Privatised? The Neoliberal Regime of Knowledge and Its Appropriation of the Postmodern 'Weltbild'. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 50(5), 713-734. doi: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.5.120
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