Book ID: CBB193528078

The Crisis of Expertise (2019)

unapi

Eyal, Gil (Author)


Polity Press


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: 208
Language: English

In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change, and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other. The current mistrust of experts is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB193528078/

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Authors & Contributors
David Demortain
Federico Brandmayr
Li, Fabiana
Haines, Monamie Bhadra
Noah Morritt
Martini, Carlo
Concepts
Expertise
Authority of science
Authorities; experts
Controversies and disputes
Science and politics
Political activists and activism
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
Modern
20th century
Places
United States
Peru
Italy
Canada
India
Institutions
United States. President's Science Advisory Committee
United States. Environmental Protection Agency
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