| Knowledge as we know it from the famous phrase of Francis Bacon –
coined some four hundred years ago at the beginning of the period of modernity
and capitalism – is power. Using different frames of reference – social theory,
social policy and social history – to learn about the history of the knowledge
question, we have to study scholarly works like Toulmin’s Cosmopolis: the hidden
agenda of modernity (1990), Burke’s A Social History of Knowledge (1997)
and Kintzinger’s Wissen wird Macht. Bildung im Mittelalter (2003) (Knowledge
becomes power. Bildung in medieval times). One strand of these discourses,
today, we find in Foucault’s talk of ‘truth regimes’; another in Chomsky’s ‘pedagogy
of lies’ (2000). This shows that the knowledge question has not gone away, but
accompanies us in societies and education. Moreover, knowledge, we are told by
the press, politicians and institutions like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development, the European Union, the United Nations Educational, Cultural
and Scientific Organisation, and researchers, is much more relevant than ever
before in the history of mankind. It is maintained that there should be a real
development to a new type of society, the knowledge society. Therefore we have
to deal with the problem of the ‘knowledge gap’, resulting from what is called
the ‘digital divide’ (Castells, 2002). This is not only a problem for education
but for social policy, too. And we have to deal with the problem of knowledge
and international economic competitiveness – it may be that this is really grounded
in (some) processes of globalisation. It could be that there is a transformation
within the capitalist society, from Fordism to post-Fordism (Jessop 2005), to
be reflected by sociological analysis (Therborn, 2000). There are many weighty
allegations that do not admit easy answers. But it seems clear that social scientists
and educators face some new challenges connected with questions of the status
and the state of the art of knowledge today. This requires differentiations like
the following, aiming at knowledge and society, knowledge production, knowledge
distribution, knowledge and education, and knowledge and capitalism (cf. Postone,
1996; Peters, 2003; Gorz, 2004; Kincheloe, 2004; Murphy, 2005). In dealing
with knowledge capitalism the starting point is the question of the relevance
of (types of) knowledge in processes of social and economic production, reproduction
and change. On the one hand, this includes various discussions about the meaning
of labour and technological processes, especially with respect to the split between
intellectual and manual labour and the consequences of forms of subsumption (formal
or real) of labour under capital – as Marx put it. What is at stake is first of
all the conception of labour, the status of labour in present social developments.
If labour does not only embody metabolism with nature, but rather is also included
in social reproduction processes, this then, on the other hand, leads to the question
of social organisation of labour (and knowledge, too) and therefore to problems
of the definition of labour, alienation, labour satisfaction, the indifference
of workers. There are at least two lines of discussion that deal with this
view of the problem in a committed manner. The first is the ‘labour process debate’,
within which the ‘nature’ of labour and technology is dealt with under capitalistic
conditions. It directs attention to the meaning of control, agreement and resistance
in the scope of the capitalist mode of production, the capitalist determined labour
process (Thompson, 1983; Casey, 1995). To complement this Anglo-Saxon debate one
may look at the contributions from a German discussion about the development of
the labour process, which focus on the term ‘new production concepts’ (Kern &
Schumann 1984). The object of both debates consists of the analysis of the nature
of labour as well as today’s social relationships, which are referred to or follow
from this and are dominated by technology, science and knowledge. Interpretations
of the results of these analyses are strongly contradictory. The deciding difference
here lies in the evaluation of the results of the restructuring of former Fordist
production processes; in their consequences for labour is it (only) about the
substitution of Taylorism and its control techniques with more modern control
techniques, or does this development show a real growth in the area of dealing
with and organising ‘production intelligence’ (Kern &Schumann 1984)? Having
studied many of these controversial ideas, I am interested in the question of
what could be good reasons to argue that an emancipating change is possible and
what could be good reasons not to consider this as a doctrine when labour, technology,
knowledge and educational processes are placed in a historical systematic relationship
together. In the future, changes in the labour process, and new technical
and organising demands that are put on the economy will be able to support the
radical spread of democratic principles (Bowles & Gintis 1987, p. 179).
As Bowles & Gintis (1987, p. 213) put it, ‘Democracy can only survive
by expanding to cover areas of social life now dominated by prerogatives of capitalist
property’. This perspective must be supported, however, by rising awareness of
the conditions of social life as well as a new form of technological competence
whose core exists in the critique of technocracy and alienation. Therefore Kern
& Schumann (1984) demand in very clear language in their foundational study,
‘The end of the division of labour’, firstly, a spread of currently needed production
intelligence, i.e. generalisation of knowledge, and secondly, a politicisation
of this need. The fact that this is historically nothing new is referred
to by Heydorn in his view of education theory and production learning (eighteenth
century): An educational concept is only as progressive as the powers
that it represents and, at the same time, leads to a direct political struggle
to change society. This is the only way the education opportunities remain current
and education becomes an important moment in the argument. Education for its own
sake is not capable of very much; it does not have much common sense. The framework
of production learning received its liberating opportunity through a confident
middle class prepared for a revolution that was able to temporarily join with
the rising proletariat. The moment this requirement was no longer valid, production
learning turned into its opposite and stabilised the existing power. Without transcending
categories, without the formal, abstract clamp on material things, a coordinate
system of knowledge, without the direct struggle, production learning became a
means of keeping people’s feet on the ground like a pig. ([1973] 1980, p. 109,
trans. J. Farrar) Thus, developed stances on education theory and social
sciences have accordingly, for the time being, the indispensability of consciousness
education that holds an awareness of history and the present in its substance
and is justified by the fact that knowledge and experience determine the beginning
of the struggle against existing living conditions, and contemporary everyday
life. Thus one may say, ‘The new revolutionary subject, which is the only focus,
is a knowledgeable subject’ (Heydorn, [1970] 1979, p. 334). This could be
the common contested ground with knowledge capitalism as it is depicted by Gorz
in his ‘Knowledge, value, and capital’ (2004). To overcome the valorisation process
of capital for which a new mode of knowledge is necessary, critical knowledge
is necessary, too. The production and distribution of this mode of critical social
knowledge is the challenge for educational theory and praxis. The articles
in this issue tackle questions of knowledge, knowledge production, knowledge society
and knowledge capitalism in different ways, mediating these with questions of
education and professional action. In times of marketisation and commodification
of education it seems necessary to revitalise an educational approach aware of
the political and societal embeddedness of educational theory and praxis. Therefore
this issue has two general socio-theoretical and socio-political articles, by
Heinz Sünker and Armin Bernhard, an article by Joe Kincheloe analysing the (mis)use
of knowledge in educational psychology and an article by Fabian Kessl & Hans-Uwe
Otto showing the relevance of the knowledge debate for a critical theory of educational
professions. In the same vein Trond Solhaug contributes an article on political
knowledge and its place in democratic education, and the final two articles are
related to the special issue focus on higher education: Michael Peters, perhaps
more optimistically than most and certainly in a utopian spirit, discusses the
possibilities of higher education contributing to a renewed and differently theorised
form of development (both at home and internationally) and Maarten Simons &
Jan Masschelein provide a searching examination of the concept of ‘educational
quality’ from a broadly Foucauldian perspective, emphasising how the present obsession
with quality is part of a wider governmental regime. The issue also carries an
article by Heinz Sünker focusing on the ideology of the Volk community
in National Socialism and an extended review by Michael Peters of David Harvey’s
A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Heinz
Sünker
Wuppertal University, Germany References
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