How Are Ideas Privatized? Neoliberal Regime of Knowledge and Its Appropriation of the Postmodern Weltbild
Abstract
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 univerzalizing concepts related to science, knowledge and edu-cation have been recaptured in the "new" vocabularies promoted by neo-liberal approaches.
While postmodernism dismissed many meanings previously attached to knowledge and education, it has also opened up the space for their unfolding in terms of their ex-change value. It is shown how neo-liberal approaches attacked this space and developed a systematic conception linking knowledge and education to the rationality of the market.
The "new" vocabulary clearly expresses univerzalizing claims as it is evident in the usage of concepts such as knowledge revolution, 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 both in terms of its educational and re-search activities.
In general, it is claimed that regressive effects of neo-liberal regime of knowledge on sociology cannot be diverted, as the overall academic, institutional and material context now under construction by the "new" knowledge ideology does not overlap with intellectual claims on which sociology was founded. The possible dissipation of sociology into applied social studies and the changing relation of sociology and its publics are also discussed.