Citizen knowledge: markets, experts, and the infrastructure of democracy

Citizen Knowledge starts from the premise that knowledge is essential to the health of democracy.For 'members of a society' to 'jointly decide about its fate' they 'need to know what they are doing'.They need to know about political institutions, and those institutions need to draw on diverse forms of knowledge to frame effective policies.'Without knowledge, and processes for integrating it into decision-making, democratic self-rule cannot be but a sham ' (p. 1).This premise leads some to give up on democracy altogether, giving more power to experts in technocratic institutions, or devolving power to market mechanisms, or both.However, it leads Lisa Herzog to think more deeply about the social, ethical, and institutional conditions under which democracies can produce the knowledge they need.In particular, she argues for carefully rebalancing the relations between markets, experts, and democratic deliberation.Herzog begins in chapter 2 with an account of knowledge as socially embedded.Drawing on pragmatism and feminist epistemology, she argues that 'we cannot, need not, and should not think of knowledge as detachable from social processes' (p.36).This pragmatist approach emphasises the relation between knowledge and action.It is a mistake to think we first agree on the facts, and only then decide what to do.Knowledge is value-laden and entangled with practice.However, she insists, we must nonetheless hold on to an ideal of agreement on basic facts as a 'more or less "non-political" knowledge creation'.The shared recognition of factual truths is 'not a natural state', but is rather 'an outstanding social achievement, the result of careful institutional design, accompanied by the right ethos' (p.49).She describes the ethos and institutions needed to achieve this 'more or less "non-political" knowledge creation' in terms of 'epistemic infrastructures'.