The movement of epistemic sites away from public institutions and toward powerful private epistemic centers; the growing packaging of expertise in commodity-like forms; and the ways in which counter-expertise must increasingly pass through market-aligned evidentiary cultures.
I have very much enjoyed writing this piece with @uribejuanita.bsky.social and @montesruiz.bsky.social. We are delighted to be contributing the 20th Anniversary issue of International Political Sociology, a journal which has been an academic home and a crucial forum for exchanges for us.
Juanita Uribe
In the article, we call for a more substantive engagement with the political-economic conditions that shape knowledge-making in global politics. We argue that this lens helps identify three important shifts:
To understand, and perhaps resist, the transformation of public problems into investment ventures, we need to examine morality not as a force external to capitalism, but as one of the languages through which capitalism renews itself.
Increasingly, problems become global priorities not only when they are urgent or morally compelling, but when they can also be framed as investment opportunities, spaces for innovation, and solutions that benefit multiple stakeholders.
Malnutrition is a telling case. Long associated with charity, it might seem like the last place to look for a “win-win” opportunity. Yet after the 2008 crisis, it gained prominence on the global agenda by being recast through a new vocabulary of productivity, returns, partnership, and shared value.
Very glad to have contributed to International Political Sociology's 20th Anniversary Special Issue with a paper on the political-economy of expertise, co-authored with Annabelle Littoz-Monnet and Leandro Montes Ruiz.
academic.oup.com/ips/article/...
I argue that we need a moral economy lens to understand this shift. Such a lens helps us see how public duty and private gain, once in tension, are increasingly brought into alignment in contemporary global politics, especially through the language of public-private partnership.
My RIPE paper “The Moral Economy of Global Priorities” now has an assigned volume and issue!
Are global problems really “win-win” opportunities?
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
With Felipe Jaramillo, we have just published a summary with
@mybisa.bsky.social of our article in the @risjnl.bsky.social, 'Epistemic Inertia in Human Rights Expert Bodies', asking why bringing in more expert voices do not necessarily translate into more change.
www.bisa.ac.uk/articles/epi...
