The Hollowing-out of the Public Sphere or Its Re-spatialisation? A Topological Probe in the Case of Expert Advice to the Education System
Roč.22,č.1(2025)
The Role of Expertise in the Public Sphere in CEE Countries
This paper focuses on the modern technocratic idea of independent science advising the independent public and consequential criticism of the hollowing-out of the public sphere by expertocracy. Going beyond this misleading diagnosis, I focus on current places where the public sphere is produced using social topology and the notion of a sociotechnical imaginary that is publicly performed. Through an exploratory probe into a current facet of the ambiguous relationship between the public and expertise, I analysed the contexts, paths, and practices of a normative and expert document published annually by a Czech NGO to bring to the fore the difference between expertise as navigation to public debate, expertise as creating one’s own public space, and expertise as a normative performance. All these forms of relationship between expertise and the public, in a way, transgress the modern sociotechnical imaginary of the direct effect of expert knowledge on public issues.
expertise; public sphere; technocracy; audit culture; social topology; relational sociology; education
Abbott, Andrew. 2016. Processual Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Allen, John. 2016. Topologies of Power. Abingdon: Routledge.
Ansell, Christopher and Robert Geyer. 2017. “‘Pragmatic Complexity’ a New Foundation for Moving beyond ‘Evidence-Based Policy Making’?” Policy Studies 38(2): 149–167.
Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2001. The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Benjamin, Andrew. 2015. Towards a Relational Ontology: Philosophy’s Other Possibility. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bertsou, Eri and Daniele Caramani. 2021. The Technocratic Challenge to Democracy. edited by E. Bertsou and D. Caramani. London: Routledge.
Bertsou, Eri and Giulia Pastorella. 2017. “Technocratic Attitudes: A Citizens’ Perspective of Expert Decision-Making.” West European Politics 40(2): 430–458.
Biesta, Gert. 2007. “Why ‘What Works’ Won’t Work: Evidence-Based Practice and the Democratic Deficit in Educational Research.” Educational Theory 57(1): 1–22.
Brenner, Neil and Stuart Elden. 2009. “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory.” International Political Sociology 3(4): 353–377.
Collins, Harry. 2015. “Can We Teach People What Science Is Really Like?” Science Education 99(6): 1049–1054.
Depaepe, Marc and Paul Smeyers. 2008. “Educationalization as an Ongoing Modernization Process.” Educational Theory 58(4): 379–389.
Dvořák, Tomáš and Jitka Wirthová. 2023. “Political and Public Engagement as Topological Boundary-Making: A Critique of ‘Deficit’ Approaches in Post-Communist CEE.” Space and Polity (First published online).
Harvey, Penelope. 2012. “The Topological Quality of Infrastructural Relation: An Ethnographic Approach.” Theory, Culture & Society 29(5): 76–92.
Hirt, Sonia. 2012. Iron Curtains: Gates, Suburbs and Privatization of Space in the Post-Socialist City. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Holmwood, John and Jan Balon. 2018. “Afterword: Monstrous Markets: Neo-Liberalism, Populism and the Demise of the Public University.” Pp. 303–321 in Science and the politics of openness: here be monsters, edited by B. Nerlich, S. Hartley, and S. Raman. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Jacobsson, Kerstin, and Steven Saxonberg. 2013. Beyond NGO-Ization: The Development of Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate.
Jasanoff, Sheila, and Sang-Huyn Kim. 2015. Dreamscapes of Modernity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Krastev, Ivan. 2017. After Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lavalette, M. and Iain Ferguson. 2007. “Democratic Language and Neo-Liberal Practice: The Problem with Civil Society.” International Social Work 50(4): 447–459.
Levinson, Bradley A. U., Margaret Sutton, and Teresa Winstead. 2009. “Education Policy as a Practice of Power Theoretical Tools, Ethnographic Methods, Democratic Options.” Educational Policy 23(6): 767–795.
Lubienski, Christopher. 2019. “Advocacy Networks and Market Models for Education.” Pp. 69–86 in Researching the Global Education Industry: Commodification, the Market and Business Involvement. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lubienski, Christopher, Janelle Scott, and Elizabeth DeBray. 2011. “The Rise of Intermediary Organizations in Knowledge Production, Advocacy, and Educational Policy.” Teachers College Record (January 2011).
Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: SAGE.
Müller, Karel B. 2007. “Nevládní Neziskové Organizace - Hrozba Či Požehnání?” Politologická Revue / Czech Political Science Review (2): 155–168.
Popkewitz, Thomas S. 2020. The Impracticality of Practical Research: A History of Contemporary Sciences of Change That Conserve. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Power, Michael. 1997. The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Power, Michael. 2000. “The Audit Society — Second Thoughts.” International Journal of Auditing 4(1): 111–119.
Prior, Lindsay. 2008. “Repositioning Documents in Social Research.” Sociology 42(5): 821–836.
Saari, Antti. 2012. “The Map Is the Territory: Educational Evaluation and the Topology of Power.” European Educational Research Journal 11(4): 586–600.
Sheller, Mimi and John Urry. 2003. “Mobile Transformations of ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ Life.” Theory, Culture & Society 20(3): 107–125.
Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A 38(2): 207–226.
Slačálek, Ondřej and Eva Svobodová. 2017. “Professionalised ‘Civil Society’ vs. Grassroots ‘Uncivil Society’? The ‘Little Czech’ 20 Years Later.” Socio.Hu (Special issue): 23–52.
Stehr, Nico and Marian Adolf. 2018. Je Vědění Moc? Poznatky o Vědění. Praha: Slon.
Tavory, Iddo. 2020. “Interviews and Inference: Making Sense of Interview Data in Qualitative Research.” Qualitative Sociology 43(4): 449–465.
Turner, Stephen P. 2015. The Politics of Expertise. New York: Routledge.
Wirthová, Jitka. 2019. “How to Write a Proof: Patterns of Justification in Strategic Documents for Educational Reform.” Teorie Vědy/Theory of Science 41(2): 307–335.
Wirthová, Jitka. 2020. “Legitimizace vzdělávacích reforem: Strategické dokumenty a konkurenční režimy vědění [Legitimising Educational Reforms: Strategic Documents and Competing Knowledge Regimes].” Sociologický Časopis /Czech Sociological Review 56(4): 491–521.
Wirthová, Jitka. 2022. “Patterns of Actorship in Legitimation of Educational Changes: The Role of Transnational and Local Knowledge.” European Educational Research Journal 21(4): 658–679.
Tato práce je licencována pod Mezinárodní licencí Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 .
Copyright © 2025 Jitka Wirthová