The Co-determination of Knowledge and Social Organisation

The chapter argues that social organisation and socially organised knowledge claims codetermine each other. Following Max Scheler (2013) , it suggests that the dominant types of social organisation and the kinds of subjectivity associated with them shape the form (even more than the content) of knowledge, filtering the types of knowledge claims which are socially acceptable or influential. Conversely, the most prestigious forms of knowledge in any society tend to legitimise the dominant types of social organisation and support their reproduction. The chapter goes on to argue that, since in hypermodern societies we predominantly inhabit a socially constructed environment whose dynamics derive from socially organised knowledge claims more than from influences exogenous to human activity, the co-determination of knowledge and social organisation is more complete than in any previous society. This gives unprecedented power to the adjudicators and manipulators of socially organised knowledge claims to legislate the life-world of individuals, and, among all forms of contemporary knowledge, the most influential are those which have evolved a symbiotic relationship with the requirements of large-scale organisations and bureaucratic-managerial techniques of governance.