Beyond evidence versus truthiness: toward a symmetrical approach to knowledge and ignorance in policy studies
Beyond evidence versus truthiness: toward a symmetrical approach to knowledge and ignorance in policy studies
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超越证据与真实性：在政策研究中对知识和无知采取对称的方法
作者：
K. Paul;Christian Haddad
在欧洲和北美建立的自由民主国家中，目前的政治发展从根本上质疑真理、知识和政治之间的规范关系。无论被贴上“后真相”还是真实性的标签，评论家们都哀叹无知和无知作为重要政治力量的肆意传播和部署。在本文中，我们讨论无知的战略层面编织无知社会学的见解与政策科学的方法。通过三个经验的小插曲，我们证明，无知是超过知识的反面或仅仅是缺乏：它是一个构成性的特征的政策过程，因此不是唯一的症状，当前的时代。最后，我们主张所谓的对称方法，在这种方法中，无知受到的关注与知识在政策科学中历史上受到的关注相同。为了充分揭示塑造政策过程的不同形式的无知，政策学者必须磨练他们的“不可知认识论敏感性”，以科普当前的挑战，并推进民主的政策科学。
Current political developments in established liberal democracies in both Europe and North America have fundamentally called into question the normative relations between truth, knowledge and politics. Whether labeled “posttruth” or truthiness, commentators lament the willful spread and deployment of nonknowledge and ignorance as important political forces. In this paper, we discuss ignorance in its strategic dimension by weaving together insights from the sociology of ignorance with a policy-scientific approach. By means of three empirical vignettes, we demonstrate that ignorance is more than the flipside of knowledge or merely its lack: it is a constitutive feature of the policy process and is thus not uniquely symptomatic of the current era. We conclude by arguing for what we call a symmetrical approach in which ignorance receives the same quality of attention that knowledge has historically received in the policy sciences. To make fully visible the different forms of ignorance that shape policy processes, policy scholars must hone their “agnoto-epistemological sensibilities” to cope with the current challenges and advance a policy science for democracy.