Steve Fuller: What Does It Mean to Live in a Time of ‘Customized’ Knowledge Production?

The research program of Social Epistemology is embedded into the tradition of the Sociology of Knowledge of Karl Mannheim and tries to indicate the role of social embeddedness of knowledge producers. Hence, it questions the motives and intentions of producing knowledge and considers the fact that “no knowledge producer can fully predict and/or control how his research will be used by others in their research” (Fuller, 2002, S. 15) and “that any knowledge producer is relatively free to tailor other knowledge claims to his specific research situation” (ebd., p. 15). The lecture, held by Steve Fuller, one of the main protagonists in this field since the 1980s, aims at an identification of the societal relevance of these implications, which address students, scientists, entrepreneurs as well as citizens who are all in charge of coping with pieces of knowledge in their everyday life, which they have to evaluate in certain contexts.