The Bad Expert: Turning Points in Expertise Cultures

• In Event: Unpacking Expertise - III: Boundaries, Technologies, & Translation

Abstract

In this paper, we ask about the conditions under which cultures of expertise transform while expert techniques and objects remain consistent. We focus on two cases in which participants narrate and perform a new culture of expertise into being by constructing a “bad expert," a reviled or dangerous figure of scientific credibility gone wrong. We show that a key mechanism in the construction of expertise cultures is the use of “antithesis performances,” which are performances of scientific and professional credibility that rely on telling stories about a scientific enemy or ostracized Other. Through enrolling the figure of the bad expert and performing his antithesis, actors help generate turning points in expertise cultures, allowing new forms of expertise to emerge. These new forms of expertise are tied to historically contingent political contexts. In order to examine the bad expert as a resource for reconfiguring cultures of expertise, we use two case studies: 1) feminist therapeutic expertise related to domestic violence; and 2) the revival of psychedelic medicine. In so doing, we make a case for linking the jurisdictional model of expertise (from the sociology of professions) with the network model of expertise (from science and technology studies): attending to expertise cultures sheds light on the role of narratives and performances in linking together expert domains while also generating new boundaries around credibility.

Authors

• Paige Sweet, Harvard University

• Danielle Giffort, St. Louis College of Pharmacy