"(European) integration theory, EU studies and the sociology of knowledge"

Rosamond, Ben. (2003) "(European) integration theory, EU studies and the sociology of knowledge". In: UNSPECIFIED, Nashville, TN. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

…EU studies-like any other area of inquiry-merits a “sociology of knowledge” treatment. The sociology of knowledge label tends to cover issues such as (a) the study of processes of growth and diffusion of knowledge within and beyond scientific communities; (b) the social systems of knowledge-generating communities-particularly in relation to (i) the (historically variable) organization of disciplines and (ii) the norms that these communities develop for evaluating the validity and admissibility of work (bound up obviously with Kuhn’s philosophy of science and the broader issue of how deviant/nonconformist work is treated); (c) the relationship between the manufacture of knowledge and wider social and political institutions; and (d) the relationship between knowledge, the manufacture of world views and the perpetration of particular interests. The aim of this paper is to think through some-but by no means all-of these questions as they apply to the study of the European Union, particularly-and in this case pretty much exclusively-in political science and International Relation treatments of the EU (the term EU Studies is used here as a shorthand). Its premise revolves around a basic claim about the importance of knowledge generation as a social process (like any other). This means, in simple terms, that our evaluation of academic work cannot be targeted solely upon its capacity (or otherwise) to conform to the real world.

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