79-753 Expertise, Public Policy and Governance in the Modern World
12 units, Carnegie Mellon University
This course will examine the emergence of scientific and technical expertise as a key component of governance, law, and daily life in the modern world. It will focus both on how individuals and groups formed their identities as experts and how decisionmakers, competing actors, and ordinary citizens relied upon or challenged these constructions. We will begin with a brief introduction to the core theoretical concepts of expertise, objectivity, power, professionalization, trust and witnessing. We will then cover a variety of topics, including the growth of a class of expert statisticians, engineers, and economists to advise rapidly expanding bureaucracies in the 18th and 19th centuries efforts by scientists and physicians to control human reproduction, and improve public health, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the role of scientists and development specialists in reformation of agriculture and rural life from the 1930s to the 1970s the rise of various forms of expertise around environmental issues since the 1960s and finally, the increasing influence of algorithms and autonomous decisionmakers in our lives. These topics will be examined from a variety of geographic contexts. Requirements for this course include a research paper that relates to the students existing scholarly interests, producing weekly reflections on the assigned readings, consistent attendance, and regular participation in class discussions.
Prerequisites: none listed
Courseweave needs JavaScript to show sections, workloads and planning tools.