Savoir et ordre social

Abstract

The concept of knowledge society has been invented by the social sciences in order to describe perspectives of modern societies. Nowadays the concept circulates increasingly in the political, educational, and economic field and in the media and has already crossed-over the geographical boundaries to which it had been applied first. Taking knowledge society as a representation serving to interpret and shape social practices, the paper outlines from an interdisciplinary perspective academic debates on the concepts and on notions of knowledge. The paper argues that certain paradigms of social progress and of science as inherent in knowledge society prevent « users » of the concept from considering contesting notions of knowledge, increasing forms of incoherent knowledge, and the accelerating devaluation of knowledge.