The New Production of Governing Knowledge

Abstract

This article draws on critical discourse analysis (CDA) to explore the extent to which there is an interdependence between new governing forms, often characterised as ‘post-bureaucratic’ and new knowledge forms, that are often described in terms of ‘mode 2’ knowledge – that is, knowledge that combines the academy, the state and the private sector in co-production. The discussion is based on the analysis of a large number of policy texts concerned with education research as well as scrutiny of academic literature on research policy in England from 1945 to the present. Much recent policy and academic discourse, we suggest, characterises new know- ledge forms as socially-responsive, and as potentially democratising knowledge, because of their apparent interactive, iterative, problem-focused and trans-disciplinary character. We sug- gest that such an analysis is insufficiently attentive to the discourse of the knowledge economy, and the related (discursive) turn in new knowledge production towards governing knowledge.