Consultants and clients: Knowledge regimes

Abstract

This chapter presents a conceptualisation of ‘knowledge regimes’ to analyse the processes of power concerning ‘the who’ and the ‘why’ of the 4Cs during the rest of the book. First, consultants are positioned, and position themselves to be, ‘in the know’. This ‘knowingness’ is always located within wider contexts. Our particular focus on the 4Cs is on how, and in what ways, their knowledge is connected with matters of public policy and with capitalism. Second, our core argument concerns the modes and the power processes in knowledge production within the 4Cs. Our work involves investigating how the construction of public policies is intertwined with these ‘knowings’. Importantly, this book reveals some of the ‘close to practice activities’ that are affected by certain kinds of knowledge and its transmission and distributions. In the closing pages of this chapter we illustrate our construction of the conceptual framework of regimes of practice and we add to our analysis in illustrating how the consultancy we describe in the rest of the book is concerned with forms of practice and power.