ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a short introduction detailing some of my views about the way global developments in this field are progressing. I have two suspicions, possible interpretations, about emergent patterns. First, the arguments of Alan Wolfe (1996) carry considerable weight with me. Wolfe has argued that what we are seeing globally is an attack on what he calls the ‘median level’. By this he means the public institutions: schools, universities, public broadcasting, libraries, hospitals and so on. In most countries, these institutions are coming under attack; this is evidenced by the fact that less and less is being spent on them. Lest we accept that it is a problem of shortage of money, it is worth pointing out that the opposite is happening to the police, the army and expenditure on military weapons and private developments like private shopping malls and private housing. Here there is a huge growth in expenditure and in expanding developments. Overall then, we are obviously not short of money. What is happening is that we are consistently choosing the private over the public at nearly all levels and this is playing through into an attack on the ‘median level’. Wolfe argues that the median levels of professional life are a confusing nuisance between the direct relationship of the state and its subjects and industry and its customers. In the median-level critique, social criticism, theory building and
arguments against inequality still reside. The attempt, therefore, at the global level, is to weaken this level and move the centre of action for knowledge construction to other levels. Michael Gibbons et al. (1994) have recently written about the distinction between mode 1 and mode 2 knowledge. Mode 1 knowledge is essentially disciplinary knowledge, normally developed in the traditional universities. Mode 2 knowledge is applied knowledge, increasingly developed in the R & D sectors of the private industrial base, together with the think tanks associated with this sector of the economy. Whilst mode 1 knowledge is under sustained attack, mode 2 knowledge is being sponsored. This is merely a version of the changing priority from the public to the private that I mentioned earlier.
