Expert Power and Control in Late Modernity: An Empirical Review and Theoretical Synthesis

Abstract

This paper provides an overview and evaluation of contemporary debates over the nature and significance of 'expert power' within 'late modemity'. It focuses on the changing relationship between expert power, organizational control and class formation within the wider context provided by the global shift towards more reflexive and flexible forms of capital accumulation. It concludes that the latter will have fateful consequences for the major forms of expertise. organizational design and class power taking shape in late modemity. In par ticular, it suggests that 'the politics of expertise' has become more intensely contested in contemporary conditions, and that this produces a more frag mented division of labour within and between the professional and managerial middle classes. Thus, expert groups are seen to play a strategic role in the radical restructuring of professional work organization and control occurring within the much more fragmented middle-class formations emerging in advanced capitalist societies.