Niilo. Kauppi

• Professor
• Directeur de recherche at French National Centre for Scientific Research

The purpose of this article is to explore what Bourdieus political sociology could bring to the study of European integration. I first present, very briefly, some of the traditional approaches in European integration studies. Then I move to my interpretation of Bourdieus structural constructivist theory of politics through a discussion of political...

Institutions and Actors: Rationality, Reflexivity and the Study of the EU Sociological research on the European Union provides a much needed alternative to mainstream EU-studies dominated by economics, law, IR and political science. However, until now this sociological alternative has mostly involved the adaptation of sociological terminology such...

Introducing the concept of 'knowledge alchemy' as the formulation of global standards through the use of indicators and algorithms, this book explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional policies and practices on economic performance, higher education, research and innovation.

In this chapter, we examine the knowledge alchemy involved in transforming academic mobility as a familiar act of academic travel to a commodified activity in today’s global competition for talent. In contemporary policy making, the assumed practices of the medieval scholar often inform the common image of an academic today. A visual that emerges i...

This chapter turns to the scripts and imaginaries of knowledge governance. To become effective, numerical knowledge needs to be narrated and communicated. We see actors referring to different imaginaries of knowledge governance that are linked to grand narratives of global megatrends, pointing to intensifying global economic competition through dig...

In our conclusions, we discuss how knowledge alchemy is embedded in transnational administration and global policy making through numerical tools, imaginaries and narratives used across multiple policy domains and sectors. To further understand conventional power in contemporary national and transnational governance, this book has uncovered the mec...

In this chapter, we discuss innovation rankings and city-level measurements of competitiveness that draw heavily from other indicators, hence echoing the hegemonic views and ideological undercurrents already present in the ranking field. The sharing of data is part of the evolving conventional power of data production on a global level. Empirically...

This chapter describes how policy makers and decision-makers developed and implemented strategies and policies based on the ‘talent’ imaginary and bring knowledge alchemy to life. By reviewing how the presuppositions revolving around the global competition for talent became integrated in higher education and university policies, migration policies,...

This chapter provides an overview of the development of global rankings in good governance and higher education. Initially, the metrics dealt with good governance and competitiveness of countries, but since the 2000s the global rankings on higher education and innovation have emerged. Recently, city rankings have highlighted the importance of asses...

This book introduces the concept of ‘knowledge alchemy’ to capture the generic process of transforming mundane practices and policies of governance into competitive ones following imagined global gold standards. Using examples from North America, Europe and Asia, it explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional poli...

Introducing the concept of 'knowledge alchemy' as the formulation of global standards through the use of indicators and algorithms, this book explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional policies and practices on economic performance, higher education, research and innovation.

Introduction In the previous chapter, we discussed the field development in global ranking concerning good governance indicators and university rankings. In this chapter, we turn to discuss innovation rankings and city-level measurements of competitiveness that emerged a few years later. As our discussion will show, they have come to draw heavily f...

Introduction In this chapter, we examine the knowledge alchemy involved in transforming academic mobility as a familiar act of academic travel to a commodified activity in today's global competition for talent. In contemporary policy making, the assumed practices of the medieval scholar often inform the common image of an academic today. This schol...

Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the development of global rankings in good governance and higher education. This also serves as a background for Chapter 3, where the metrics in city competition, talent and AI-readiness are discussed at the cusp of automation. Indicators and rankings are outputs of algorithmic reasoning; often, the...

Introduction This chapter begins the second part of our book and turns to the scripts and imaginaries of knowledge governance to show how they shape diverse sectoral policies and institutional practices through numerical global scripts and formulas. As discussed in Chapter 3, global indicators bring coherence to transnational governance by providin...

Introduction In this chapter, we describe how policy makers and decision-makers developed and implemented strategies and policies based on the ‘talent’ imaginary and bring knowledge alchemy to life. By reviewing how the presuppositions revolving around the global competition for talent became integrated in higher education and university policies,...

Today, we continue to live in magic. Scientific and technological advancement have indeed lifted our everyday lives to wonderment, but these advances have also introduced magical practices to governance. Our book has been about the magic taking place in knowledge governance, the processes of steering and governing state information, and has been th...

This chapter analyzes some of the knowledge dynamics and conceptual politics involved in EU theory building. It is said that outside the academic world little attention is drawn to academic theories and concepts, and that ‘practitioners’ in political and economic life ignore them. It is true that some ‘practitioners’ (politicians, civil servants, a...

This portrait of Bourdieu's laboratory in the early days describes the impact of the bourdieusian «tribe» on the author's social destiny, especially to his attempt to develop a reflexive political sociology that explores the intertwinement of culture, power, and knowledge. Repeatedly, he depicts himself as an outsider suspended between several (geo...

The chapter argues that European Parliament (EP) elections are not second-order elections for political underdogs such as Front National (or UKIP). For them and similar non-cartel parties, the EP elections are first-order elections that have enabled political survival and provided a venue for growing influence in national politics. This chapter exp...

Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg and Stefan Bernhard editors

Les métamorphoses de l'avant-garde : Critique et Tel Quel Niilo Kauppi, CNRS. Présentation à Cerisy-la-salle, 18 juin 2019. Colloque LA REVUE CRITIQUE : PASSIONS, PASSAGES "Tout écrivain qui, par le fait même d'écrire, n'est pas conduit à penser : je suis la révolution (...) en réalité n'écrit pas." (Maurice Blanchot) C'est un grand plaisir pour mo...

In a landmark article, Hooghe and Marks (British Journal of Political Science 39 (1):1–23, 2009) called for a paradigmatic shift in European integration studies, arguing that the old permissive consensus that facilitated functional integration has been replaced by a new constraining dissensus by a politicised electorate. European Union (EU) politic...

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Digital capitalism differs from previous technological revolutions in at least one important respect: revolution is not about how effectively external objects can be manipulated, but more fundamentally about how reality reveals itself to us. The purpose of this article is to better understand the evolution of digital technology by outlining some of...

Politicisation, in a broad and basic understanding, means to turn something - an issue, an institution, a policy - that previously was not a subject to political action into something that now is subject to political action. So far, most definitions of the concept would agree. But besides this basic approach, there is much discussion. Politicisatio...

In the name of the imperatives of the knowledge-economy, the European public university has been under attack since the beginning of the 2000s. Everywhere in Europe, budgets have been cut and departments considered as being useless eliminated. Reactions have been weak. How can this be explained? How can one challenge the dominant discourse on highe...

With globalization and Europeanization, profound changes have taken place in the composition and structure of elites. Once solidly tied to the nation state, elites have, following processes of differentiation and specialization, become more transnational than ever before. Their development has been conditioned by the evolving relationship between i...

The objective of this article is to study some of the intended and unintended effects on academe of the evolving global ranking game. I will start with some broader points on the global ranking game, the formal terms and economic interests it promotes, then continue with a presentation of the Shanghai ranking and its main rival the Times Higher Edu...

In this chapter, the author explores the relationship between Bourdieu’s idea on communication and his political philosophy. Bourdieu’s approach to communications was dominated by a paradox: on the one hand, he held communication to be a key social activity; on the other hand, he reach as a scientist for a level of existence where reality is not so...

In this chapter, the author maintains that rankings of universities and their social carriers participate in the relatively successful practical realization of the academic standards they seek to codify and of the shaping of reality according to the criteria they promote. In this sense, global university rankings are becoming a self-fulfilling prop...

In this chapter, the author analyzes Pierre Bourdieu as a representative of the French intellectual tradition. In the name of morality, he rose to defend those who suffered injustice. In the Bourdieu affair, the sufferers of injustice were the unemployed and part-time workers. The opponents were the neoliberal market ideologists, historical success...

This chapter proposes some elements for a structural constructivist conception of integration. The author understands integration as a key element in differentiation and stratification processes, more specifically of professional specialization and the formation of a variety of political, cultural and social hierarchies and spaces. He argues that t...

This chapter starts with reflections on the difficulties of studying the EU. The author then presents some of the research that develops a political sociology perspective to European integration and political power. Key concepts include structural differentiation and stratification. Scholars explore European integration as a process of structural d...

In this chapter, the author discusses some of the intellectual tools that sociology can mobilize in the analysis of European Union (EU) politics, and then follows with a closer investigation of some sociological research. To illustrate EU politics, this chapter concentrates on the European Parliament, the most democratic European institution. The a...

In this chapter, the author argues that the increasing complexity of European societies accentuates the need for a discourse that unites specialists—mathematicians, engineers, humanists—and the public. European societies are constantly haunted by the fragmentation of knowledge relating to political and social life. This can be seen in the decline i...

In this chapter, the author offers an analysis of European public spaces and follows with a discussion of the transformations in the European Commission’s communication strategy since September 2004. For the first time, the European Commission openly challenged the monopoly of political legitimacy of national political institutions. It was involved...

This chapter argues that neoliberalism, through its bureaucratically led reform frenzy, produces not only identitarian uncertainty amid a politically relatively unorganized academe but also a scientifically legitimized ambivalent discourse that confuses more than clarifies the mission of the university and research. Resistance to neoliberalism is v...

In this chapter, the author scrutinizes the links between politics and academe in global governance. He analyzes two cases, those of former president of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso and philosopher Michel Foucault, that exemplify different types of political engagement. Social scientists play a key but concealed part in the steering...

This chapter studies the evolving relationship between the redistribution of social resources and the structuration of institutional spaces beyond the nation-state. The author first discusses general features of transnational fields and then moves to an examination of the European Parliament as an empirical case. In this perspective, the object of...

In this chapter, the author politicizes the ontological dimension of EU studies. He discusses ontology’s power to determine the real by analyzing some of its unformulated presuppositions and the links with knowledge and action. He argues that key European institutions like the European Commission do not change only because of institutional dynamics...

In this chapter, the author develops a topic undertheorized in Bourdieu’s work: physical violence. He presents the key points of an esthetic theory of the sublime and develops an alternative theory of the sublime, which draws on structural constructivism and Taoist political theory. In contrast to an esthetic theory of the sublime that automaticall...

This chapter explores the politics of circulating ideas, as part of a broader reflection on the circulation/diffusion/transfer/transplantation of concepts and ideas in the EU. The chapter starts with a discussion of some main points of Pierre Bourdieu’s text on the international circulation of ideas in which he develops a framework for the analysis...

Bourdieu’s theory of politics can be divided into three components: a general analysis of the social aspects of the political (le politique), a more specific analysis of politics (la politique), and his political practices. The author analyzes Bourdieu’s conception of social domination through topics such as political judgment and delegation and th...

This book argues that contemporary European politics creates new forms of transnational power that challenges the traditional parameters of the nation-state. Kauppi identifies and critically explores the evolving dynamics existing between national and transnational spaces, groups and knowledge. Kauppi suggests that European public policies and tran...

Dans le champ des Relations internationales, Vincent Pouliot développe une théorie du praticable comme une théorie « matérielle » de la pratique, complémentaire à celle des conséquences, de la convenance, de l’argumentation. La logique du praticable serait paradoxalement la base non théorique de toutes les théories en ri . Comment l’approche de Pou...

In this article, we suggest a novel conceptual framework for understanding and analysing EU politicisation. Recent studies on EU politicisation argue that the post-Maastricht era led to the politicisation of EU integration via an increasing citizens' dissatisfaction. Contrary to this account, we argue that European integration has been from the beg...

Pierre Bourdieu was a prolific scholar whose multifaceted work inspired research in a wide variety of areas. Beyond sociology we find his influence in anthropology, history, cultural studies, political science, and international relations. Particularly after 1995, when he engaged in a fight against neo-liberalism, he became the pre-eminent public i...

Academic identity is continually being formed and reformed by the institutional, socio-cultural and political contexts within which academic practitioners operate. In Europe the impact of the 2008 economic crisis and its continuing aftermath accounts for many of these changes, but the diverse cultures and histories of different regions are also sig...

In Debate with Kari Palonen is a collection of 48 essays written by scholars from a great variety of research fields. All essays discuss the scientific contributions of the Finnish political scientist Kari Palonen, from his views on political thought to the understanding of conceptual change and the study of politics as an activity. The essays crit...

A founder of structuralism, the French anthropologist Claude Lévi‐Strauss has had a powerful impact on scholars like Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva. Born in Brussels, Belgium, to a Jewish family originally from the Strasbourg area in Alsace, he studied law and ph...

Political sociology analyzes the relationship between society and politics. In contrast to sociology, political sociology deals mostly with the state, governments, parties, interest groups, and so on. Compared to political science, political sociology is interested in power relations in various social contexts. A first broad approach encompasses so...