From 'Epistemic Cultures' to 'Techno-Epistemic Cultures' and 'Post-Normal Epistemic Cultures'

How do epistemic cultures – as originally defined and reconstructed by Karin Knorr-Cetina (1999) – fuel expert controversies and contribute to lasting stale-mate situations in evidence-based regulatory disputes? Are there scientific cultures that transgress the epistemic dimension, e.g. in technosciences that combine an orientation towards better understanding with an ambition to intervene, control and create, or in so-called post-normal sciences (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992) that combine an orientation towards better understanding with a mission to address societal problems? How do contemporary innovation regimes impact on scientific cultures and academic living spaces (Felt 2009)? These are the central questions I address in my ‘Rahmenschrift’ and the relating published texts.The ‘Rahmenschrift’ starts with an outline of the initial introduction of the concept of ‘epistemic cultures’ within science and technology studies. It adds further approaches that became influential in our understanding of scientific cultures, like Becher’s (1989) investigation of ‘academic tribes and territories’, higher education research into campus cultures and academic socialisation processes or Lave and Wenger’s work on ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1999). This first part of the ‘Rahmenschrift’ ends with an overview of current scholarly discussions that focus on reconstructions of and critical reflections on change in epistemic cultures.In the second part of the Rahmenschrift, I introduce my own engagement with the concept of epistemic cultures that goes back to my PhD project on disciplinary socialisation processes. I then move on to outline my reconstruction of ‘cultures of non-knowledge’ within expert controversies and explain how this research ignited my interest in more-than-epistemic cultures, namely techno-epistemic cultures and post-normal scientific cultures. In a short third part, I summarise the aspects that I see the most central for further developing our understanding of epistemic cultures and for applying this understanding to open questions in science and society.