Project on Expertise
Organization
- Gil Eyal, Director
Overview
Expertise is a central phenomenon in modern life. It provides a legitimate mode of speaking about and influencing public affairs. It serves as a crucial web connecting between state and society. It is where we place most of our hopes for progress and welfare. It is the point at which nature and society intersect and act on one another. The Project on Expertise deals most generally with the nature, types, social distribution and modes of operation of expertise. More specifically, the program is currently engaged in a research project on autism. Recently, there are reports indicating a marked rise in the prevalence and incidence of autism, which some have called an "autism epidemic." Against this background of heightened interest, concern and activism, the project is interested in autism as a phenomenon that straddles the nature/society divide, as a condition that is at once biological and social, congealing through the actions of experts, activists and parents (themselves lay experts) into what is called the "autism community," and a new bio-social identity.
Emine Onculer, a graduate student in sociology, is a research assistant for this program.
