“Experts” in the 20th Century: Between Academia, Public Discourse, and Politics

19.-20. September 2024
Maximilian-Kolbe-Haus
Campus der HSU, Hamburg

In recent years, there has been much discussion about experts, their role in politics and the public sphere, and the influence they exert. The most striking example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic; from 2020 onward, virologists and epidemiologists, among others, but also many self-proclaimed “experts”, gained significant prominence in public discourse. A similar trend can be observed in international politics. Since 2022, in connection with Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as in the context of the geopolitical confrontation between the U.S. and China, “Russia experts”, “China experts” and “military experts” have spoken out almost daily, offering their interpretations of events and developments through mass media.

This highlights a key point: on the one hand, experts have become an indispensable part of the public sphere, while on the other, the terms “expert” and “expertise” are often used without much reflection. In this context, over the past few decades, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have made efforts to study experts and their expertise as subjects of research in their own right.

With our conference on September 19 and 20, 2024, in Hamburg, we aim to build on this: focusing on selected case studies from the early 20th century to the present, we want to reflect together on the phenomenon of expertise at the intersection of academia, public discourse, and politics. We do not see experts as essentialized figures, but rather seek a reflexive understanding of key categories and concepts. With this approach, we aim to open up the construct of expertise as a multifaceted and dynamic phenomenon – one that not only looks at the practices and interactions of experts but also investigates the negotiation and attribution of expertise, as well as the strategies experts use to profile themselves and build networks. How and between whom is it negotiated who is an “expert”? How can “expertise” be distinguished from knowledge or competence? Is expertise synonymous with “expert knowledge”? What is the relationship between knowledge, academia and expertise in specific time periods and different cultural contexts? In which areas do experts play an advisory role and act as practical intermediaries (e.g., politics, economics)? How does expertise in a specific field become a subject of attribution and negotiation processes? What role do institutional structures play as conditioning factors for expertise, and how can the agency of experts be understood? We are addressing exactly these questions in our conference, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg. Together with scholars from the fields of history, political science, sinology, sociology, and anthropology, we aim to reflect on the construct of expertise as a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon.

A particular focus will be on Asia/China, and the following presentations with a reference to Asia will be featured:

Martin Albers (Hamburg):
Helmut Schmidt als „China-Experte“: Narrativer Einfluss im Wechselspiel von Deutungsangebot und medialer Interpretationsnachfrage

Paul Schröck (Freiburg):
Vom Osteuropa-Experten zum „Mentor Germaniae“. Klaus Mehnert als „Welterklärer“ der frühen Bundesrepublik

Dani Kranz (Mexiko-Stadt, Mexiko):
Expertise and Experteasing Israel/Palestine

Yating Zhang (Berlin):
Inspiration from the Social Market Economy: Sino-West German Intellectual Exchange on Economic Thought, 1970s-1990s

Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik (Wien):
Gegenwartsbezogene Chinaforschung unter Stress: Ist Entpolitisierung ein Ausweg?

Joachim Krause (Kiel):
Die Rolle von DGAP und SWP in der
sicherheitspolitischen Politikberatung zwischen 1960 und 1990

Björn Alpermann (Würzburg):
Kritische Intellektuelle in China: Zwischen Expertise und Dissens

Mona Bieling (Hamburg):
Expertise in the Service of Nation-Building? The Example of Zionist Botany in Mandatory Palestine, 1920s-1930s

Christoph Müller-Hofstede (Berlin):
Die Rolle von Expertise im Kontext staatlicher politischer Bildung in den 1970er/80er Jahren: China als neuer Fokus der Bundeszentrale für politischen Bildung

Stefan Messingschlager (Hamburg):
Neue Praktiken, veränderte Zuschreibungen: Westliche China-Expertise im Umbruch der frühen 1970er Jahre

Alexander Graef (Hamburg):
The Russian Mezhdunarodniki: Experts, Networks and the State