How knowledge circulates

Secondly, we can focus on institutions and organisations that host and contribute to the shaping of intellectual production and consumption. These include university departments, research centres, laboratories, associations and publishers. For example, neoliberal ideas were developed by the Mont Pelerin Society, an international organisation that has gathered thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises and Karl Popper.

Thirdly, we can focus on “authors”, especially those considered “key authors”. Key authors succeed in becoming a reference in their discipline and beyond; their theories circulate across disciplines and across countries. One example is Pierre Bourdieu, whose works have been translated into more than 30 languages across 40 countries.

We can observe different stages in the reception of Bourdieu’s work. He was discovered as a specialist in sociology of education, sociology of culture and anthropology, so the reception of his work was fragmented not only across the world but across different specialities. However, at some point after the publication of his book Distinction, which was translated into English by Harvard University Press in 1984, his reception changed. There was a unification of all his work, and he became known across the world as a social theorist.

The mid-1990s marked a new stage of politicisation, as Bourdieu became committed to the struggle against neoliberalism. He became a global public intellectual, widely discussed in the media as well as the academic community. Finally, after his death, Bourdieu has become a classic – he is one of the most cited social scientists in the world today, and his work continues to be translated and discussed.

The fourth way we can address the circulation of knowledge is by focusing on how ideas circulate materially. If we examine the material channels of the circulation of ideas, we observe that, within the academic field, this circulation occurs in specific settings such as conferences, journals and books. Natural scientists tend to publish more in journals; humanities scholars tend to publish in book form; and social scientists oscillate between these two models. Each of these forms may circulate either nationally or internationally and require economic means. Let’s consider these economic issues.

The circulation of knowledge depends on either or both public and private funding. Knowledge has become a profitable area, with investments made by large publishing groups. These groups have imposed a new economic model to enhance profit.

In the Anglo-American world, academic publishing is separate from the trade book market, whereas in European countries like France, Germany and Italy, there is still a tradition of publishing social and human science books within trade publishing.

This tradition has an important consequence – knowledge produced in academia receives attention in the media and participates directly in public debate. Conversely, articles in academic journals, even if they are open access, are too specialised for this.

Furthermore, scholars are often interviewed in the media as experts on current issues. They can exert a critical function as public intellectuals, just as Arendt, Foucault, Bourdieu and Habermas did, and Thomas Piketty and Judith Butler do today.

In this way, knowledge does not only serve the dominant governments or companies that require expertise but can also be appropriated to criticise the dominant ideology or public policies.

Books still play a major role in the social and human sciences, especially in history, sociology, philosophy, anthropology and literary studies. It is worth noting that there is a significant production of books on economics by heterodox economists, as opposed to orthodox economists, who principally publish articles.

If we study the flows of translation of scholarly books from one language to another, we can observe some patterns that highlight the uneven power relations between languages and intellectual traditions, as well as the role of cultural intermediaries in the selection process – including translators, publishers, literary agents, academics and State representatives.

These uneven power relations should be interpreted in light of six different factors. The first is power relations between languages and cultures. Books written in a central language like English, French or German are more likely to get translated than those written in peripheral languages. This is even more the case if we take into account the prestige – or symbolic capital – of a specific intellectual tradition such as German philosophy.

The second factor is symbolic capital and other properties of the author. Some classical authors, like Hobbes, Kant and Rousseau, or modern classics, like Arendt, Foucault and Lévi-Strauss, hold a great amount of symbolic capital enclosed in their very names, which function like a brand, meaning their books are more likely to get translated than those of unknown authors.

The opportunity for authors deprived of international symbolic capital to be translated depends on other properties such as the prestige of the institutions where they were educated, and of those they belong to, and also gender. It appears that a female author is less likely to be translated than a male one; the same applies to minorities.

The third factor is properties of the book itself. For unknown authors on the international scene, properties such as the originality of the topic, timeliness (relevance to political issues or fashionable topics), style (publishers prefer more narrative books to address a larger audience) and length are key.

Ideas do not circulate randomly. They depend on the materiality of specific channels and on symbolic and social capital, which is unevenly distributed. They also depend on the role of cultural intermediaries.

These intermediaries may have various interests – political, economic and cultural. Although these interests can be intertwined, sometimes one prevails over the others. As an example of political interests, the circulation of Marxist thought has been favoured by (but not limited to) Marxist networks and publishers.

Publishers and agents may have economic interests in translating (or choosing not to translate) a scholarly book. Some books become best-sellers, like Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The interest of intermediaries in this book was not only commercial – its success was due to the context of the economic crisis and the debate surrounding the wealthiest 1%.

To give an example of cultural interests, some scholars may invest in translation for free, either to promote certain ideas, theories or paradigms, or to get recognition, or both.

Thus, intermediaries not only select but also label the books they import, as Bourdieu underscored.