THE QUANTIFIED WORLD. HOW THE LOGIC OF THE FINANCIAL MARKETS THREATENS KNOWLEDGE

Colin Crouch

In autumn 2014, it became known that the English National Health Service wanted to pay every doctor who diagnoses a patient with dementia £55 in future. The outrage was huge: doesn't this increase the risk of misdiagnosis? Don't doctors know what to do even without such incentives? This example shows that the logic of neoliberalism is still gaining ground despite the major crisis. The associated change affects all areas of life: schools, hospitals and the police are being restructured as part of the big numbers game and subjected to the dictates of key figures; students and passengers are being turned into customers who act like calculating machines. On the way to the »information society«, one central resource is falling by the wayside: knowledge itself.
Colin Crouch traces how neoliberalism corrupts alternative forms of knowledge and expertise. Contrary to what its apologists claim, the market is not a perfect knowledge machine that conjures up transparency from anonymous decisions. On the contrary, if the logic of the financial markets is allowed to operate unhindered, it can destroy the immune system of our societies.

Colin Crouch is a British political scientist and sociologist and teaches as Professor of Governance and Public Management at the University of Warwick. He became internationally recognised with his diagnostic work on post-democracy and the book of the same name published in 2004.

Moderation
Robert Misik, journalist and author

The event is being organised in cooperation with Buch Wien 2015. Colin Crouch's book "Bezifferte Welt. Wie die Logik der Finanzmärkte das Wissen bedroht" will be published by Suhrkamp in September 2015.