Political situations: knowledge controversies in transnational governance

This article develops two arguments. The first revolves around the importance of studies of knowledge controversies, originally developed within the field of science and technology studies (STS), to accounts of innovation in transnational governance. Innovation in transnational governance, I contend, has catalyzed the emergence of transnational knowledge controversies, including controversies about the operation of transnational governance mechanisms. An argument turns on the need to supplement existing approaches to the study of knowledge controversies in STS. To this end I introduce the concept of the political situation. This concept highlights the ways in which the significance of a controversy needs to be understood in relation to a shifting and contested field of others controversies and events that have occurred elsewhere and at other times. The concept of the political situation also points to the part played by the social sciences themselves in the constitution and contestation of the situation within which knowledge controversies come to have significance.