Interactional expertise
Encyclopedia
Interactional expertise is part of a more complex classification of expertise developed by Harry Collins
and Robert Evans (both based at Cardiff University
) and first published in Social Studies of Science in June 2002 (Collins and Evans 2002). In this initial formulation interactional expertise was part of a threefold classification of substantive expertise that also included ‘no expertise’ and ‘contributory expertise’, by which they meant the expertise needed to contribute fully to all aspects of a domain of activity.
approaching a topic for the first time. It is easy to see that, whether the research project is to be about plumbing
or physics
, most researchers will start from a position of ‘no expertise’ in that area. As the research project proceeds and the social interactions between the researcher and the plumbers or physicists continue, the social researcher will become increasingly knowledgeable about that topic. For example, they will find that they can talk more interestingly about plumbing or physics and ask more pertinent questions about how it really works. Eventually, the researcher may even get to the point where they can answer questions about plumbing or physics as though they were a real plumber or physicist even though they can’t do plumbing or physics. It is this kind of expertise that Collins and Evans call interactional expertise.
The important thing to note about interactional expertise is that the only thing the social researcher can’t do that a practicing plumber or physicist can do is the practical work of actually installing central heating
or conducting experiments. It is this difference – the difference between being able to talk like a plumber/physicist and actually do plumbing/physics – that is the difference between interactional expertise (what the researcher has) and contributory expertise (what the plumbers and physicists have). Of course, plumbers and physicists who can talk fluently about their work will have both kinds of expertise.
In identifying this separate and distinctive kind of linguistic expertise, the idea of interactional expertise makes a clear break with other theories of expertise, particularly those developed in Science and Technology Studies
, which tend to see expertise as a social status
granted by others rather than a property of the individual. As discussed in more detail below, the idea of interactional expertise also differs from more traditional phenomenological
theories of expertise, in which the embodied expertise of the contributory expert is well-recognised but the distinctively linguistic expertise of the interactional expert appears to have been over-looked. In this context, it must be emphasised that interactional expertise is a tacit knowledge-laden ability and thus similar in kind to the more embodied contributory expertise. This means that, like contributory expertise, interactional expertise cannot be acquired from books alone and it cannot be encoded in computerised expert systems. It is a specialised natural language
and, as such; it can only be acquired by linguistic interaction with experts. The difference between interactional and contributory expertise is that, in the case of interactional expertise, the tacit knowledge pertains to the language of the domain but not its practice. In the case of contributory expertise, tacit knowledge relating to both the language and practice must be acquired.
in large organisations to high level specialist journalism
to the peer review
that is at the centre of science
. Both of these are described in more detail below.
research in which Hubert Dreyfus
, starting from Heidegger argued that because computers don’t have bodies they can’t do what humans do and will not, therefore, succeed in becoming intelligent, no matter how sophisticated and detailed the knowledge base and rules with which they are programmed (see Dreyfus 1972).
In 1990, Harry Collins developed an alternative critique of AI which, although similar to Dreyfus’s in that it suggested fundamental limits to what AI could achieve, grounded this explanation in an understanding of socialisation rather than embodiment (Collins 1990). Collins’s argument was that because computers are asocial objects that cannot be socialised into the life of a community then they cannot be intelligent. In this sense, Collins is taking the definition of intelligence first proposed by Alan Turing
in 1950 (and now known as the Turing Test
) in which intelligence is defined as the ability to hold a conversation. In the Turing Test, the conversation is conducted via keyboards and the challenge for the AI community is to produce a computer that can give answers that are indistinguishable from those produced by a real human. Given that such interactions are by their very nature open-ended and context-dependent Collins argues that only a fully socialised intelligence will be able to respond appropriately to any of the new and potentially unknown sentences directed to it.
Although the argument was not made in these terms at the time, the concept of interactional expertise is extremely important here. In the original critique of AI research, Collins distinguished between behaviour-specific action (capable of being encoded and reproduced by machines) and natural action (what humans do the rest of the time and which machines cannot reproduce). In a later work with Martin Kusch (Collins and Kusch 1998), this same distinction was re-cast as the distinction as mimeomorphic action (action performed in the same way each time and thus amenable to mechanical reproduction) and polimorphic action (actions that depend on context and local convention for their correct interpretation and continuation and thus not reproducible by machines, however sophisticated).
The link between these arguments, the embodiment debate and the idea of interactional expertise is the importance of natural language
. If interactional expertise exists then it suggests that people who cannot perform a particular task or skill – and who therefore cannot have the embodied expertise associated with it – can still talk about that skill as if they did possess the embodied skills. Interactional expertise thus raises a key question about the “amount” of embodiment that is needed for expertise to be transferred. For proponents of the embodiment thesis, quite a lot of embodiment is needed as the expertise resides in the relative position, movement and feel of the body. From the perspective of interactional expertise much less embodiment is needed and, taken to its logical minimum, perhaps only the ability to hear and speak are needed.
but, in most cases, the reviewers will be drawn from cognate or related fields. This is particularly common in research funding decisions, where the likelihood of an application being reviewed by non-specialists increases with the amount of money involved. Even in the case of smaller awards, and of peer reviewed papers, it is still often the case that reviewers will have contributory expertise in a different narrowly defined specialism to that of the author being reviewed. If interactional expertise did not exist, then justifying peer review would be difficult. If, however, reviewers can have expertise by virtue of their interaction with a range of cognate scientists, then the process of peer review seems reasonable.
of large organisations – presumably the kinds of skills that are taught on MBA schemes around the world – we can also ask if managers do better if they understand particularities of the business they are in charge of. Intuitively it seems reasonable to suggest that the manager of a newspaper
should know something about how a journalist
works or that a manager of a car
factory
should know something about how a Production-line works. Whilst this kind of thinking is formally included in many training schemes, the idea of interactional expertise allows us to ask about the kind of experience that is needed in order for managers who lack the embodied experience of writing copy or working on a production line to understand what this is like for those that do fulfil these roles. One implication of interactional expertise is that direct experience – working one’s way up through the ranks – may be less important than previously thought even though lots of interaction with those who do these tasks could still be important. Certainly in the management of large science projects, managers will work hard to acquire interactional expertise quickly.
, technology
, medicine
and public policy
many activities are undertaken by interdisciplinary teams. In science and technology, these take the form of scientists and engineers from many different disciplines working together on a single project. It is this situation, in which different groups of specialists with different, mutually incompatible and sometimes incomprehensible ideas nonetheless manage to find a way of communicating with each other and working together that inspired Peter Galison
to develop the original trading zones
metaphor. Similar teams are often found in public health settings, where cases are decided by multi-disciplinary teams comprising social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers and so on. In the trading zone case, these teams work by developing a new composite language, called a pidgin
or creole language
, which the group shares and uses to communicate. The idea of trading zones has been developed by Mike Gorman, who has identified different types of trading zones, and examined their operation in a range of settings, including nanotechnology
(Gorman, Groves, & Catalano, 2004). Interactional expertise offers an alternative to this approach. Instead of a new language emerging, some members of the group learn the language of the others and shift back and forth between the two worlds. This is more akin to translation between two cultures rather than the creation of a new, shared, culture.
controversy arguably adopted the ‘balanced approach’ for too long, thus lending greater credibility to the claims that MMR was dangerous than they deserved according to most members of the scientific community. It is interesting to note that in the latter stages of the debate these stories were often produced by the general news journalists and not the specialist health or science journalists who, by virtue of what we might call their interactional expertise, no longer saw the claims as credible (see Boyce 2007).
Harry Collins
Harry Collins is a British professor at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. While at the University of Bath Professor Collins developed the Bath School approach to the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge...
and Robert Evans (both based at Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
) and first published in Social Studies of Science in June 2002 (Collins and Evans 2002). In this initial formulation interactional expertise was part of a threefold classification of substantive expertise that also included ‘no expertise’ and ‘contributory expertise’, by which they meant the expertise needed to contribute fully to all aspects of a domain of activity.
Classification
The distinction between these three different types of expertise can be illustrated by imagining the experience of a social science researcherResearcher
A researcher is somebody who performs research, the search for knowledge or in general any systematic investigation to establish facts. Researchers can work in academic, industrial, government, or private institutions.-Examples of research institutions:...
approaching a topic for the first time. It is easy to see that, whether the research project is to be about plumbing
Plumbing
Plumbing is the system of pipes and drains installed in a building for the distribution of potable drinking water and the removal of waterborne wastes, and the skilled trade of working with pipes, tubing and plumbing fixtures in such systems. A plumber is someone who installs or repairs piping...
or physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, most researchers will start from a position of ‘no expertise’ in that area. As the research project proceeds and the social interactions between the researcher and the plumbers or physicists continue, the social researcher will become increasingly knowledgeable about that topic. For example, they will find that they can talk more interestingly about plumbing or physics and ask more pertinent questions about how it really works. Eventually, the researcher may even get to the point where they can answer questions about plumbing or physics as though they were a real plumber or physicist even though they can’t do plumbing or physics. It is this kind of expertise that Collins and Evans call interactional expertise.
The important thing to note about interactional expertise is that the only thing the social researcher can’t do that a practicing plumber or physicist can do is the practical work of actually installing central heating
Central heating
A central heating system provides warmth to the whole interior of a building from one point to multiple rooms. When combined with other systems in order to control the building climate, the whole system may be a HVAC system.Central heating differs from local heating in that the heat generation...
or conducting experiments. It is this difference – the difference between being able to talk like a plumber/physicist and actually do plumbing/physics – that is the difference between interactional expertise (what the researcher has) and contributory expertise (what the plumbers and physicists have). Of course, plumbers and physicists who can talk fluently about their work will have both kinds of expertise.
In identifying this separate and distinctive kind of linguistic expertise, the idea of interactional expertise makes a clear break with other theories of expertise, particularly those developed in Science and Technology Studies
Science and technology studies
Science, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...
, which tend to see expertise as a social status
Social status
In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....
granted by others rather than a property of the individual. As discussed in more detail below, the idea of interactional expertise also differs from more traditional phenomenological
Phenomenology (science)
The term phenomenology in science is used to describe a body of knowledge that relates empirical observations of phenomena to each other, in a way that is consistent with fundamental theory, but is not directly derived from theory. For example, we find the following definition in the Concise...
theories of expertise, in which the embodied expertise of the contributory expert is well-recognised but the distinctively linguistic expertise of the interactional expert appears to have been over-looked. In this context, it must be emphasised that interactional expertise is a tacit knowledge-laden ability and thus similar in kind to the more embodied contributory expertise. This means that, like contributory expertise, interactional expertise cannot be acquired from books alone and it cannot be encoded in computerised expert systems. It is a specialised natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
and, as such; it can only be acquired by linguistic interaction with experts. The difference between interactional and contributory expertise is that, in the case of interactional expertise, the tacit knowledge pertains to the language of the domain but not its practice. In the case of contributory expertise, tacit knowledge relating to both the language and practice must be acquired.
Why does it matter?
The concept of interactional expertise is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it provides a new way of engaging with traditional problems in the philosophy of knowledge. Secondly, it appears to be implicated in a wide range of social activities, ranging from some styles of managementManagement
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
in large organisations to high level specialist journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
to the peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
that is at the centre of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
. Both of these are described in more detail below.
Interactional Expertise and Philosophy
In standard philosophy of knowledge the key distinction is between knowledge that is embodied and knowledge that is formally and explicitly articulated. In this dichotomous formulation, knowledge exists either as codified rules and facts or as some intangible property of the body that performs the task. This distinction forms the basis of the key debate about Artificial IntelligenceArtificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
research in which Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....
, starting from Heidegger argued that because computers don’t have bodies they can’t do what humans do and will not, therefore, succeed in becoming intelligent, no matter how sophisticated and detailed the knowledge base and rules with which they are programmed (see Dreyfus 1972).
In 1990, Harry Collins developed an alternative critique of AI which, although similar to Dreyfus’s in that it suggested fundamental limits to what AI could achieve, grounded this explanation in an understanding of socialisation rather than embodiment (Collins 1990). Collins’s argument was that because computers are asocial objects that cannot be socialised into the life of a community then they cannot be intelligent. In this sense, Collins is taking the definition of intelligence first proposed by Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
in 1950 (and now known as the Turing Test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
) in which intelligence is defined as the ability to hold a conversation. In the Turing Test, the conversation is conducted via keyboards and the challenge for the AI community is to produce a computer that can give answers that are indistinguishable from those produced by a real human. Given that such interactions are by their very nature open-ended and context-dependent Collins argues that only a fully socialised intelligence will be able to respond appropriately to any of the new and potentially unknown sentences directed to it.
Although the argument was not made in these terms at the time, the concept of interactional expertise is extremely important here. In the original critique of AI research, Collins distinguished between behaviour-specific action (capable of being encoded and reproduced by machines) and natural action (what humans do the rest of the time and which machines cannot reproduce). In a later work with Martin Kusch (Collins and Kusch 1998), this same distinction was re-cast as the distinction as mimeomorphic action (action performed in the same way each time and thus amenable to mechanical reproduction) and polimorphic action (actions that depend on context and local convention for their correct interpretation and continuation and thus not reproducible by machines, however sophisticated).
The link between these arguments, the embodiment debate and the idea of interactional expertise is the importance of natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
. If interactional expertise exists then it suggests that people who cannot perform a particular task or skill – and who therefore cannot have the embodied expertise associated with it – can still talk about that skill as if they did possess the embodied skills. Interactional expertise thus raises a key question about the “amount” of embodiment that is needed for expertise to be transferred. For proponents of the embodiment thesis, quite a lot of embodiment is needed as the expertise resides in the relative position, movement and feel of the body. From the perspective of interactional expertise much less embodiment is needed and, taken to its logical minimum, perhaps only the ability to hear and speak are needed.
Interactional Expertise and Practical Action
The idea of interactional expertise also has many practical applications and accounts for many everyday practices and activities. The implication of interactional expertise is to legitimate commentary and opinion from individuals outside a group of contributory expertise without necessarily saying that all opinions and views are equally valid. Examples of circumstances in which some degree of interactional expertise would be important include:The role of peer review in science
Scientific papers and research are subject to peer reviewPeer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
but, in most cases, the reviewers will be drawn from cognate or related fields. This is particularly common in research funding decisions, where the likelihood of an application being reviewed by non-specialists increases with the amount of money involved. Even in the case of smaller awards, and of peer reviewed papers, it is still often the case that reviewers will have contributory expertise in a different narrowly defined specialism to that of the author being reviewed. If interactional expertise did not exist, then justifying peer review would be difficult. If, however, reviewers can have expertise by virtue of their interaction with a range of cognate scientists, then the process of peer review seems reasonable.
The management of large organisations
Whilst there may be some skills that are more or less generic in the managementManagement
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
of large organisations – presumably the kinds of skills that are taught on MBA schemes around the world – we can also ask if managers do better if they understand particularities of the business they are in charge of. Intuitively it seems reasonable to suggest that the manager of a newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
should know something about how a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
works or that a manager of a car
Čar
Čar is a village in the municipality of Bujanovac, Serbia. According to the 2002 census, the town has a population of 296 people.-References:...
factory
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
should know something about how a Production-line works. Whilst this kind of thinking is formally included in many training schemes, the idea of interactional expertise allows us to ask about the kind of experience that is needed in order for managers who lack the embodied experience of writing copy or working on a production line to understand what this is like for those that do fulfil these roles. One implication of interactional expertise is that direct experience – working one’s way up through the ranks – may be less important than previously thought even though lots of interaction with those who do these tasks could still be important. Certainly in the management of large science projects, managers will work hard to acquire interactional expertise quickly.
Interdisciplinary trading zones
In scienceScience
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
, medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
and public policy
Public policy
Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...
many activities are undertaken by interdisciplinary teams. In science and technology, these take the form of scientists and engineers from many different disciplines working together on a single project. It is this situation, in which different groups of specialists with different, mutually incompatible and sometimes incomprehensible ideas nonetheless manage to find a way of communicating with each other and working together that inspired Peter Galison
Peter Galison
Peter Louis Galison is the Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University.Galison received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in both Physics and the History of Science in 1983. His publications include Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics ...
to develop the original trading zones
Trading zones
The metaphor of a trading zone is being applied to collaborations in science and technology. The basis of the metaphor is anthropological studies of how different cultures are able to exchange goods, despite differences in language and culture.-Overview:...
metaphor. Similar teams are often found in public health settings, where cases are decided by multi-disciplinary teams comprising social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers and so on. In the trading zone case, these teams work by developing a new composite language, called a pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
or creole language
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
, which the group shares and uses to communicate. The idea of trading zones has been developed by Mike Gorman, who has identified different types of trading zones, and examined their operation in a range of settings, including nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
(Gorman, Groves, & Catalano, 2004). Interactional expertise offers an alternative to this approach. Instead of a new language emerging, some members of the group learn the language of the others and shift back and forth between the two worlds. This is more akin to translation between two cultures rather than the creation of a new, shared, culture.
Journalism and the mass media
Most journalists cover many different topics in their career but some focus on a specific area, becoming specialist journalists, covering particular beats like politics, medicine, science, environment, security and so on. In the case science, but in other areas too, the job of journalists is to render the specialist expertise of some esoteric group intelligible and relevant to ordinary folk. In doing so, they interpret events and place them in a broader context. In many cases, journalists do this by presenting ‘both sides of the argument’ in order to provide a balanced story and prevent accusations of bias. This is fine in principle but difficult in practice, particularly for science, as it requires the journalist to make a judgement about how credible a scientific claim is and thus how it should be reported. For example, should it be reported in a balanced way, in which two more or less equal sides get to make contrasting claims, as a story about a fringe, maverick or otherwise highly uncertain claim being made but not widely supported, or simply ignored as nonsense and not reported at all. In the UK, the reporting of the MMRMMR vaccine
The MMR vaccine is an immunization shot against measles, mumps, and rubella . It was first developed by Maurice Hilleman while at Merck in the late 1960s....
controversy arguably adopted the ‘balanced approach’ for too long, thus lending greater credibility to the claims that MMR was dangerous than they deserved according to most members of the scientific community. It is interesting to note that in the latter stages of the debate these stories were often produced by the general news journalists and not the specialist health or science journalists who, by virtue of what we might call their interactional expertise, no longer saw the claims as credible (see Boyce 2007).
See also
- Science and Technology StudiesScience and technology studiesScience, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...
- Trading ZonesTrading zonesThe metaphor of a trading zone is being applied to collaborations in science and technology. The basis of the metaphor is anthropological studies of how different cultures are able to exchange goods, despite differences in language and culture.-Overview:...
- Science of Team ScienceScience of Team ScienceThe science of team science field encompasses both conceptual and methodological strategies aimed at understanding and enhancing the processes and outcomes of collaborative, team-based research. It is useful to distinguish between team science initiatives and the science of team science field...
- Research DevelopmentResearch DevelopmentResearch Development is a set of strategic, proactive, catalytic, and capacity-building activities designed to facilitate individual faculty members, teams of researchers, and central research administrations in attracting extramural research funding, creating relationships, and developing and...