Transforming knowledge into cognitive basis of policies: a cosmopolitan from below approach

The Chapter deals with the process of transformation of knowledge into what Amartya Sen identifies as fundamental pillar of our societies and of collective decisions they shape, that is the ‘informational basis’ which policies and public action are based on. This is a crucial process, since it strongly contributes to frame the territory over which policies are going to intervene, establishing how the borders of this territory have to be drawn, what has to be included and what can be dropped off into the area of legitimate social, political and bureaucratic indifference. Such a process has to be historically and sociologically situated, in order to fully understand the way actors’ capacities are implied in it. In the first part of the Chapter it is introduced and discussed the so called ‘trap of trajectorism’, that characterizes the field of tension configured by the capitalist mode of translating the space of possibility opened by modernity: the relationship knowledge/informational basis results strongly affected by social inequalities and concurs itself in reproducing them. An approach inspired from a cosmopolitanism from below is then explored, according to which citizens’ capacities – in terms of capacity to aspire – can be actively involved in the process of transformation of knowledge into informational basis. A redefinition of the knowledge production process in terms of human right to research seems to be the direction to be addressed, for strengthening this relationship between capacity and knowledge. In this sense, cosmopolitanism from below represents a necessary, stimulating challenge for revitalizing their own role in what are claimed to be “knowledge societies”.