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Rhetorics of Expertise

As a function of industrialization, scientific revolution(s), and professional specialization, contemporary culture is thoroughly reliant on experts. The idea of expertise serves as a mechanism for delegating the pieces of a saturated life, and deferring to perceived authorities. Yet the distribution of power and resources inherent in this systemic exchange of services and goods generates public anxiety. What exactly is an “expert”? What combination of training, skills, experience, and practice renders expertise? There is widespread uncertainty and concern regarding non-experts’ capacity to judge the competence of experts. Deference requires trust, and trust implies a risk of deception and fraud. Moreover, the liberal-democratic ideal of popular agency to some extent clashes with a society run by experts. This conflict becomes especially apparent in the context of emerging information technologies, facilitating the creation and distribution of content, not just by traditional experts but by the general public. Scholarly discussion on the subject is warranted, and this special issue contributes to such an effort. This issue explores the social practices, technological conditions, political implications, power structures, cultural artifacts, and philosophical precepts surrounding the notion of expertise. The contributing authors, all scholars of rhetoric and communication studies, were invited to bring their own expertise to bear on the topic. In this invitation, the authors were given as a heuristic the 2011 book The rhetoric of expertise (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books); rather than a book review, however, they were encouraged to present unique treatments of the subject reflecting their own research foci. The present essay previews the contributors’ arguments, and explicates two themes. In the first essay, Damien Smith Pfister proposes that a “many-to-many” model of communication and expertise, made possible by a networked society, challenges modernist routines of knowledge production and distribution. Pfister extends his