Talk:Epistemic community

Relation between such communities and logic as a process being debated at Logic_and_Wikipedia

How does Peter Haas fit in. --Vegalabs 18:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

This article urgently needs cleanup; if you know the subject matter, please help
This article does not help the uninitiated at all. The first sentence reads "An epistemic community may consist of those who accept one version of a story, or one version of validating a story."

The first sentence should begin with something like "An epistemic community is ...". Maybe completing the sentence with "a group of people who share a view, even though they do not really form a community, as they may not even know each other" would do. I did not edit the page myself because I did not really undestood the article so I might have gotten all wrong.

Please, if you do know what "epistemic community" is, change at lease the first sentence.

190.160.133.87 20:21, 1 July 2007 (UTC) Pablo Straub

Calling all philosophers
Let's get the context straight (no pun intended) and find out which postmodernist POV has been inserted. The page linked by logos is uninformative, having nothing to do with the opinions of feminist theorists. I'd like to know how the concept "epistemic community" relates to that of paradigm. Thank you.Vendrov 06:47, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * First of all, I'd like to say I had nothing to do with the contents of this article. I believe you should adress the author directly.


 * However, I did a little digging of my own. See if it helps: The first reference to the concept seems to be Holzner, Burkart : Reality Construction in Society (1972) - I found that in Ruggie, J G : Constructing the World Polity, pp. 55-56. In an article in 1989, on the term "epistemic community", Peter M. Haas wrote:


 * »20. The term has been used in the literature on sociology of knowledge and has been adapted for use in international relations to refer to a specific community of experts sharing a belief in a common set of cause-and-effect relationships as well as common values to which policies governing these relationships will be applied. For a good survey of the sociology of knowledge usage, see Burkart Holzner and John Marx, Knowledge Application: The Knowledge System in Society (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1979), chaps. 4 and 5, especially pp. 107-111, in which the authors present a lengthy discussion of epistemic communities, including the large community of scientists who share a faith in the scientific method. The beliefs of the ecologists which I discuss here are much more specific, since in addition to sharing a belief in the scientific method as the way to verify their understanding, they also share beliefs in specific causal models. A very similar notion is that of "thought collective," discussed by Ludwig Fleck in Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). See John Gerard Ruggie, "International Responses to Technology: Concepts and Trends," International Organization 29 (Summer 1975), pp. 569-70, in which Ruggie takes an approach similar to Foucault's use of "episteme" but associates epistemic communities with broader widespread social beliefs rather than with the more limited set of shared beliefs held by experts. See also Ernst B. Haas, "Why Collaborate? Issue Linkage and International Regimes," World Politics 32 (April 1980) pp 357-405.« - Haas, Peter M. : Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control. In International Organization, Vol. 43, No. 3. (Summer, 1989) - note 20. on p. 384


 * Other references I found through Google (eg  or   )

That's all. :-) ...--Lynxmb 09:27, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Very problematic
This section on epistemic communities is very problematic and misses a huge portion of the theoretical debate put forward by others such as Ernst Haas or Emanuel Adler. It also misses the empirical discussion about it with regard to epistemic communities working on nuclear deterance or environmental issues, as well as differentiating epistemic communities from other knowledge/ information groups such as transnational advocacy networks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lior.herman (talk • contribs) 10:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)