Preliminaries
For various reasons, social fabric in Bangladesh is subtle, as it transforms keeping pace with complex fusion of defining factors, invisibly stems from historical background as well as global influence. Social structure evolve and get it’s essential shape from socio-political change through flexible adoption and adjustment of new values, generated thanks to different political movements and inflow of knowledge, system of thoughts or power structure systems. All those exotic things have a germinating ground in this country due, partly to colonial legacy and post-colonial agents of scholarship, produced by area studies centers in different parts of the globe. Notwithstanding a post-colonial belief system impinges upon it, still society is getting its shape with the line of knowledge and power dynamics and political legitimacy. This paper is to explore how knowledge and power is interrelated with politics in the context of Bangladesh society. There is a hypothesis that knowledge, power and politics are interrelated. Bangladesh, being a thriving society is evolving with a complex nexus of knowledge production, power intervention, and political legitimacy of policy decisions. In this age of knowledge society , any form of knowledge, whether empirical or non-empirical, is the determinant of development of the society while institutions and process of knowledge production is in grip of the power. For the very nature of knowledge, it begs credibility and recognition as power requires political legitimacy. Before going to a critical analysis I would like to develop insights on conceptual framework and academic status of the issue in terms of philosophical investigation.
Concept of knowledge
Knowledge is more debated a term than any other philosophical concept in its history. Epistemology being core of philosophy, deals with the definition, nature, source, possibility, structure and limitation of knowledge. In epistemological sense, knowledge is justified true belief , but this traditional concept of knowledge is supposed to be weak on two principles, one fallibilism and two transfer of justification . Edmund Gettier in his article entitled “Is justified true belief knowledge?” , explicitly analyzed that despite having three conditions met, we tend to believe a false proposition to be true and are justified as well. Considering different set of structures, it can be said that knowledge is justified true belief, that is coherent, reliable, certain and foundational. Apart from philosophical standpoint, knowledge is set of perceptions, stemmed from logical analysis, scientific discovery or empirical evidence. Though it is a popular belief that science, technology and engineering are shaping the society visibly, it is quite interesting a fact that knowledge of science or technology itself subject to philosophical treatment, epistemological or ontological.
Concept of Power
Like knowledge, Power is widely used and mostly debated concept in political arena as its interpretations are done from different theoretical and conceptual realm of philosophy, sociology, political science and anthropology. From political viewpoint, power is conceived as capacity of changing life and holding authority over environment. From sociological stand point Anthony Giddens has given emphasis on power analysis in sociological discourse, where power is defined as the ability of an individual to fulfill his desire, implement his decision and ideas. Power is an instrument to dominate and influence others. In political domain power is categorized as soft and hard (Josef S Nye: 2009), where soft power indicates diplomatic, intellectual and strategic weight while hard power indicates weapons, money and ability of coercion. Nye is of the view that, global politics is controlled by both of this soft and hard power . Michel Foucult, a post modernist philosopher, exposited a different version of power analysis. He explained that power is not an attribute, quality or thing; rather it’s a strategic situation in particular circumstances. Power is a condition or strategic position of particular entity among various strategic points where every point hold power authority and involve with whole environment making a web of reciprocity. A point of power augments power of another as all of those points are related with everyone. According to Nye power is the ability to affect the behaviour of others to get the outcomes one wants. This power can be exercised in different ways such as hard or soft, with threat or communication, inherent qualities or intimidation .
Knowledge is the foundation of the policy decision
Knowledge is the very instrument to formulate policy as every policy has philosophical basis, experimental support or simulation, factual evidence and theoretical or conceptual foundation. Every bit of new experience, every sense of new idea gives impetus to knowledge formation, consequently helps to generate policy opinion at state or at international level. Now, civil society, think tank, government research centers and institutes in different universities, play a pivotal role in this regard. But those organs employed in knowledge generation, beg foundational and basic research to justify policy tools, contextualizing conceptual to theoretical perspective of new knowledge. Knowledge can be transferred to policy if policy actors are indispensably related to researchers, at academic or non academic forum. That knowledge is the vital force behind any viable policy, is an apparent reality but knowledge is not always justified enough and epistemologically reliable for permeating in a policy. Somehow, process of generating knowledge is questionable to genuine thinkers whether it is right to be readily adopted in a policy or not. So, it is not unlikely to shift our attention to a question, how knowledge is produced or generated.
Knowledge is produced by power
Like colonialism practiced by imperialists, mind, in the age of neo-colonialism, no doubt, is going through reshaping by power . Knowledge is produced in political and other conditionality, sometimes manipulation of knowledge is considered as epistemological injustice in academic arena. In contemporary world of academia and beyond, defining knowledge is a complex debate, yet to produce any standard acceptable to epistemologists, subsequently creates space for misunderstanding. So, political or social power, act as a strong variable to determine what we know and what can be known despite justification of such knowledge is subject to critical investigation.
For various reasons, social fabric in Bangladesh is subtle, as it transforms keeping pace with complex fusion of defining factors, invisibly stems from historical background as well as global influence. Social structure evolve and get it’s essential shape from socio-political change through flexible adoption and adjustment of new values, generated thanks to different political movements and inflow of knowledge, system of thoughts or power structure systems. All those exotic things have a germinating ground in this country due, partly to colonial legacy and post-colonial agents of scholarship, produced by area studies centers in different parts of the globe. Notwithstanding a post-colonial belief system impinges upon it, still society is getting its shape with the line of knowledge and power dynamics and political legitimacy. This paper is to explore how knowledge and power is interrelated with politics in the context of Bangladesh society. There is a hypothesis that knowledge, power and politics are interrelated. Bangladesh, being a thriving society is evolving with a complex nexus of knowledge production, power intervention, and political legitimacy of policy decisions. In this age of knowledge society , any form of knowledge, whether empirical or non-empirical, is the determinant of development of the society while institutions and process of knowledge production is in grip of the power. For the very nature of knowledge, it begs credibility and recognition as power requires political legitimacy. Before going to a critical analysis I would like to develop insights on conceptual framework and academic status of the issue in terms of philosophical investigation.
Concept of knowledge
Knowledge is more debated a term than any other philosophical concept in its history. Epistemology being core of philosophy, deals with the definition, nature, source, possibility, structure and limitation of knowledge. In epistemological sense, knowledge is justified true belief , but this traditional concept of knowledge is supposed to be weak on two principles, one fallibilism and two transfer of justification . Edmund Gettier in his article entitled “Is justified true belief knowledge?” , explicitly analyzed that despite having three conditions met, we tend to believe a false proposition to be true and are justified as well. Considering different set of structures, it can be said that knowledge is justified true belief, that is coherent, reliable, certain and foundational. Apart from philosophical standpoint, knowledge is set of perceptions, stemmed from logical analysis, scientific discovery or empirical evidence. Though it is a popular belief that science, technology and engineering are shaping the society visibly, it is quite interesting a fact that knowledge of science or technology itself subject to philosophical treatment, epistemological or ontological.
Concept of Power
Like knowledge, Power is widely used and mostly debated concept in political arena as its interpretations are done from different theoretical and conceptual realm of philosophy, sociology, political science and anthropology. From political viewpoint, power is conceived as capacity of changing life and holding authority over environment. From sociological stand point Anthony Giddens has given emphasis on power analysis in sociological discourse, where power is defined as the ability of an individual to fulfill his desire, implement his decision and ideas. Power is an instrument to dominate and influence others. In political domain power is categorized as soft and hard (Josef S Nye: 2009), where soft power indicates diplomatic, intellectual and strategic weight while hard power indicates weapons, money and ability of coercion. Nye is of the view that, global politics is controlled by both of this soft and hard power . Michel Foucult, a post modernist philosopher, exposited a different version of power analysis. He explained that power is not an attribute, quality or thing; rather it’s a strategic situation in particular circumstances. Power is a condition or strategic position of particular entity among various strategic points where every point hold power authority and involve with whole environment making a web of reciprocity. A point of power augments power of another as all of those points are related with everyone. According to Nye power is the ability to affect the behaviour of others to get the outcomes one wants. This power can be exercised in different ways such as hard or soft, with threat or communication, inherent qualities or intimidation .
Knowledge is the foundation of the policy decision
Knowledge is the very instrument to formulate policy as every policy has philosophical basis, experimental support or simulation, factual evidence and theoretical or conceptual foundation. Every bit of new experience, every sense of new idea gives impetus to knowledge formation, consequently helps to generate policy opinion at state or at international level. Now, civil society, think tank, government research centers and institutes in different universities, play a pivotal role in this regard. But those organs employed in knowledge generation, beg foundational and basic research to justify policy tools, contextualizing conceptual to theoretical perspective of new knowledge. Knowledge can be transferred to policy if policy actors are indispensably related to researchers, at academic or non academic forum. That knowledge is the vital force behind any viable policy, is an apparent reality but knowledge is not always justified enough and epistemologically reliable for permeating in a policy. Somehow, process of generating knowledge is questionable to genuine thinkers whether it is right to be readily adopted in a policy or not. So, it is not unlikely to shift our attention to a question, how knowledge is produced or generated.
Knowledge is produced by power
Like colonialism practiced by imperialists, mind, in the age of neo-colonialism, no doubt, is going through reshaping by power . Knowledge is produced in political and other conditionality, sometimes manipulation of knowledge is considered as epistemological injustice in academic arena. In contemporary world of academia and beyond, defining knowledge is a complex debate, yet to produce any standard acceptable to epistemologists, subsequently creates space for misunderstanding. So, political or social power, act as a strong variable to determine what we know and what can be known despite justification of such knowledge is subject to critical investigation.
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