Cognitive Exploitation: Tensions emerging in the production and social use of scientific, traditional, informational and labor knowledge.

KREIMER, PABLO; ZUKERFELD, MARIANO

Buenos Aires

Congreso; ESOCITE/ 4S 2014 (Sociedad Latinoamericana de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología y Society for Social Studies of Science (4S); 2014

ESOCITE/ 4S 2014 (Sociedad Latinoamericana de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología y Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)

We coin the term ?Cognitive exploitation? to describe social relationships defined by four characteristics: i) The relationships involve material and/or symbolic exchanges between at least two kinds of actors ii) Some actors appropriate for profit of knowledge nonprofit originated by other actors. iii) The exchanges are to some extent voluntary and statutory (or unregulated) iv) The exchanges are objectively asymmetric, in the sense that the for profit actors obtain a surplus which has a market value. We have observed, from some primary sources and specialized literature, the phenomenon of cognitive exploitation in different social spaces, where diverse types of knowledge, actors, legal frameworks and, more generally, social contexts are involved. According to the predominant type of knowledge at stake, we have placed them provisionally as "scientific", "traditional", "informational "and "labor". All these cases have been, until today, analyzed by segmented fields of research (sociology of science, intellectual property studies, anthropology of knowledge, sociology and economics of labor). However, we claim that under the guise of a great heterogeneity, these cases respond to processes that exhibit remarkable regularities. Therefore, the originality of this approach lies in drawing attention to these regularities through the concept of cognitive exploitation.