Becoming a Foreign Policy Expert in Russia: From Knowledge to Relational Positioning

This paper argues that in order to understand the role of policy knowledge in modern societies we need to distinguish analytically between expertise and experts. Whereas the former addresses 'true' intellectual capacity, the latter describes a social role, i.e. recognized agents whose authority can be caused by different factors. Hence, instead of privileging knowledge (expertise) as an attribute of experts, I argue that experts are agents that take relative positions within a competitive social struggle. Adopting the sociological toolbox of Pierre Bourdieu, I suggest that agents initially accumulate different forms of capital (e.g. cultural, economic, symbolic, etc.) within distinct professional fields. Over time they may transform into experts by gaining access either to the state (administration) or the public sphere, which in turn generates political and media capital. The combined amount of political and media capital determines the social role of experts and the political function they play. I illustrate this process of social transformation and subsequent position-taking by experts with reference to foreign policy experts in Russia.