Epistemic communities and social indicators: a geographic and transdisciplinary perspective

Abstract

This text presents a theoretical analysis and a methodological approach proposal on the intersection between epistemic communities and the production of social indicators, exploring how specialized knowledge communities in social statistics influence new public discussions that tend to generate new political agendas and social imaginaries. It is an early-stage approach that relates the action of knowledge communities to performances and transformations in the psychosphere and technosphere of the national geographical space by intervening in the mediation, regulation and communication systems between the State and society. It starts from the thesis that understands indicators as "technical objects" (SANTOS, 1995. MILLÈO, 2007), endowed with symbolic capacities that influence political actions and narratives about territories. We seek to demonstrate how the analysis of the social appropriation of indicators reveals how epistemic communities influence the field of public policy production and spatial representations.