Talking about ‘tacit knowledge’ – critical professionalism or collective defences?

Abstract

The increased attention on and theorizing of practical competence in human service professions in terms of e.g. body, intuition or authenticity can be seen as a protest against increased academization of education and training. It can also be seen as a protest against New Public Management rationalizations of human service work including the workload of - written and thus verbal - documentation demanded. However the massive and at times essentialist discourses on what cannot and even must not be said about the practical knowledge points to the function of the well known concept of “tacit knowledge” as a collective work life defence against complex and contradictory demands. Human service work triggering off psychological defence mechanisms is well documented. New work organizations produce more refined legitimizations on professional and organizational levels and lead to more intellectualized defences on the individual level. Why does the concept of tacit knowledge bloom so abundantly - and how can the concept be discussed with a view to its critical and Utopian potentials? This article argues that the production of the phenomenon “tacit knowledge” as an almost tangible one with an almost substantial ontological status stems from two types of theoretical misconception and one set of cultural taboos - all stabilizing existing defensive attitudes and producing new ones.

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