Episteme, Polity and Inequality Regimes: New Dynamics and Configurations

In reaction to recent political unexpected victories of radical right, authoritarian politicians, the concept of post-truth politics is often used. This Paper argues that social complexity theory (Walby 2009) is a promising way of addressing issues related to this if a domain of episteme is added to the classical four of polity, economy, violence and civil society. Understanding episteme to be a system that produces and organizes knowledge and truth, located strongly in social fields such as education, media and research enables investigating whether and how changes in the domain of episteme are related to changes in the (democratic) polity.