Facing up to face value: Communication, difference, and the turn to expertise

Abstract This paper engages with a turn that has taken place over the last decade or so: from a sociology of professions toward a sociology of expertise. While the shift toward expertise is highly conducive to communicative inquiry, it is haunted by a ghost of professions past. I argue that this ghost—a persistent problem I formulate as ‘face value’—must be confronted for the turn to realize its considerable potential. Face value refers to the ways in which presumptions of merit arise through relations of difference, such as gender, race, and sexuality. I chart a path toward examining the production of face value, namely, by situating networks of expertise within economies of difference.