Shifting terrains of expertise: Power, knowledge and the era of Industry 4.0

This article examines the social and political construction of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies, situating I4.0 as the latest of several episodes of power that have shaped the shifting terrains of expertise. Expertise and power relations unfold over time, with expert groups exercising persuasive and coercive forms of power through the mobilisation of knowledge amongst other sources. Building on a processual analysis of the Montreal Aerospace cluster, we situate I4.0 as contextually bounded and identify how experts are mobilisers and carriers of knowledge, shifting the terrain of expertise and reproducing and transforming the rules of the game with implications for systemic power relations.