Pastoral Conversation: A Postmodern View of Expertise

This article pursues the possibility of a changing conception of expertise following changing conceptions of knowledge. After a brief overview of some of the roots of postmodernism, it examines various postmodern ways of talking about knowledge and reality before suggesting implications for expertise in pastoral conversation. Expertise is a dialogical co-creation of knowledge relevant to the needs of the persons in the conversation and does not exist prior to the conversation.