Knowledge Structures: Review I

1
Knowledge Structures Review I

2
Knowledge Structures Review

• Module I - Knowledge Structures and Moral Order
• critical theory theoretical tradition (the
  Frankfurt school Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse
  ludic and resistance postmodernist theory)
• developed method of generating dangerous
  knowledge, the kind of information and insight
  that upsets institutions and threatens to
  overturn regimes of truth
• notion of hegemony, contradictions of class
  societies, epistemes, analysis of consciousness,
  revolutionary action
• goal of critical analysis to critically analyze
  modes of thinking (epistemes, Orientalism) to
  open channels for experience of everyday life,
  practice informing theoretical thought, as
  shapers of knowledge systems to counter
  oppression of thought by creating critical
  consciousness
• librarianship is revolutionary in how it meets
  the needs of the public (upholding institutions
  and facilitating social change, universal
  access to information)

3
Knowledge Structures Review

• Module II - Knowledge Domains and Communities of
  Practice
• critique of modernist science and
  post-Enlightenment thought (critical feminist
  studies, critique of technoscience, cultural
  studies movement)
• thought is mediated by power relations that are
  social and historically constituted and therefore
  facts can never be isolated from the domain of
  values or removed from ideological inscription
  (relationship bw concept and object are mediated
  through language / discourse and therefore in
  existing power relations in society)
• mainstream research practices are implicated in
  the reproduction of systems of class, race, and
  gender oppression
• postmodern science and theory reject assumptions
  of Enlightenment rationality, traditional Western
  epistemology, and supposedly secure
  representation of reality that exists outside of
  discourse itself (knowledge is mediated in
  communities of practice)

4
Knowledge Structures Review
Module I - Knowledge Structures and Moral
Order 1. Knowledge and Experience (deCerteau)
2. Knowledge and Practice (Lave, Bowker
Star) 3. Multicultural Perspectives
Deconstructing Orientalism (Said) 4. Historical
Perspectives Deconstructing the Enlightenment
(Foucault, Said)

5
Module I Knowledge Structures and Moral Order

• Knowledge and Experience
• Knowledge and Practice
• Multicultural Perspectives Deconstructing
  Orientalism
• Historical Perspectives Deconstructing the
  Enlightenment
• multiple perspectives of the processes that shape
  the production of knowledge (and
  representations), and its circulation how
  knowledge creates epistemes (schemas for
  processing of information) and how epistemes can
  be critiqued

6
Module I Knowledge Structures and Moral Order

• experience knowledge built through community
  memory and immediate reality, localization of
  experience in contrast to hyperreality of
  mediated experience communities seek autonomy
  and self-reflection
• practice formal knowledge systems (education)
  vs. informal knowledge (situational)
  legitimation of knowledge through traditional
  modernist science regulates what can be said
  under the flag of scientific authority practical
  knowledge is excluded from this discourse yet it
  is the practical knowledge accumulated through
  work / practice that may influence the creation
  of knowledge and innovation practitioner
  research vs. expert research (practitioners
  closer to purposes, cares, everyday concerns, and
  interests of work) need to acknowledge the
  progressive impact of practical knowledge

7
Module I Knowledge Structures and Moral Order

• multiculturalism the position of the knower that
  is related to institutional authority, reflects
  power relations and ruptures of East / West,
  South / North knowledge is a system shaping
  reality but it is perspectival knowing styles
  are localized but in the postmodern condition the
  perception of the world is fragmented
• historical epistemes are shaped by communities
  of practice and institutional discourse
  knowledge trails knowledge is cumulative and
  shaped by antecedents institutions maintain
  privileged knowledge systems

8
Knowledge and Practice Lave

• JPF mathematics in action vs. story problems and
  the classroom context
• Cases bowling, Weight Watchers, abandoning
  problems (supermarket calculations of prices)

9
Knowledge and Experience deCerteau

• The grand narratives from television and
• advertising stamp out or atomize the small
• narratives of streets or neighborhoods
• (deCerteau, pp. 142-3)

10
Multicultural Perspectives Said

• Is knowledge self-replicating, fatalistic, a text
  that does not have the ability of reflecting
  experiences or perspectives of the Other?

11
Historical Perspectives Said, Foucault

• Student response to readings / presentations

12
Knowledge Structures Review
Module II - Knowledge Domains and Communities of
Practice 1. Science Technology (Bijker,
Haraway, Johns) 2. Social Sciences (Budd,
Borgman) 3. Arts Humanities (Panofsky) 4.
Popular Culture (Freccero, Poole)

13
Module II Knowledge Domains and Communities of
Practice

• Science Technology
• Social Sciences
• Arts Humanities
• Popular Culture
• scholarly communication is shaped by the
  communities of practice which impose their own
  views on the nature of truth (formal knowledge
  systems in various disciplinary domains science,
  technology, social sciences, arts humanities)

14
Module II Knowledge Domains and Communities of
Practice

• traditional modernist research focused on rigor
  while neglecting the dynamics of the lived world
  and the pursuit of justice in the lived world
  post-Enlightenment science focused research on
  the how and the form of inquiry to the neglect of
  the what and the substance of inquiry
  traditional research argues that the only way to
  produce valid information is through the
  application of a rigorous research methodology
  (strictly following a set of objective procedures
  that separate researchers from those researchers
• critical postmodern research respects the
  complexity of the social world (research humility
  implies a sense of unpredictability of the
  sociopolitical microcosm loss of faith in the
  privileged frame of reference claims to truth
  are relative to social context of knowledge
  creation they are also dependent on the
  conditions of production

15
Module II Knowledge Domains and Communities of
Practice

• cultural studies (popular culture) critically
  examine mediated representations and knowledge
• humanities acknowledge the subjective nature of
  knowledge as interpretation
• social inquiry needs to be social critique, not
  only technology that focuses on reducing human
  beings to taken-for-granted social outcomes
  (scientific research works with hypotheses about
  reality and then collects data to support them
  thus theory is used to validate existing power
  relationships)
• science and applied science (technology) are the
  most modernist of the knowledge domains, least
  concerned with critical perspective

16
Science Technology Bijker, Haraway

• Progress, science, reason, nature how far do we
  go? The promises and limitations of
  post-Enlightenment thought

17
Knowledge Circulated Johns

• The realities of production, and circulation of
  knowledge artefacts is part of the power dynamics
  in society. The notions of authorship and
  authority are related to trust and
  trustworthiness of certain knowledge claims.
  Standardization / fixity of text forms is another
  key issue in the knowledge production and
  circulation in the form of artefacts.

18
Social Science Budd, Borgman

• Social science as method of understanding with
  high internal validity and hope for
  generalizability (external validity across
  contexts) but how does it accommodate the
  unpredictable character of sociopolitical
  realities?
• What happens to scholarly communication in the
  electronic publishing scenario? (continuous /
  discontinuous future paradigms hybridity)

19
Arts Humanities Panofsky

• The strength and the frailty of humanistic
  study?

20
Popular Culture Freccero

• Whose knowledge is it really (knowledge
  representations created by the media and the
  processes of capitalist society or authentic
  expression of social groups)?
• Why important to study cultural forms as critical
  study and analysis of power relations?