Critical Reflections on Knowledge Structures & Communities of Practice

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 / networks of practice)

4. Knowledge Structures: Review Module I - Knowledge Structures and Moral Order 3. Knowledge and Experience (deCerteau) 4. Knowledge and Practice (Lave) 5. Multicultural Perspectives: Deconstructing Orientalism (Said) 6. 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 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: in the postmodern condition the perception of the world is fragmented • historical: epistemes are shaped by communities / networks of practice and institutional discourse, knowledge trails: knowledge is cumulative and shaped by antecedents; institutions maintain privileged knowledge systems

8. Knowledge and Practice: Lave Student responses to readings / presentations

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) 2. Social Sciences (Budd, Rowland) 3. Arts & Humanities (Panofsky) 4. Popular Culture(Freccerro)

13. Module II: Knowledge Domains and Communities of Practice • Science & Technology • Social Sciences • Arts & Humanities • Popular Culture • scholarly communication is shaped by the communities / networks 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 researched • 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 truthare relative to social context of knowledge creation

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. Social Science: Budd, Rowland 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?

18. Arts & Humanities: Panofsky The strength or the frailty of humanistic study?

19. 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?