Course Objectives

• Comparison and contrasting of diverse knowledge systems and understanding their participation in framing social worlds, moral codes, and practice
• Examination of knowledge systems from a historical and multicultural perspective
• Examination of the role of contemporary library and information agencies in providing access to knowledge systems through information infrastructure and the role of information professionals
• Examination of scholarly communication and of one knowledge domain and a scholarly journal related to that area
• Examination of students' own epistemological positions and evaluation of how these may affect their contribution to knowledge production in building information infrastructures (selection of materials, providing access to materials in the context of information agencies)
• Examination of historical artifacts in the context of production, dissemination, and consumption of knowledge
• Evaluation of representational systems and organizational schemes for access of knowledge artifacts in a variety of settings, with an emphasis on the traditional context of information work in libraries, archives, and museums

Organization of the Course

Module I - Knowledge Structures and Moral Order

1. Intellectual Origins of Knowledge Systems
2. Knowledge and Power
3. Knowledge and Experience
4. Knowledge and Practice
5. Multicultural Perspectives: Deconstructing Orientalism
6. Historical Perspectives: Deconstructing the Enlightenment

Module II - Knowledge Domains and Communities of Practice

1. Science & Technology
2. Social Sciences
3. Arts & Humanities
4. Popular Culture
5. Information Work: Professionalization
6. Information Work: Process & Practice in Organizational Contexts

Module III - Knowledge and Memory

1. Organizations
2. Memory Institutions: Museums, Archives, Libraries (Digitalized)
3. Social Memory
4. Information, Artifacts, Documents in Context
5. Circulating Information in Modernity

Major Assignments

Required Texts:

Bowker, Geoffrey, and Susan Leigh Star. 1999. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. (MIT Press) (selections)

Additional Texts:

Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid. 2000. The Social Life of Information. (Harvard Business School Press) (selections)

Methods of Assessment

Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter. 1969 [1936]. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt (Schocken Books), pp. 217-251.

Bijker, Wiebe A. 1994. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. (MIT Press)

Borges, Jorge Luis. 1962 [1942]. "Funes, the Memorious." In Ficciones, Tr. Anthony Kerrigan. (Grove) (Available at: http://www.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/GEC101/Funes.html; accessed January 23, 2006)

Bowker, Geoffrey. 2006. Memory Practices in the Sciences (Inside Technology). (MIT Press)

Budd, John M. "Journals and the Shaping of Disciplinary Knowledge," 67th IFLA Council and General Conference, August 16-25, 2001.

Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. (Cambridge University Press)

de Certeau, Michel, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol. 1998 [1994]. The Practice of Everyday Life. Volume 2: Living and Cooking. (University of Minnesota Press)

Fentress, James, and Chris Wickham. 1992. Social Memory. (Blackwell)

Foucault, Michel. 1965. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. (Vintage Books)

Freccero, Carla. 1999. Popular Culture: An Introduction. (New York U Press)

Furner, Jonathan. 2004. "A Brilliant Mind: Margaret Egan and Social Epistemology," Library Trends 52 (4): 792-809.

Galison, Peter. 2004. "Removing Knowledge," Critical Inquiry 31 (Autumn): 229-243.

Geertz, Clifford. 1992. "Common Sense as a Cultural System," The Antioch Review, 50 (1&2): 221-241.

Gingerich, Owen. 2004. The Book that Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. (Walker Publishing Company)

Hamlish, Tamara. 2000. "Global Culture, Modern Heritage: Re-membering the Chinese Imperial Collections." In Museums and Memory. (Stanford University Press), pp. 137-158.

Haraway, Donna J. 1991. "The Cyborg Manifesto." In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. (Routledge)

Haraway, Donna J. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. Female Man_Meets_Oncomouse?: Feminism and Technoscience. With paintings by Lynn M. Randolph. (Routledge)

Hess, David J. 1995. Science & Technology in a Multicultural World: The Cultural Politics of Facts & Artifacts. (Columbia)

Hofstede, Geert. 1991. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival. (McGraw-Hill)

Johns, Adrian. 1998. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. (U of Chicago P)

Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. (Harvard U P) (Ch. 1: Introduction, pp. 10-17; Ch. 2: "What is a Laboratory," pp. 26-45)

Lave, Jean. 1988. Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life. (Cambridge University Press)

Lowenthal, David. 1998. "Fabricating Heritage," History & Memory: 5-25.

Maleuvre, Didier. 1999. Museum Memories: History, Technology, Art. (Stanford University Press), 1-112

Olick, Jeffrey K, and Joyce Robbins. 1998. "Social Memory Studies: From 'Collective Memory' to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices," Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 105-140.

Osborne, Brian S. 2002. "Locating Identity: Landscapes of Memory," Choice July/August 2002: 1903-1911

Panofsky, Erwin. 1957. "The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline." In Meaning in the Visual Arts. (Doubleday), pp. 1-25.

Raber, Douglas. 1997. Librarianship and Legitimacy: The Ideology of the Public Library Inquiry. (Greenwood)

Ruhleder, Karen. 1995. "Reconstructing Artefacts, Reconstructing Work: From Textual Edition to Online Databank," Science, Technology & Human Values 20 (1): 39-64.

Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. (Vintage Books)

Urban, Greg. 2001. "This Nation Will Rise Up." In Metaculture: How Culture Moves Through the World. (U of Minnesota P), pp. 93-144.

Van Dyke, Ruth M., and Susan E. Alcock. 2002. "Archaeologies of Memory." In Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscape, Monuments, and Memories, pp. 1-13. (Cambridge University Press)

Verran, Helen. 2001. Science and African Logic. (U of Chicago Press) (Ch. 9 also published as: "Investigating the Social Foundations of Mathematics: Natural Number in Culturally Diverse Forms of Life," by Helen Watson in Social Studies of Science 20 (2:1990): 283-312)