The History of Knowledge and the Future of Knowledge Societies

The new field of the history of knowledge is often presented as a mere expansion of the history of science. We argue that it has a greater ambition. The re‐definition of the historiographical domain of the history of knowledge urges us to ask new questions about the boundaries, hierarchies, and mutual constitution of different types of knowledge as well as the role and assessment of failure and ignorance in making knowledge. These issues have pertinence in the current climate where expertise is increasingly questioned and authority seems to lose its ground. Illustrated with examples from recent historiography of the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, we indicate some fruitful new avenues for research in the history of knowledge. Taken together, we hope that they will show that the history of knowledge could build the expertise required by the challenges of twenty‐first century knowledge societies, just like the history of science, throughout its development as a discipline in the twentieth century, responded to the demands posed by science and society.     

Does Nature Always Matter? Following Dirt through History

Despite several decades of impressive scholarship in environmental history, the field remains largely marginal to the discipline as a whole. Environmental stories are still more likely to turn up in introductions, sidebars, and footnotes to political, social, and economic histories than they are to be incorporated into those narratives in a transformative way, though we as environmental historians know that potential is there. As we struggle to identify what precisely it is that we want other historians to do with our work, we run up against questions of definition and mission: What is environmental history? What do we do that is unique? What do we want other historians to learn from what we do? Some scholars in our field have suggested that we can answer these questions by framing “environment” as a category of analysis parallel to race, class, and gender, arguing that careful attention to the environment offers as rich a way of uncovering power relationships in societies as attention to these other categories does. While it is true that power can be read in the environment, and is frequently expressed through it, I argue that “environment” as both concept and fact is so fundamentally different from class, race, and gender that the analogy does not work, and distracts us from another, more fruitful strategy for articulating the broader relevance of our scholarship: demonstrating the significance of material nature for histories beyond the environmental realm. If other historians would join us in our attention to the physical, biological, and ecological nature of dirt, water, air, trees, and animals (including humans), they would find themselves led to new questions and new answers about the past.     

The Obvious in a Nutshell: Science,Medicine, Knowledge,and History

The scope and mission of the history of science have been constant objects of reflection and debate within the profession. Recently, Lorraine Daston has called for a shift of focus: from the history of science to the history of knowledge. Such a move is an attempt at broadening the field and ridding it of the contradictions deriving from its modernist myth of origin and principle of demarcation. Taking the move from a pluralistic concept of medicine, the present paper explores the actual and possible contributions that a history of knowledge can offer to the history of medicine in particular. As we will argue, the history of medicine has always been a history of knowledge, but for good reasons has always stuck to the concept of medicine as its object and problem throughout the ages, including the modern, scientific one. We argue that, in the history of medicine, the demarcation between scientific and non‐scientific represents an accident, but is not foundational as in the case of natural science. Furthermore, the history of medicine programmatically played a role in at least two academic domains (history proper and medical education), adjusting historical narratives of medical knowledge to its audience. Accordingly, we underscore that the history of both science and medicine, as traditionally defined, already provides room for almost the whole spectrum of approaches to history. Moreover, their different myths of origin can, and indeed must, be included in the reflexivity of the historical gaze. We argue that the position towards a history of science, medicine, or knowledge is not a question of narrative or theory, rather, it is a question of relevance and awareness of extant contexts.     

Geschichtswissenschaft - Wissenschaftsgeschichte: Koexistenz oder Konvergenz?

Until recently, in Germany general history lived with the history of science in a peaceful coexistence which was the result of their mutual ignorance. The debates on the integration of social and cultural theories and methods into both disciplines have offered opportunities for a new convergence of general history and history of science. The basic assumption of social constructionism that science does not produce knowledge independant from time and space, has offered new possibilities to link history of science with the discourse of general history. This article will argue that the biographical method, the theory of national innovation systems, institutional history and cultural history are among the most promising approaches to ensure that scholarly coexistence will be replaced by convergence.     

THE MISSING NARRATIVIST TURN IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SCIENCE

The narrativist turn of the 1970s and 1980s transformed the discussion of general history. With the rejection of Rankean historical realism, the focus shifted to the historian as a narrator and on narratives as literary products. Oddly, the historiography of science took a turn in the opposite direction at the same time. The social turn in the historiography of science emphasized studying science as a material and practical activity with traceable and documentable traits. This empirization of the field has led to an understanding that history of science could be directly describable from scientific practice alone without acknowledging the role of the historian as a constructor of narratives about these practices. Contemporary historians of science tend to be critical of science's ability to describe its object—nature, as it is—but they often are not similarly skeptical of their own abilities to describe their object: past science, as it is. I will argue that historiography of science can only gain from a belated narrativist turn.     

2. REASONS,GENERALIZATIONS, EMPATHY,AND NARRATIVES: THE EPISTEMIC STRUCTURE OF ACTION EXPLANATION

It has become something of a consensus among philosophers of history that historians, in contrast to natural scientists, explain in a narrative fashion. Unfortunately, philosophers of history have not said much about how it is that narratives have explanatory power. They do, however, maintain that a narrative's explanatory power is sui generis and independent of our empathetic or reenactive capacities and of our knowledge of law‐like generalizations. In this article I will show that this consensus is mistaken at least in respect to explanatory strategies used to account for rational agency using the “folk‐psychological” framework of intentions, beliefs, desires, and the like. Philosophers distinguish insufficiently among different aspects and different types of information needed for a historian to persuasively account for an agent's behavior in particular circumstances. If one keeps these aspects apart it will become apparent exactly how one should understand the epistemic contribution of empathy, generalizations, and narrative for the explanation of action.     

Exploring the Archaeology of the Modern City: Issues of Scale,Integration and Complexity

Historical archaeologists have advocated the need to explore the archaeology of the modern city using several different scales or frames of reference—the household and the district being the most common. In this paper, we discuss the value of comparisons at larger scales, for example between cities or countries, as a basis for understanding archaeology of the modern western city. We argue that patterns of similarity and dissimilarity detected at these larger scales can (and should) become part of our interpretive and explanatory armoury, when it comes to understanding patterns and processes at smaller scales. However, we also believe that these larger scale enquiries do not by any means exhaust (or diminish the importance of) the site- or household-specific questions that continue to demand adequate answers. By reporting some of the thinking behind the work that has been done in Melbourne, Sydney and shortly to begin in London, we seek to more clearly establish the value of this broader comparative agenda in urban historical archaeology.     

Sexualities,subjectivities and urban spaces: a case for assemblage thinking

In this essay, we argue that assemblage thinking has much to offer geographers attempting to conceptualize the interrelationships between sexualities, subjectivities and contemporary urban spaces. In our current research on queer mobilities, we found that despite the explanatory weight provided by mobilities approaches, two fundamental questions remained: how to conceptualise the nature of ‘the queer subject’, and how to better explain why certain kinds of urban spaces still seemed to support these newly mobile queer subjects. Here we speculate on the potential of assemblage thinking to formulate some new theoretical and conceptual responses to these questions. While quite preliminary, there is the potential to understand how interlocking (but temporary and unstable) notions of identities, subjectivities and mobilities (of ideas, people, knowledge, capital, etc.) can be ‘assembled’ in and across urban spaces, recursively reshaping sexualities and places.     

Cleaning Up Their Acts: Shifts of Environment and Energy Policies in Pluralist and Corporatist States

This study examines the abilities of different types of governments to take proactive steps towards reducing pollution. Specifically, the hypothesis that the system of interest group representation on a scale of pluralism to corporatism will affect a state's rate of change to reduce consumption of carbon dense fuels. Using a standardized measure of carbon density of fuels consumed, this work examines industrialized economies over a 13-year time period. The study shows that the Nordic corporatism systems are more capable of shifting to cleaner fuels than pluralist, majoritarian systems. It is asserted that this is a result of the goal-oriented policymaking in corporatist states in comparison to more process-oriented policymaking in pluralist systems.     

Liberalism and cultural claims in Central and Eastern Europe: toward a pluralist balance†

ABSTRACT. This article relies on cases from new EU member states in postcommunist Europe to integrate two overlapping debates about majority–minority relations. Since the Second World War, political theorists and international institutions have tended to discourage group‐rights approaches in favour of individual rights; meanwhile, policy‐makers who achieved interethnic peace in postcommunist Europe have often opted for group‐rights approaches. On the basis of political theory, international norms and the conduct of political elites in this region, we argue that both the individual‐rights and group‐rights approaches can be differentiated internally along the dimension of pluralism – that is, their willingness to accommodate multiple processes of cultural reproduction. Moreover, both group‐rights and individual‐rights approaches can offer justifications for restricting minority cultural opportunities; furthermore, restrictive group‐rights approaches sometimes cloak their efforts behind ‘Western‐sounding’ individual‐rights rhetoric. Likewise, both group‐rights and individual‐rights approaches can permit group accommodation that can lead to political integration. We find that de facto pluralist approaches to minority accommodation – often spearheaded by moderate parties of the majority in coalition with minority‐group parties – encourage ethnic peace, regardless of their foundation in individual or group rights.     

The history of ‘Social Technology’, 1898–1930

Since the term was first coined, in the late nineteenth century, ‘social technology’ has had a mixed fate. Whereas ‘technology’ has become one of the keywords of the twentieth century, ‘social technology’ never quite seemed to settle in the vocabulary of social theory. In this article, we focus on the early history of ‘social technology’, tracing its spread from its origin in the sociology department at the University of Chicago, and describing the increasing competition from the term ‘social engineering’ starting in the 1920s. We argue that this shift in terminology is significant, because it is an index of changing ideas about the demarcation of sociology, about the application of science in the betterment of society and about the nature of technology.     

Making History, Talking about History

Making history—in the sense of writing it—is often set against talking about it, with most historians considering writing history to be better than talking about it. My aim in this article is to analyze the topic of making history versus talking about history in order to understand most historians' evident decision to ignore talking about history. Ultimately my goal is to determine whether it is possible to talk about history with any sense.
To this end, I will establish a typology of the different forms of talking practiced by historians, using a chronological approach, from the Greek andRoman emphasis on the visual witness to present-day narrativism and textual analysis. Having recognized the peculiar textual character of the historiographical work, I will then discuss whether one can speak of a method for analyzing historiographical works. After considering two possible approaches—the philosophy of science and literary criticism—I offer my own proposal. This involves breaking the dichotomy between making and talking about history, adopting a fuzzy method that overcomes the isolation of self-named scientific communities, and that destroys the barriers among disciplines that work with the same texts but often from mutually excluding perspectives. Talking about history is only possible if one knows about history and about its sources and methods, but also about the foundations of the other social sciences and about the continuing importance of traditional philosophical problems of Western thought in the fields of history and the human sciences.     

Partisans and the Use of Knowledge versus Science

This paper explores the kind of knowledge that partisans profess in order to contribute to our studies of what has usually been thought of as the “denial of science.” Building on the research of Robert Proctor, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, I show that the tobacco interests and climate science skeptics usually described as “doubt mongers” also purveyed forms of certainty and rested their arguments on three different registers of truth: that of narrowly defined “facts” that could sustain a controversy, ideological commitments to free enterprise, and the truths of self‐conscious partisans engaged in battle. Thus, in many respects they have used elements of general knowledge, as well as social, economic and political commitments, to argue against specific scientific findings. Further, at least in the case of climate skeptics, this denial has been in the service of an image of the nature of science and its proper relation to politics. Analyzing significant dichotomies in debates that cross the terrains of science and politics, and knowledge and science, I will argue that a clear articulation of the relations amongst them will be critical to our work to understand the character of climate science denial, but also of the climate sciences themselves.     

The Psychological Basis of Historical Explanation: Reenactment, Simulation, and the Fusion of Horizons

In this article I will challenge a received orthodoxy in the philosophy of social science by showing that Collingwood was right in insisting that reenactment is epistemically central for historical explanations of individual agency. Situating Collingwood within the context of the debate between simulation theory and what has come to be called "theory theory" in contemporary philosophy of mind and psychology, I will develop two systematic arguments that attempt to show the essential importance of reenactment for our understanding of rational agency. I will furthermore show that Gadamer's influential critique of the reenactment model distinguishes insufficiently between the interpretation of certain types of texts and the explanation of individual actions. In providing an account of individual agency, we are committed to a realistic understanding of our ordinary scheme of action-explanations and have thus to recognize the centrality of reenactment. Nevertheless, Collingwood's emphasis on reenactment is certainly one-sided. I will demonstrate its limitations even for accounting for individual agency, and show how it has to be supplemented by various theoretical considerations, by analyzing the different explanatory strategies that Christopher Browning and Daniel Goldhagen use to explain the behavior of the ordinary men in Reserve Battalion 101 during World War II.     

Claude Lévi‐Strauss (1908–2009): The apotheosis of heroic anthropology (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Claude Lévi‐Strauss is one of the greatest interdisciplinary writers of the twentieth century whose influence extends far beyond his own discipline of social anthropology. His inquiry illuminates the borderlands between ‘primitive’ and non‐primitive, self and other, myth and history, human and animal, art and nature, and the dichotomies that give structure to culture, society, history and agency. This commemorative article of his legacy assesses disciplinary and interdisciplinary debates influenced by Levi‐Strauss's inquiry and methods, and looks at potential challenges for the future. Lévi‐Strauss's ideas continue to be influential in our assessments of what we mean by culture, values, social organization, including social transformations and cultural ideologies such as ethnocentrism, nationalism, fundamentalism, pluralism, neo‐liberalism, post‐modernism, relativism, humanism and universalism.     

Towards a holistic approach to heritage values: a multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan approach

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore the ‘Preservation/Heritage Values/Management’ triptych, and we propose a new method for addressing the values attributed to cultural heritage sites. Combining multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan approaches, we propose a way of moving beyond the traditional lens of assessing significance within the imposed categorical framework of ‘aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual values’. We provide an example of our new approach through a worked case study in the Maloti-Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site (South African section). Our case study concerns the values associated with the world famous San (Bushman) rock art of this mountain area. Through a thematic analysis of data collected in this area from 2009 to 2017, six cross-cultural interest points are identified and are discussed. Building upon the history of values-based heritage management, we argue that our multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan method is transferable and can be applied to heritage sites around the world. It can facilitate the construction of heritage management plans that are more in tune with local actors and that will therefore prove to be more effective and sustainable.     

A Strategic Approach to Multistakeholder Negotiations

Environment and development practitioners increasingly are interested in identifying methods, institutional arrangements and policy environments that promote negotiations among natural resource stakeholders leading to collective action and, it is hoped, sustainable resource management. Yet the implications of negotiations for disadvantaged groups of people are seldom critically examined. We draw attention to such implications by examining different theoretical foundations for multistakeholder negotiations and linking these to practical problems for disadvantaged groups. We argue that negotiations based on an unhealthy combination of communicative rationality and liberal pluralism, which underplays or seeks to neutralize differences among stakeholders, poses considerable risks for disadvantaged groups. We suggest that negotiations influenced by radical pluralist and feminist post‐structuralist thought, which emphasize strategic behaviour and selective alliance‐building, promise better outcomes for disadvantaged groups in most cases, particularly on the scale and in the historical contexts in which negotiations over forest management usually take place.     

Historicising Agency

Why has ‘agency’ been such a tenacious concept in historical scholarship on women and gender, and what have been the consequences on this tenacity? This essay tackles these questions and proposes, through a brief examination of the history of skin lighteners in South Africa and beyond, how agency might be pushed in more surprising, more analytically productive directions. Too often agency slips from being a conceptual tool or starting point to a concluding argument. For example, in my subfield of African women's and gender history, statements like ‘African women had agency’ can stand as the impoverished punch lines of empirically rich studies. Consideration of Walter Johnson's 2003 essay ‘On Agency’ highlights the intellectual and political imperatives of 1970s Marxist and feminist social history that placed agency at centre stage. This essay examines why, more than a decade after Johnson's critique, agency endures as a ‘safety’ argument for reasons related to representational politics, research methodologies and the circumscribed imagination of intellectual gatekeepers. It argues that we should move beyond agency as argument by attending to the multiple concerns and desires – some intentional, others not – that animate human actions, including contentious gendered practices, and by examining how different historical actors have themselves understood agency. Agency has a history. By acknowledging and tracing that history, we will be better able to discern the usefulness and limits of agency for our own analyses.