Introduction: Interaction, Circulation and the Transgression of Cultural Differences in the History of Knowledge-Making

Abstract

This book proposes a novel approach to knowledge-making. By formulating a new paradigm and drawing on fresh material about spaces that have so far barely been studied, the authors of this volume reconstruct the relational histories of knowledge production. The volume starts from the following premises: that knowledge is always made in interaction; that it is never unmediated; and that its origins never lie in a single place. The making and moving of knowledge are two inextricably entangled processes. This project therefore rediscovers the circulation of people, practices and ideas by studying the adaptation and reconfiguration of locally situated stocks of knowledge. In so doing, it moves beyond the emphasis on representations which has ensnared the study of culture for half a century. The central conceptual move it proposes is one that de-prioritizes cultural difference in order to contextualize and historicize its conditions of emergence. Taken together with this move, the strategy of enquiry presented in this book provides a new approach to how the global history of knowledge-making can be written today.