Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae and/or non-US-ASCII text omitted; see image)
Kennedy Michael D. , Globalizing Knowledge. Intellectuals, Universities and Publics in Transformation (Stanford , Stanford University Press , 2015)
Book Reviews
Even if one thinks, like Jeffrey Alexander, that globalisation is merely "an incremental change in scale" rather than "a change of exponential magnitude"1it should be acknowledged that an important task for sociology is to understand how the intensification of exchanges at the global level influences the production, dissemination and implementation of knowledge. Michael D. Kennedy, professor of sociology and international studies at Brown University, takes on the topic in his new book.
After conceding that "globalizing knowledge" is a "terrible notion" [9], due to the polysemous and disputed meaning of both terms, Kennedy defends its use on the basis that it is "inescapable in these times" [9], because it refers to "a critical dynamic," central to the "good of the world" [35-36]. According to Kennedy, globalizing knowledge "refers to the process by which distant regions' knowledgeabilities are implicated in the particular cultures fusing those understandings" [9]. The sociology of globalizing knowledge is thus concerned with the "conditions, manners and implications of that fusion" [9]. What are these "knowledgeabilities?" Certainly he does not limit knowledge to the classical definition of what is considered justified true belief, since he includes in his account the discourses and works produced by social movements, artists and political leaders. In effect, Kennedy affirms that the view of knowledge as the result of a detached stance, a theoretical attitude towards the world proper of those who, in the terms of Lewis Coser, live "for" rather than "off" ideas, is a "narrow definition of knowledge in the world" [8], to which the author prefers a less exclusive view: on the one hand what is considered knowledge is the result of struggles and power relations and, on the other, the culture and discourses of social movements and groups "without privileged access to education, power, and wealth" [12] should be considered as a legitimate form of knowledge.
Kennedy then breaks the subject down by stating that his book "is about how different kinds of knowledge actors--intellectuals and knowledge institutions and networks--shape, and are shaped by, the mediations of various global flows and...