‘fact’. Upon reflection, circularity yet again rears
its untimely head. Rather than recognizing a
‘fact’, we accept that certain statements are true
while others are not. In most cases, this recogni-
tion takes place subconsciously: it becomes part of
‘common sense’ in the form of a largely taken-for-
granted context that we inherit. Who, for instance,
would doubt that water flows downstream? And
what point would there be in doubting that it does?
The circular notion at the heart of conceptuali-
zations of knowledge is thus as unavoidable as it
is real. If ‘knowledge’ cannot create the spaces it
requires by its own, modern standards to be
separated from other forms of reflexive behaviour,
perhaps it is time to reconfigure ‘knowledge’ dif-
ferently: perhaps as a particular form of ‘prac-
tice’ or ‘culture’ that operates in accordance with
its own set of rules and regulations and according
to the spaces that are produced by these ‘prac-
tised knowledges’. Rather than insisting on the
idea of knowledge as being ‘external’ to and
detached from experience, we would then be free
to speak of ‘knowledge’ as one form of culture,
which resides alongside other forms of existence.
Alternatively, such recognition could lead to a
levelling of the distance between culture and
knowledge, effectively elevating any kind of
practice to the status of knowledge (and vice
versa). In the first case, witchcraft and modern
medicine would no longer be categorically dis-
tinct; in the second, the laboratory and the
kitchen were both to emerge as spaces of knowl-
edge. Perhaps. But what would initially have
been gained by such a move if, to invoke Ian
Hacking (1999), the emerging cultural construc-
tion of reality would leave both knowledge and
culture ill defined and lacking in analytical
rigour? In other words, would we not merely by-
pass what we need to understand? Faced with the
difficulty of defining knowledge, we might
arguably have been well advised to have begun
by placing‘knowledge’ in relationship to other
concepts. After all, socially and culturally spe-
cific practices such as ‘knowledge’ acquire their
meaning by being placed in relationship to other
practices and concepts. To give an example: we
can identify the meaning of ‘employment’
because we can place it within a spectrum of
related activities that range from ‘slavery’ to
non-profit forms of work such as say gardening.
Alternatively, we employ a range of practices
alluded to as ‘leisure’ activities to create a
context that is different in kind from the one we
designate as ‘employment’. Together, these
concepts and the semantic fields they characterize
bestow meaning on the world we inhabit.
‘Knowledge’ is no different from other con-
cepts: it, too, forms part of strings of conceptsthat allow us to differentiate practices from one
another. But again there is one crucial difference:
more than most practices, ‘knowledge’ is set
aside from other concepts not merely with the
help of dualisms that together form part of a
semantic web. Rather, ‘knowledge’ becomes
what it is perceived to be through the stabiliza-
tion of dualisms into polar opposites of the
‘either/or’ kind (Doel, 1999; Hannah, 1999). The
bipolarity of individualized phenomena, or
the fact that propositions are either true or false,
is translated into a model for knowledge as such
(Wittgenstein, 1961). In western societies in
particular, ‘knowledge’ is thus characterized as
much by reference to what it is as by allusions to
what it is not. This essentially Hegelian insight,
the recognition that each and every ‘positive’
identification creates some form of ‘negative’
context, usually takes the form of an axis
between what is identified as ‘knowledge’ and its
opposite other, variously defined as ignorance,
simplicity, error or other signs of absence.
Arguably its most fundamental axis, however, is
that between ‘knowledge’ and the form of ‘non-
knowledge’ usually referred to as ‘belief’. The
solidification of the polarity between various
forms of religious practice and scientific knowl-
edge is finally one of the key defining elements
of modernity.
In the rest of this chapter, I explore some of
the key ramifications of this fundamental setup
for the study of culture. I suggested earlier that
perhaps it would be advisable not to approach
‘knowledge’ by the commonly accepted stan-
dards, which present it as an endeavour external
to everyday routine and thus capable of avoiding
the circularity that attaches to other forms of
human practice. For such a critical approach to
work, we will have to clarify where and why the
adoption of this standard occurred – and why it
continues to matter. Only then will this chapter
be in a position to analyse the contribution of
‘culture’ to ongoing epistemological debates and
to clarify any possible contribution that ‘cultural
approaches’ could make to the human sciences.THE RISE OF KNOWLEDGEHow, then, did ‘knowledge’ come to be what it is
today – the most common of yardsticks for the
evaluation of claims about various aspects of
reality? The first and admittedly obvious point to
note is the historical novelty of both the status
and the current conceptualization of knowledge.
The break most commonly associated with the
twin occurrence of the Renaissance and the522 SPACES OF KNOWLEDGE3029-ch28.qxd 03-10-02 11:07 AM Page 522