its radically non-experimental, more technical
sense can be subject to the same disciplined
processes of critical reading that literary
scholars apply to poems and novels, and in
as many ways. The process of theoretical
critique in human geography is not only
about the collision of contending concepts,
therefore, but is also about its text-ures,
the very languages and grammars of geograph-
ical enquiry: it can and should include the
analysis ofmetaphor andrhetoric, a dis-
closure of the masculinism and phallo-
centrism of the formal structure of an
argument or the deconstruction of geo-
graphical texts. This ought to come as no
surprise: the root meaning of ‘Geo-graphy’,
after all, is ‘Earth-writing’. ghe/dg
Suggested reading
Bunkse (2004); Thacker (2005–6).
local knowledge A term coined by the
English philosopher Gilbert Ryle, and popu-
larized by the American anthropologist
Clifford Geertz (1983). Local knowledge re-
fers to the double idea (1) that all knowledge is
geographically and historically bounded, and
(2) that the local conditions of its manufacture
affect the nature of the knowledge produced.
Note that local knowledge refers to the context
in which knowledge is produced, not the geo-
graphical domain to which knowledge applies.
The physicist’s string theory, for example, is
a piece of local knowledge even though its
explanatory province is infinitely large, even
beyond the known universe. To take in turn
the two parts of the definition:
(1) Knowledge is historically constrained,
and produced within particular material
settings that include geographical site,
particular kinds of human bodies, and
specific types of buildings, machines
and equipment. The key word ispro-
duced. Producing knowledge contrasts
with the conventional view that know-
ledge is acquired through discovery
(dis-cover, literally to uncover). In the
discovery view, knowledge is assumed
to be free floating and pre-existent,
requiring only the right conditions to be
revealed. For knowledge to be produced,
however, suggests something different;
that there is an active process of creative
construction ‘on site’ according to
specific local rules and conditions. An
example is graduate students making vig-
orous use of large desk calculators in the
statistics laboratory at the University of
Iowa in the late 1950s, and in the process
producing geography’s quantitative
revolution(Barnes, 2004b).
(2) The material and historical setting, and
associated social interests, enter into the
very lineaments of knowledge. Know-
ledge does not come from the sky, from
heavenly inspiration, but from engaging
in particular kinds of social practices that
are historically and geographically
grounded (see situated knowledge).
Knowledge is irreducibly social, never in-
nocent, always coloured by the context of
its production. This does not mean that it
is singularly determined by its context.
Multiple responses to any situation are
possible, though their range will be con-
strained by the places and predicaments
that have in various ways, sometimes un-
remarked and unconscious, both sum-
moned and shaped them. Examples are
legion:environmental determinismex-
pressed (and helped to legitimize) the ra-
cist and imperialist impulses of late-
nineteenth-century Europe; regional
sciencerepresented theinstrumental-
ist,masculinistand economistic senti-
ments of much of mid-twentieth-century
America; andpostmodernismreflected a
late-twentieth-century consumer capital-
ism constituted by flickering images and
fabricated identities. In each of these
cases, the knowledge that emerged is
shaped by the particular, non-repeatable
constellation of forces, causes and deter-
minations found at a given time and
place. One can begin to trace their effects,
and they clearly travel and will be found in
other times and places too, but not in the
exact same combination with the same
consequence. Each local context will be
different, producing different knowledge.
The important corollary is that universal
claims to truth are unsupportable. Know-
ledge is always made inside the bubble of
local context, with no means of moving
outside for ‘a god’s eye view’ (Haraway,
1991c, p. 193).The issue of local knowledge has been
central recently in at least two disciplines.
First, in anthropology, Clifford Geertz (1988,
p. 137) argues for the impossibility of ‘telling it
like it is’, because ethnographic accounts are
as much about the world of the ethnographer
as the world that is represented (and transpar-
ently obvious in early ethnographies; Geertz,Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_L Final Proof page 422 31.3.2009 2:44pmLOCAL KNOWLEDGE