ABSTRACT
It is often observed that knowledge is crucial to contemporary developed economies (see, e.g., OECD). “Knowledge” now denotes something people strive to produce, strive to have recognized, and to evaluate, rank, and transact (Strathern; Ong and Collier; Camic, Gross, and Lamont). Indeed it might be fair to say that “knowledge” has become a value term in its own right. As Klein writes, commenting on the recognition of contemporary dance as a form of knowledge, “[i]n the globalised world of the 21st century, knowledge is considered the key to prosperity, inuence and power” (26). In political, business, and media rhetoric, innovation, creativity, and knowledge are often directly connected with economic dynamism, both in labor and in product innovation. In short, knowledge is a product of specic currency in a “knowledge based society” (Klein 27), the societies described by sociologists as operating a “knowledge economy” (Drucker; Powel and Snelman 200). This context is one in which an openness to new sources of knowledge (see Fensham in this volume, Chapter 7), and to new possibilities to extract and make useable knowledge from hitherto overlooked domains (see Zuniga Shaw in this volume, Chapter 10), is quite palpable (Strathern). Knowledge itself is one thing. Identifying new and alternative means of producing knowledge that might have economic or societal benets is another. It opens up the possibility for innovating on knowledge production itself. The rise of funding schemes targeted to art and science collaborations in the rst decade of this century is just one instance of this drive (see Leach and Davis), one that looks for knowledge production potential in arenas and domains hitherto considered “beyond” (Brandstetter 42) the rational and discursive production of knowledge in science (Klein 28).
