ABSTRACT

Knowledge and society do not merely interact or determine one another. They are constitutive of one another. Society consists in the relations between people and the natural world that produce what we take to be knowledge and vice versa. Seen in this light modern science is not, in essence, distinct from other so-called traditional knowledge systems. All knowledge traditions are in effect socially organized and sustained spaces in which trusted and authoritative knowledge is produced and transmitted. This not only permits an equitable basis for their analysis and comparison, but also provides the possibility of bringing into focus hidden cultural features and assumptions by examining encounters between knowledge traditions. This approach can help to avoid the trap of privileging one tradition's mode of classification and ordering over another. It also helps avoid the trap set by the prevailing overemphasis within western intellectual circles on knowledge as representation.