Description

Knowledge Landscapes North America intervenes in current critical debates on concepts of knowledge and modes of knowledge production and circulation. As knowledge has been proclaimed an indispensable economic resource, scholarly and public discourses increasingly interrogate its established and newly evolving forms and institutions. These discussions frequently focus on North America and its knowledge landscapes, which retain their crucial position in knowledge distribution despite shifts in global power constellations. The contributions to this volume explore the particularities of these knowledge formations by raising pertinent questions: How do North American knowledge institutions drive global knowledge economies-and in which ways are they driven by them? Which agents shape North American knowledge landscapes? What conditions have been conducive to the emergence of innovative knowledges? The authors interrogate the significance of local and tacit knowledge; they reflect on marginalized or 'forgotten' knowledges as well as on the expertise of literature and the arts; and they map the shifting media ecologies that have affected concepts of knowledge and its circulation.