The Meaning of Local Knowledges

Foucaults studies of the relations between power and knowledge provide an alternative methodology for the studies of knowledges and their organizing. A methodology, which is referred to as genealogy. Process and pluralism is at the heart of genealogy. It thereby challenges unitary sciences and emphasises the concrete, independent and contextual character of knowledges. It seeks the present in the history of struggles among differentials. It focusses on uncovering the different knowledges and their interaction that are behind organized patterns. Finally, it strongly encourages a focus on specific practices like techniques, projects, tasks etc. in and around which the differences play together and interact in specific ways. In these operations, genealogy turns science on its head, because it opposes any unifying narrative and allows knowledges to maintain their own identity. The analysis thus becomes of an ascending kind, where more general phenomena emerge through the detailed study of practices.