Budd, Jesse Shera
Jesse Shera, Sociologist of
Knowledge?
Jesse Hauk Shera (1903-1982)
• librarian / scholar / theoretician /philosopher / educator
“An early pioneer in the electronic organization of information and library catalog
automation, Jesse Hauk Shera was born in Oxford, Ohio, on December 8, 1903, the son of
a dairyman. He grew up in Oxford, graduating from McGuffey High School in 1921.
While in high school, Shera was a member of the debating team as well as a cheerleader.
Initially interested in a career in chemistry, a visual impairment, poor eyesight, prevented
him from pursuing this goal. Instead, he remained in Oxford and graduated with honors
with an A. B. in English from Miami University in 1925. He continued his educational
career at Yale University, graduating in 1927 with a master's degree in English. As
employment for English professors was scarce in the pre-depression era, Shera was unable
to procure a teaching position and returned to Ohio, where he joined the library staff at
Miami University.” (From: http://www2.msstate.edu/~jeg98/JShera.htm)
Social Epistemology / Sociology of
Knowledge
knowledge = justified true belief
(social) epistemology = the limits of knowing / justification
of belief + examination of the social dynamics of
knowledge claims
sociology of knowledge = primary focus is on the social
dynamics (including the creation and maintenance of
culture, the construction of rules, tacit or otherwise, of
action and behavior, and the governance of group belief)
that influence human action (Budd, p. 425)
Jesse Shera, Sociologist of
Knowledge?
• LIS = epistemological discipline (a body of new
knowledge about knowledge itself
• Engagement with the social processes of knowledge
creation, distribution, and use
• recorded knowledge = graphic record (Shera) … and
beyond
Jesse Shera, Sociologist of
Knowledge?
underlying assumptions of SE (Shera & Egan 1952: Budd 2003, p.
426)
1.
DIRECT & IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE: “knowing” based on immediate
environment or personal experience with the environment
2.
REMOTE AND VICARIOUS EXPERIENCE: “knowing” through instruments
of communication developed by society to assume “knowing” about the total
environment that is beyond personal experience; the symbols that enable such
translation to personal experience
3.
SOCIAL KNOWING: Coordinating the differing knowledge of many
individuals the society may transcend the knowledge of the individual.
4.
KNOWLEDGE AS INTEGRATED ACTION: Social action, reflecting
integrated intellectual action, transcends individual action.
Geertz, Common Sense
Common Sense as a Cultural System
common sense
• Discuss Zande vs. Evans-Pritchard’s ‘common
sense’ (what is the underlying system?).
• Why is it useful to look at categories that cross
cultures (e.g. hermaphroditism)?
• Give own examples of common sense systems:
• that have shifted historically
• that demonstrate cultural relativity
Common Sense as a Cultural System
common sense
• How is common sense knowledge system built?
• What are transmission systems for common
sense knowledge systems?
• Give examples of how common sense can
regulate activities of the society (e.g. economic,
agricultural, etc.). What are the limitations?
Common Sense as a Cultural System
common sense
• Give examples of how anomalies in the system of
commonsense thought can be explained away? (Zande:
witchcraft)
• Discuss each of the stylistic features (quasi-qualities) of
common sense
naturalness
practicalness
thinness
immethodicality
accessibleness
Common Sense as a Cultural System
• traditional occupation of anthropologists to find out
about systematized knowledge in different cultures
• systematized knowledge found in the elementary forms
of [religious life among the Australian aborigines,
native botanical systems in Africa, spontaneous sense of
design on the Northwest Coast, ‘concrete’ science in the
Amazon]
• common sense ignored form of knowledge (not
systematized)
Common Sense as a Cultural System
• Geertz seeks to understand “roughcast shapes of
colloquial culture vs. worked-up shapes of studied
culture”
• Geertz claims that “given the given, not
everything else follows” -- common sense is not a
human universal
Common Sense as a Cultural System
common sense
• immediate deliverance of experience
• realm of the given and undeniable, matter-of-fact, selfevident realities
• ‘just life’ with ‘world as its authority’
• if it rains it is common sense to step into the house
• ‘what everyone with common sense knows’
Common Sense as a Cultural System
common sense
• not a tightly integrated system but based on conviction
by those who have it on its validity; dimension of
culture not usually conceived as forming an ordered
realm
• frame for thought and a species of it
• as totalizing as any other frame of thought
• it is just an illusion to give truth to things as they are
Common Sense as a Cultural System
common sense
• epistemology of common sense is external reality
contrasted to:
religion -- revelation
science -- method
ideology -- moral passion
• common sense (problem of ‘everyday experience’, how
we construe the world we biographically inhabit)
• interpretation of experience; constructed; cultural
system; what leads to what
• system of thought based on pre-suppositions
Common Sense as a Cultural System
So What? skepticism, justification (regress argument)
Formal statement of the Regress argument
Assuming that knowledge is justified true belief:
(1) Suppose that P is some true belief. For it to count as knowledge, it must be justified.
(2) That justification will be another statement – let’s call it P'; so P' justifies P.
(3) But if P' is to be a satisfactory justification for P, then we must know that P' is the case.
(4) But in order to know that P' is the case, it must itself be justified.
(5) That justification will be another statement – let’s call it P"; so P" justifies P'.
(6) We are now back in the same position as in (3), but in this case with P" in place of P'.
This presents us with three possibilities: the sequence never finishes; or some statements do
not need justification; or the chain of reasoning loops back on itself. Therefore, we accept
some foundation and coherence for the world, based in common sense.
Common Sense as a Cultural System
common sense justification
• common sense method: why not assume what nobody ever doubts?
• provides solution to the regress argument
• do not need criteria in order to judge whether proposition is true or
not
• can take some justifications for granted according to common sense
(acceptable assumptions)
• there is no infinite regress or circle of reasoning because the buck
stops with the principles of common sense
Common Sense as a Cultural System
•
•
•
•
•
common sense / everyday experience
contains categories organized by association
transmitted body of knowledge
natural symbols
basis for formalized knowledge: information
infrastructures
• Why skepticism about common sense? moral
order creates meaning, justifies social order,
determines what is legitimate knowledge and what
is not
Osborne, Locating Identity
Locating Identity
• Explain the ‘places of memory’ concept. Give
examples of such 'places' that you are familiar
with. How is memory organized around space
and time?
• Why is memory related to identity of groups?
Why is it important for groups to have 'memory'
organized a certain way? What are the channels
of transmission for group memory (say, in a
family, an institution, a nation).
Locating Identity
• Give examples of mnemonic devices
(landscapes, verse, objects, etc.). Which
ones among them could serve as collective
markers, and which ones organize personal
memories. How do they differ?
• Discuss how memory can be individual,
collective, and hegemonic.
Locating Identity
• Why does the author say that systems of
remembering and forgetting are socially
constructed. How is 'forgetting' part of the
process of remembering?
Locating Identity
• What, in your opinion, is the significance of
memory research for managing memory
institutions (libraries, archives, museums)? What
do they have in common as connection to
building collective identity? What are the pitfalls
for these institutions?