The Place of Civil Society in the Creation of Knowledge

Abstract

AbstractThis interdisciplinary volume addresses the relations between civil society and knowledge from a social, institutional, and spatial perspective. As knowledge and civil society are co-constitutive (any voluntary civic agency would seem to require a minimum of knowledge and the kinds of civic agency shape the production and use of knowledge), we approach their relationship from two viewpoints: (a) what we know and how we think about the civil society shapes our action in it; (b) the particular relations between knowledge and civil society shape how knowledge in civil society becomes actionable. Adhering to the first imperative, we should carefully reflect and occasionally reconsider our assumptions about civil society. In line with the second imperative, we should carefully distinguish the ways in which civil society impacts knowledge. These range from knowledge creation, its interpretation, and its influence on societal and political discourses to its dissemination through civil society.