Subject: CASTAC - AAA Panel (Blomberg & Orr) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 01:57:11 -0500 From: Joseph Dumit To: CASTAC-L BCC: dumit@mit.edu the following was forwarded by Julian Orr: Here's another late one. Organizers: Jeanette Blomberg and Julian Orr Chair: Jeanette Blomberg Reframing knowledge management: Anthropological perspectives on knowing and acting Business and popular publications are filled with stories about the competitive advantage that awaits companies able to "manage their knowledge resources" and "turn corporate knowledge into market value". Knowledge management, the latest corporate craze, claims to offer techniques and tools for harnessing the "knowledge assets" of a company and is reminiscent of the obsession with "culture" that overtook business and organizational discourses a few years ago. Anthropologists in and out of the academy rarely participated in these discussions, except to bemoan the co-opting of the concept of culture for economic gain. In hindsight, perhaps we should have been more willing to engage with those who were promoting the culture concept as the key to business success. Today it is more difficult for anthropologists to distance ourselves from global capitalism and its corporate manifestations, and moreover anthropologists may want to have a more prominent voice in contemporary discourses. For many of us, the corporate appropriation of "knowledge" in the interest of applying corporate management techniques to relations of knowing is a pressing issue. We are concerned about the reification and commodification of knowledge which we see as intimately connected to the current enthusiasm for control and management of intellectual capital. This session will present anthropological perspectives on knowing and acting with the aim of directly engaging the rhetorics of knowledge management. Drawing on fieldwork among both industrial and non-industrial groups, papers will explore local action as the basis of knowing, the material and literary foundation of knowing, the tension between local and global knowledge systems, and knowing as embodied practice. Please contact Jeanette Blomberg and Julian Orr if you are interested in participating. Abstracts must be received by March 23, and should not exceed 250 words. Abstracts should be sent to Jeanette Blomberg: e-mail: blomberg@parc.xerox.com Jeanette Blomberg Xerox Palo Alto Research Center 3333 Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 (650) 812-4751 (650) 812-4380 (fax) e-mail: orr@parc.xerox.com Julian Orr Xerox Palo Alto Research Center 3333 Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 (650) 812-4347