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Study Group: Knowledge/Transfer

The study group on knowledge and transfer is concerned with two intersecting fields of interest: It explores the value of "knowledge" as an analytical instrument, while also investigating cultural transfers between different actors, regions and societies. The group seeks to combine these research interests in three ways:

1. It reads theoretical texts on knowledge and transfer in order to become acquainted with current debates in the various disciplines.
2. It identifies questions and concepts which meaningfully conjoin transfer processes with interchanging forms of knowing and producing knowledge.
3. It integrates the empirical work of its members by discussing their particular interest in both conceptual fields.
   

The following questions thereby structure the debates:

• How crucial is the reference to knowledge and transfer in the research undertaken by the various sub-projects of the Sonderforschungsbereich 640? And how do knowledge practices as they are explored in the study group, relate to the concept of "representation" as it is discussed in the SFB?
• How is knowledge negotiated between various spaces and fields of action? How far are cultural transfers linked to specific media and concrete practices? And how useful are alternative ways of conceptualising transfers as processes of "translation" or "translocation"?
• How can transfer processes as well as processes of adapting and negotiating knowledge be located and described? How can they be compared?
• Situated knowledge I: How is the knowledge under investigation structured by gender, class or race? To what extent can the production of knowledge be viewed as a cultural or social practice? To what extent is the individual research actor-centred?
• Situated knowledge II: How do researchers reflect on their own activities and the consequences of their work? How do the members of the study group view their own roles as producers of knowledge?

The Working Group is hosting the Conference "Transfer in Dispute" (26.11. - 28.11.09).