Another Structure of Knowledge Is Possible: The Social Forum Process and Academia

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the possibilities opened by the emergence of the social forum process (both manifested at the global level in the World Social Forum and at more local levels, particularly the United States Social Forum) for the reconstruction of the structures of knowledge. By structures of knowledge, I mean two things. First, following Immanuel Wallerstein, I mean the disciplinary organization and hegemonic approaches since the late nineteenth century in the social sciences. 1 Secondly, and this will provide more of my focus, I mean the institutional and practical features of academia – the research universities, academic journals, university presses, libraries, conferences, professional associations, etc. Structures of knowledge in both senses produce ways of understanding the world. Th ese ways of understanding in turn compete with those produced in other sites, including everyday common sense(s), journalism, think tanks, the entertainment industries, social movements etc. Th e academic forms (which themselves are not unitary) are by no means universally hegemonic. Th ey are, nevertheless, quite significant. Academia in its modern sense has blossomed in tandem with the growth of modern nation states and the deepening of the capitalist world economy, during the period 1800 – the present, roughly the period that Immanuel Wallerstein describes as characterized by a coherent ‘geoculture’. Not unlike the modern nation-state, the research university starts to emerge around 1800, congeals in form about 1) Wallerstein 1991.