KULTUREL VIDENSDIVERSITET: Om videnssystemers lukkede ontisk-epistemiske fantasier og nødvendigheden af vidensmægling

Resumé

Cultural diversity is often taken to be something visible. We perceive others as different

from us on the basis of their different colours of skin, signs of gender, age, their clothes

etc. In this article I argue that we should be more attentive towards the invisible diversity.

This includes an increased focus on the processes behind our perception of cultural

diversity in the visible world. I argue that cultural learning processes are what can be

recognized as cultural differences. Learning involves an incorporated knowledge of

practice. When this normally tacit body knowledge is called forth in confrontations,

brokers are needed who can understand better the often misunderstood words spoken

in conflicts. The incorporated knowledge makes words meaningful for some, who share

the learning in practice the words refer to, and unintelligible for others, who do not. Such

brokers are important in open conflict, but they are perhaps most important when we

naively accept communicated messages from influential people. We need brokers who

know how to translate the practice of everyday body knowledge in cultural worlds –

even when we from visible surfaces consider us as part of the same culture. We need

brokers who can open up complexities, where none were seen and who can make us

understand that even apparently innocent words and appearances can be understood in

deeper ways demanding a new form of incorporated knowledge. In the “world of physics”,

I argue, such brokers are necessary for a more democratic world. The most likely brokers

are anthropologists, who do not settle for surfaces, but insist on reflecting on their own

incorporated cultural learning processes.