Resources—from raw materials, artifacts, material objects, and instruments to human skills, ideas, and practices, to personal networks and large-scale technological infrastructures—impact substantially upon the creation, maintenance, and advancement of knowledge. Knowledge, in turn, is necessary to define and unlock such resources, as well as being, in and of itself, one of the key resources of human culture. At the intersection of media studies, STS, history of science, and history of the humanities, this course offers a framework for the analysis of knowledge and its resources and the multiple reciprocities between the two categories. It addresses the core concepts, methodologies, and historiographies necessary to disentangling the complex relationships between knowledge and its resources in a long-term and global perspective. Key to the agenda is a “historical-political epistemology,” an approach highlighting the ways in which knowledge is shaped historically and in which political systems, technological infrastructures, and social interaction shape the resource economics of knowledge cultures.
This Seminar will be taught in English, together with Anke te Heesen (HU) and Cale Johnson (FU). It is part of the curriculum of the International Max Planck Research School “Knowledge and its Resources: Historical Reciprocities,” and open to advanced master students of HU, FU, and TU Berlin. Students who wish to participate please apply with a short motivation email to Christine von Oertzen (oertzenc@hu-berlin.de)- Kursverantwortliche/r: Christine von Oertzen