OLIVER IBERT: Zur Lokalisierung von Wissen durch Praxis: Die Konstitution von Orten des Lernens über Routinen, Objekte und Zirkulation*

On the Localization of Knowledge through Practice: the Constitution of Sites of

Learning via Routines, Objects and Circulation

This paper aims to deepen our understanding of the social mechanisms that localise knowledge. There-fore it juxtaposes two different approaches towards a ‘geography of knowledge’ and seeks to learn from their discrepancies. While the economic geographic discourse unfolds an argument of agglomeration and explains the local character of knowledge through regionally bound actors and a specific institutional setting, the interdisciplinary ‘science studies’ elaborate an argument of place, which portrays the actual practices of knowledge production as inherently local: Knowledge is situated locally through routines of interaction within epistemic communities, it is embedded within a material setting of a knowledge milieu, and it enacts monocentric practices of circulation within and across epistemic cultures. The paper concludes by scrutinising the relationship between local practices and mobile practitioners and the role of institutions. It uses empirical material from an ethnographic case study conducted in a research and development project in nanotechnology.

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