Yes, an empirical study should address itself to something which *is* actually measurable, at least statistically. Even so, there may still be structural cultural assumptions which need unpacking. I think most people would accept knowledge as a value -- "knowledge" pretty much encompasses the whole of human endeavour from how to make organised communicative sounds and chip flint tools to how to build a digital library. Who gets to define criteria for knowledge evaluation? And do we all accept that only knowledges which can be converted to exchange values are to be valued? Because this assumption does seem to be becoming increasingly structural to academic endeavour in a marketised system and is rapidly ceasing to be "marked" as a culturally specific assumption at all. If the point of the study in question is to explain and address economic exclusion in capitalist economies proceeding from disadvantaged groups becoming differently skilled, it would seem important to explore the question of what constitutes "skill" or "knowledge" and how their value is measured. The assumption that only knowledges which can be exchanged for money within a capitalist system are valuable (or exist at all) is effectively built into the formulation of a "knowledge gap" itself. If this isn't deconstructed, the study will just contribute, once again, to renewed economic enforcement of ruling class knowledge values. Renewed efforts will then be made to get economically excluded groups to devalue knowledges specific to their environment and adopt knowledges for which they have no use (because they do not address the immediate environment or provide knowledges which this specific group actually *can* convert to money). These knowledges will be largely rejected by the recipients who can't find a use for the knowledge offered (it has no application in their context). The effects of this effort will then be measured according to the values and assumptions of those constructing the study/skills programme and the poor will be found to be "less" again. QED: the poor are poor cos they're failing. This assumption that economically excluded groups within capitalism possess *less* knowledge ought to be deconstructed. Are we measuring knowledge by the kilo or the pound? As has been a perennial source of film comedies, a yuppie abandoned in the wilderness would become dependent on bushmen who have the specific skills to exploit that enviornment. Tarzan in New York is equally amusing. So, are we looking at the specific knowledges required to facilitate specific modes of social and economic life? And how do we assess the value of these different cultural/economic spaces? Is how rich they are in terms of money income going to be the dipstick again? Can the poor only "better themselves" by obliging the middle-class liberal will to elide class difference (by homogenising themselves with middle class knowledge values)? Paula Danny Butt wrote:

Hi Michaël

There are a number of ways of looking at this and it's possible to frame the question in the way you do. Decisions on terminology reflect long-standing political and disciplinary issues and I would be surprised if there was consensus around the correctness of your proposition.

I would agree with 1), that knowledge is a social relationship and very elusive as an object. Once could say that ICT skills = "knowledge" = "resource" = "good". But the work of Eszter and others has made it clear that the acquisition of such knowledge is not at all straightforward, even if we agreed that it was valuable. (My view is that people like us who write to academic listservs tend to assume that it's valuable :).

A more sceptical view would be to look at ICTs as part of a much larger set of social and economic relationships, that informationalise resources with unevenly distributed benefits. Some knowledge can be converted into material resources more readily than others, but it's very difficult to measure the knowledge, and I guess my question would be why introduce the "knowledge gap" when you can track ICT use against more measurable "divides" like increasing wage inequality? And even then ICT use itself is such a variable field - I think the value of work like Kathryn Shaw in the volume I referred to is that it addresses a specific field and looks at employment change, something that people can give good information on, rather than a hypothesis that treats all potential situations as a site of "the gap" rather than addressing the relationships between one's object of study and what is external to it.

Cheers,

Danny

-- http://www.dannybutt.net adventures in cultural politics - http://acp.dannybutt.net digital media - http://digital.dannybutt.net

On 5/12/05 4:21 AM, "Opgenhaffen Michaël" <michael.opgenhaffen@lessius-ho.be> wrote:

...

Thanks Eszter, Redhika, Ulla, Danny, Paula and others for your help. I understand that my question was not well formulated, my excuses for that!

This is quite a complex domain for me and I want to get it right. Therefore, an additional question:

If I got it right, the knowledge gap is the situation that some groups (high-class, white, rich, well-educated, ...) are getting smarter en smarter (because of there learning-abilities and -motivations and other benefits) and the other groups aren't, so that the gap between the info-rich and info-poor is widening (cfr Matthew-effect). Since the success of ICT, we can observe sort of a same distinction between those who can work with internet and computers and those who can't or won't. Those who can work with ict, benefit from that use, while the groups for who it could be great to work on (for closing the knowledge gap) aren't working with ict so that again, the gap is widening.

I now i formulated it very briefly, but is this in general correct?

My question is twofold: 1) Can i describe the difference in knowledge-output between users and non-users as 'a knowledge gap'? I thought I read it somewhere, but as i read your answers, i begin to think that the knowledge gap is more a social phenomenon and not the difference in knowledge-output between users and non-users. 2) If this difference can not be called 'knowledge gap', which concept do you suggest to describe this possible difference in knowledge-output between users and non-users?

Thankx a lot in advance. I know my English is not as good as my dutch is, but i hope clear anough to understand.

Michaël

------------------------- Michaël Opgenhaffen Translation studies and journalism Lessius school Antwerp Belgium

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