Abstract
Is knowledge neutral? Can it be? Are there ways to produce neutral and objective knowledge? Different theories about knowledge and science have implications for how research is done and how different knowledge organization systems (KOS) and knowledge organization processes (KOP) are made and understood. Such questions are epistemological. This article starts considering how feminist researchers have questioned the objectivity of research about women and introduces the concept “epistemological violence”. It further takes a broad view of the main families of epistemological theories and demonstrate trends towards historical, interpretative and pragmatic perspectives in the understanding of knowledge and research. The main emphasis in the article is given to the question of whether knowledge is neutral or political and concludes that it is better to have explicit subjectivity than subjectivity disguised as objectivity. The article also discusses the importance of these perspectives for information science and knowledge organization.
| Original language | English |
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| Journal | Knowledge Organization |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| ISSN | 0943-7444 |
| Publication status | Submitted - 2019 |