[...]... line with Knowledge Goes Pop, Apple recognizes that official knowledge should not be focused on to the detriment of popular knowledge: 16 Knowledge Goes Pop To do so would be a very real error, since popular knowledge is crucial in the formation and legitimation both of identities and of what counts as “real” knowledge Indeed, popular knowledge serves as the constitutive outside that causes other knowledge. .. of knowledge, the knowledge economy and the humanities value knowledge for fundamentally different reasons Given its predominance, it is inevitable that the knowledge economy will influence the future of the university and affect the appeal of different 8 Knowledge Goes Pop knowledges for students persuaded to think of themselves as customers in training to be knowledge workers’ When it comes to knowledge, ... accounts that praise popular knowledges, such phenomena has been ascribed position B) Under this category fall all those knowledges that traditionally have not counted as knowledge at all: knowledges of an uncertain status; knowledges that have not been verified; knowledges that are officially discredited (for different reasons) but which still enjoy mass circulation These 4 Knowledge Goes Pop would include... point out that popular knowledge cannot afford to ignore the official knowledge: A popular knowledge is, then, never essential or self-sufficient, but can exist only in relation to official knowledge. This relationship may range from one of accommodation or excorporation to one of as great a difference or distance as possible (1993: 198) Popular knowledges, in this way, ape more legitimated knowledges (mirroring... particular knowledge- producing discourse that I identified with – that I might mobilize Preface xiii to analyse popular knowledge That is to say, I realized that the way in which I approached such cultural phenomena was crucial: if I approached popular knowledges according to an ideal of critical distance, say, positioning popular knowledges as the other of, foreign to, and outside legitimated knowledge, ... identifications are experienced, produced 18 Knowledge Goes Pop and consumed – I would argue that the ‘popular’ of ‘popular knowledge requires a different set of questions to be asked from those posed by classic subcultural studies That is to say, if the old questions are not even right for subcultures anymore, they are even less appropriate for popular knowledges (a category that shares some characteristics... enquiry It is in this epistemological conjuncture that popular knowledges exist THOSE IN THE KNOW As a backdrop to thinking about popular knowledge, I want to highlight just some of the (relatively) recent academic approaches to knowledge that have helped me to understand how knowledge has been positioned in the humanities and what challenges popular knowledges pose to that positioning And although I won’t... behaviours and objects The sociology of knowledge, then, considers the effect of society on knowledge and the social construction of knowledge – in other words, how society shapes knowledge and how knowledge shapes society (in terms of social reality).The usefulness of such an approach, of course, is to recognize all knowledges, both official (such as scientific knowledge) and unofficial (such as folklore)... ‘official’ knowledges that also tell us who we are, what to believe, and how to conduct ourselves socially From Michel Foucault’s work, I knew that power relations are determined by knowledge, but I also wanted to think about the relations between knowledges in terms of power Are popular knowledges, I wondered, marginalized by official knowledges? What challenge do they pose to traditional sites of knowledge. .. something is real knowledge is contingent on something else being defined as merely popular For this very reason, the popular itself is actually closely linked to the state in often unseen ways and hence cannot be ignored (2003: 11) Apple’s observation regarding the relationship between ‘official’ and popular knowledges, along with his recommendation to look more closely at popular knowledge to understand . Gere Forthcoming books include Anti-Capitalism: Cultural Theory and Popular Politics Jeremy Gilbert Knowledge Goes Pop From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip CLARE BIRCHALL Oxford. presenting knowledge, the relations between expertise and the various forms of common sense are becoming increasingly conflicted. Knowledge Goes Pop jumps