Why a profession needs a discipline

Dr Susan MyburghUniversity of South Australia

Visiting Professor, University of Parma

How does the information society affect the information professions?◦What do we do?◦Are there commonalities between the

information professions?◦Why do we do what we do?

The sea change/ paradigm shift.◦Foucault’s ‘Bibliotheque fantastique’◦Information interventionists (Myburgh,

2007)◦Participatory librarianship◦Transliteracies

What are we (as information workers) and what will we become?◦Digital libraries◦User involvement◦Context◦Particular learning role◦Metaprofession◦Metatheory

the expression “information society” has become the hegemonic term to describe contemporary times: not because it expresses a theoretical clarity, but rather due to its “baptism” by the official policies of the more developed countries

The Information Society

Creating the information societyIt seems as if the information society is built from the incorporation of technologies and not from the existing structural realities and contradictions

Technological determinism

What is fundamental is to contest and delegitimize any term or definition that reinforces this technocentric conception of society

In order to historically review the concept, it should be remembered that, in general, the relationship between technology and development has frequently been perceived as a lineal relationship

Technology as progress

Development: two approachesIn the first approach, to talk about the information society refers to a new development paradigm that assigns technology to a causal role in the social order, designating it as the drive of economic development.

And changeThe second approach maintains that the

new phase of human development that we are entering into is characterised by the predominance of information, communication, and knowledge in the economy as well as human activities. According to this standpoint, technology is the support that has unleashed the acceleration of this process; but it is not a neutral factor, nor is its course inexorable, since technological development is guided by games of interest.

The discourse of information is a discourse of power ... Information ... looks chaotic, i.e. individual oriented, but it is based on power as much as on its outward sign, money. The discourse of the information economy displaces and discourages the idea of information as a social good by giving the impression of a non-hierarchical and powerless structure, where everybody has a chance to find the message one is looking for. But indeed this means that finally the messengers are the main point, the medium is indeed the message (Capurro, 1996, online).

Discourse of information

How can one characterise the deep transformations that come with the accelerated insertion of artificial intelligence and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in our present society?

How do we know what changes, if any, ICTs can bring about?

That information possesses transformative abilities is an article of faith for librarians

But what about the information that ICTs communicate?

DILEMMAOn one hand the international

dominant position holds that only deregulation of markets can guarantee the existence of the infrastructure necessary for universal access to the Information Society.

On the other hand, movements are fighting to ensure that information remains above all a public good and calling for regulation and public governance at a level appropriate for the important issues of the Information Age.

But now collaborative everything is possible: even consumerism…

Libraries aren’t what they used to be…

Perhaps they’re even more so.

Elucidating the professional contribution of librarianship to the information society. Four issues can be identified:

Information work must be explained as a discipline/profession.

Thus, there is a necessity for a theoretical framework which describes the knowledge domain.

Possibility of a metacommunity of information professionals but we need conceptual clarity.

Every discipline/profession must have asocial purpose or responsibility.

. A profession can be defined by the role it plays in society, but it nonetheless needs a disciplinary or theoretical base to inform its praxis: it requires a supporting discipline which exhibits epistemological commitments and develops theory which supports practice.

Discipline/ProfessionKnowledge/Power (Foucault)

Parsons suggests that there are several core criteria which distinguish professional work from the work of other occupations, namely a “requirement of formal technical training... giving prominence to an intellectual component”; the development of “skills in some form of its use”; and the “socially responsible uses” of the profession (Parsons, 1968, his italics).

DEFINITION OF ‘PROFESSION’

Among the various distinguishing criteria of a profession are: a core body of knowledge outlining and governing its practices, a social problem or need which the profession uses its knowledge base to deal with, and a degree of autonomy.

Abbott (1988, p. 8) defines professions as “exclusive occupational groups applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases”, and he believes that a profession’s strongest claim of jurisdiction over a problem is that its knowledge system is effective in the task domain.

Knowledge domains and problem solving

Blackler (1995) compares command of the abstractions which constitute a knowledge domain to a ‘black box’ of professional knowledge (c.f. Latour and Woolgar, 1986). This professional knowledge is not shared by other professions: separation and isolation give authority to such knowledge (Blackler, 1995). This suggests that both a theoretical foundation and a clear social purpose are necessary .

‘Black box’ of professionalism

A discipline can be characterised, according to Klein, as “[T]he tools, methods, procedures, exempla, concepts and theories that account coherently for a set of objects or subjects” (Klein, 1990, p.12).

Disciplines comprise an object of study, theories, and epistemological commitments, as disciplines are a means for, in Foucauldian terms, constructing and controlling knowledge production.

A discipline therefore includes a disciplinary culture, which provides an identity, credentials and values for its practitioners.

A discipline imparts, in addition, a particular view of the object of its study and this is what commonly differentiates disciplines: the objects, and the way in which they are studied, which Kuhn (1962/1970) called a paradigm or world view. The knowledge domain depends, in turn, on identified objects of study, and established methods and procedures for examination of these objects within the discipline.

Disciplinary cultures

Action guided by habitus has the appearance of rationality but is based

not so much on reason as on socially-constituted

dispositions.

Van House and Sutton, 1996

Different views of things

Theory is the core of an academic discipline (as opposed to its practical expression as a profession), and concepts are the core of a theory.

THEORY

PRAXIS

Praxis (practice) is the execution of the theoretical principles embodied in the knowledge domain of a discipline/profession.

The branches of philosophy (or knowledge seeking) include epistemology (the nature and grounds for knowing); ontology (the nature of being and the existence of entities); methodology (systematic understandings of method); ideology (the role of power and forces in human life, institutions, and cultures); teleology (designs and purposes as explanation); and axiology (the nature and operation of values and ethics).

Aristotle, Philosophy and the love of knowledge

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with the definition, nature, structure, origin and theory of knowledge: how knowledge is created.

Many disciplines identify an epistemological base which guides what knowledge in the discipline is created, structured, organised and understood: an epistemological commitment is considered the philosophical base of the discipline.

Borko’s1968 definition of “Information Science”:

Information science is that discipline that investigates the properties and behaviour of information, the forces governing the flow of information, and the means of processing information for optimum accessibility and usability (Borko, 1968, pp. 3-5).

Library and Information Science

Soergel (2005), amongst others, believes that Information Science already “brings together and advances basic thinking about the structure of knowledge, the structure of problems, approaches to problem solving and decision making, human information processing, and the functioning of social groups and organizations”, and thus it includes, or draws upon, many diverse areas, including computer science, mathematics, journalism, graphic design, education, economics and so on.

Information Science is all things…

… we emphasise that the argument for jurisdiction must be based on demonstrated ability to solve information problems. Many professions are at work building new information tools in the form of computer-based systems. Many are concerned with methods of managing and delivering information, and not just traditional information containers (Van House and Sutton, 1998, online).

What is the ‘knowledge domain’ ?

Things that confuse us: Data, information and knowledge

Reductionism

Talking on the phone

‘The mother of all models’

Transmission model. Shown to cultural and communication studies as a poor, oversimplified and irrelevant example.

T. S. Eliot

This hierarchy is first suggested in a poem by T. S. Eliot, published in 1934, called The chorus of the rock:

 Where is the Life we have lost in living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in

knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in

information?

A good way to think about information is that it's the professional object of librarianship. Every profession has its object: for law everything is a case, for medicine everything is a disease, and for librarianship everything is information. In each case, someone walks in the door with a problem, and the professional's job is to find their object in that problem, and to talk about the problem in a way that makes it sound like a case, a disease, or information that can be compared with other cases, other diseases, or other information (Agre, 1997, online).

Defining information

What is information, anyway? “IPs collect, organise, describe, manage, preserve

and make accessible… ”. •the pattern of organisation of matter and energy that has been given meaning by a living being.

•the lifeblood of the knowledge-based organisation.

•anything that makes sense.

•something that is intended to make sense.

•an objective phenomenon, something that is generated by, transmitted in, received and stored in physical media, but the existence of which is independent of an interpreting agent.

•the presence of a 1 or 0 in a bit.•a stimulus which expands or amends the World View of the informed.

•what people or systems need to be able to carry out work practices.

More information theory An expression of the form is considered by convention to be equal

to zero whenever p = 0. This is justified because for any logarithmic base.

Developing a theoretical framework which provides a kind of ‘lingua franca’ for the disciplines/professions involved in information work would be a high priority if further collaboration and integration is desired.

Need for a theoretical framework

A theoretical framework provides a basic, hypothetical, logical, conceptual structure or description of a complex entity or process, which can be used to develop theory, by classifying and organising complex information and providing a unified and coherent view. It enables the organisation and classification of concepts, entities, and phenomena, and the relationships between them, providing a unified and coherent view.

A theoretical framework comprises a set of concepts (ontology), the relationships between the concepts or phenomena which are called propositions or principles, and these relations are captured in a taxonomy. The ontology and taxonomy are accompanied by a statement of teleology, or purpose, which is qualified by axiological beliefs or obligations. ‘Nomos’, or the present situation and customs, can be contrasted with ‘telos’, which refers to a purpose or goal. Epistemologically speaking, an axiom is a self-evident truth.

Creation, Communication, Comprehension Information is that part of knowledge that is

selected to be communicated It is communicated by being represented in

symbols (sound and image) – language Knowledge of language (sound and image)

must exist before communication can take place (i.e. mutual understanding of cultural symbols) (Myburgh, 2007)

Definition of learning

Learning is a process of active engagement with experience.

It is what people do when they want to make sense of the world. It may involve the development or deepening of skills, knowledge, understanding, awareness, values, ideas and feelings, or an increase in the capacity to reflect. Effective learning leads to change, development and the desire to learn more.

Libraries are political sites; information professionals have a political role: this is clear because of the relationship between information (ideas) and power.

All knowledge structures, epistemologies and communication of information are, as Foucault tells us, highly political and hegemonic.

Politics

Information is a key component of what Giddens calls ‘structuration’, an emergent process in which neither structure nor individual action predominates but it must be related to what is already known and understood; but it must also have an element of novelty and so inspire creativity.

In other words, information must be made meaningful to human beings.

Giddens

...information professionals are not neutral, impartial custodians of truth; that information centre documents are not disinterested or innocent by-products of actions and administrations; that documents are rooted in the process and discourse of creation; and the order and language imposed on documents through arrangement and description are not value-free recreations of reality (Cook, 1997, online).

Information professionals can be viewed as “organic intellectuals” (Gramsci)

they play an ideological and organizational role in maintaining an historic bloc’s hegemony over the relations of economic production and civil society. From this perspective, the apparently neutral discourse of LIS regarding access to information can be examined as a discourse that privileges particular rather than universal interests (Raber, 2003, p. 35).

Organic intellectuals and teleology

They are the organizers of capitalist hegemony and its culture, and they play central strategic and ideological roles in the superstructure that reproduces capitalist relations of production.

These intellectuals “are the dominant group’s “deputies” exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government”(Gramsci, 1971, p. 12, cited by Raber, 2003, p. 45)

Hegemony over both economic and political relations.

Information and power For Castells, it is the interaction between

knowledge creation, making meaning, learning and application that is a key aspect of the Information Society.

Power then is central to information – for information, as Castells in particular has so forcefully argued, is an element which must flow. Where it flows from, and to whom, is the province of power.

Librarians as political They control mastery of and access to those

discursive resources which could provide essential competencies in an information-based economy and society, and which directly affect social and economic power.

Ethiopia, Habermas and the public sphereHabermas (1962) argues, in his book, The structural transformation of the

bourgeois public sphere, that art criticism, social criticism and literary criticism developed in public spaces like coffee houses. They became organised in the sense that criticism developed particular forms of communication in order to talk and write about social, political and cultural issues in society.

The success of the public sphere, according to Habermas, depends upon: the extent of access (as close to universal as possible), the degree of autonomy (the citizens must be free of coercion), the rejection of hierarchy (so that each might participate on an equal footing), the rule of law (particularly the subordination of the state), the quality of participation (the common commitment to the ways of logic). rational-critical discourse (Rutherford, 2000, p. 18).

understand how information is created, the differences between information sources, the distinctions in how people acquire information and turn it into something meaningful to them and their organizations, and the changing nature of information systems as reflections of social, economic, political, cultural and other factors…(Cox, 1998, online).

Librarians, as information professionals,

information work has been described as a ‘metadiscipline’ which is concerned with the content of conventional disciplines’, and it is orthogonally situated in relation to other disciplines. (Bates, 1999, p. 1044). Herold quotes an earlier writer who suggested that there are similarities between philosophy and librarianship in this regard (as does Floridi):

Metadisciplines and metacommunities

  1. Material field – agreement on the set of

objects with which the discipline is concerned; 2. Subject matter – the point of view or

epistemology from which the metadiscipline looks upon the set of objects that it studies

3. Level of theoretical integration – reconstruction of the reality of its subject matter. Most disciplines have many different theories, some unrelated, some contradictory.

4. Methods - the methods used to observe, describe and interpret the entities and phenomena that comprise the objects of study in the discipline..

Metatheory should incorporate the following areas. Heckhausen (1972),

5. Analytical tools – the tools a discipline uses, although Heckhausen indicates that these are not specific to disciplines.

6. Applications of a discipline in fields of practice – the degree of applicability of the theory to established practical applications. Heckhausen notes that disciplines with obligations to professional practice tend to be multi-disciplinary and lag behind in research.

7. Historical contingencies – a discipline is always in a transitional state and is a product of historical developments.

8. Social purpose of the profession/discipline. The purpose of the profession/discipline must be articulated and incorporated in its theoretical structures.

Heckhausen (1972) continued.

Essential to information professionalsHow and why is knowledge createdHow and why is knowledge selected for

communication; how is it representedWho are the intended recipients of the coded

message?How do they decode it and extract meaning

and make sense?What happens when they have received and

understood the information?How does this ‘transform’ them (change their

decisions and actions)?

If they can get it together, so can we.