Transforming Knowledge

by Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich

This is a book about how we define knowledge and how we think about moral and political questions. It argues that the prevailing systems of knowledge, morality, and politics are rooted in views that are exclusionary and therefore legitimate injustice, patriarchy, and violence. That is, these views divide humans into different kinds along a hierarchy whose elite still defines the systems that shape our lives and misshape our thinking. Like the first edition of Transforming Knowledge, this substantially revised edition calls upon us to continue to liberate our minds and the systems we live within from concepts that rationalize inequality. developments in its allied fields (such as Cultural Studies, African American Studies, Queer Studies, and Disability Studies) to critique the deepest and most vicious of old prejudices. This new edition extends Minnich's arguments and connects them with the contemporary academy as well as recent instances of domination, genocide, and sexualized violence. Updated to consider recent scholarship in Gender, Multicultural, Postcolonial, Disability, Native American, and Queer Studies, among other fields of study; Revised to include an extended analysis of the conceptual errors that legitimate domination, including the construction of kinds (genders) of human beings; Revised to include new materials from a variety of cultures and times, and engages with today's contemporary debates about affirmative action, postmodernism, and religion

Genres: Education, Philosophy, School

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1990

Reviews

[Gea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich is the author of numerous works and the Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the Union Graduate School in Vermont. Transforming lays out a formula that can be used to show how hidden biases and power hierarchies operate and maintain power within societies. By highlighting how errors in ‘thinking’ occur, Minnich helps us to notice the errors in our own thinking. She explains how - through faulty generalizations, circular reasoning, mystified concepts, and partial knowledge – individuals and the dominant culture reinforces the status quo and makes it very difficult for new ideas and social concepts to take root. This is an imperative read for those interested in epistemology, women studies, social change, and learning; the concepts within this book can be applied in many different fields to show how the dominant culture operates.

[Lorette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the seminal book on how White, euroamerican centric, paternalistic, sexist thinking pervades our culture and all our culture produces. We have made progress, but Minnich encourages the new academy to transform knowledge radically, changing our knowledge constructs and our language. Our thinking errors are supported by four main processes: overgeneralization, partial knowledge, circular thinking, and mystified concepts. I found mystified concepts the most intriguing, and I have reread that section, where she discusses concepts that have come to mean more that just the words - sex, gender, man, woman, Liberal Arts, war are a few she specifies.

[Gea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A definite favorite -
Teaches how to look at the root of issues and not get caught up on definitions -
Teaches how to uncover why issues, institutions, values are assumed to mean certain things -
Relevant book in all areas of social life: race, gender, sex, education, politics, history...

[Vampire-lk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woot woot!! Wrote my last essay for this book!!!!!!

Was a good book overall! Great examples & points made! Granted would never read this outside of school or probably ever again! Enjoyed it over some of my other books assigned not as dry or dull as some!!

[Milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry in parts, but it's ultimately worth the read for its four (five?) points on errors of dominant traditions.