Knowledge matters, and states have a stake in managing its movement to protect a variety of local and national interests. The view that knowledge circulates by itself in a flat world, unimpeded by national boundaries, is a myth. The transnational movement of knowledge is a social accomplishment, requiring negotiation, accommodation, and adaptation to the specificities of local contexts. This volume of essays by historians of science and technology breaks the national framework in which histories are often written. Instead, How Knowledge Moves takes knowledge as its central object, with the goal of unraveling the relationships among people, ideas, and things that arise when they cross national borders. This specialized knowledge is located at multiple sites and moves across borders via a dazzling array of channels, embedded in heads and hands, in artifacts, and in texts. In the United States, it shapes policies for visas, export controls, and nuclear weapons proliferation; in Algeria, it enhances the production of oranges by colonial settlers; in Vietnam, it facilitates the exploitation of a river delta. In India it transforms modes of agricultural production. It implants American values in Latin America. By concentrating on the conditions that allow for knowledge movement, these essays explore travel and exchange in face-to-face encounters and show how border-crossings mobilize extensive bureaucratic technologies.
Industry Reviews
"A timely contribution and an excellent example of how to connect academic research with contemporary geopolitical debates on migration, geopolitics, and international commerce. . . . How Knowledge Moves unites a series of disparate but fascinating stories. . . . The volume conveys a thought-provoking call to focus on the obstacles to circulation, which can provide intriguing insights on current political debates on migrations, international commerce, and national identities. In any case, the volume is a fresh contribution to the literature and a timely reminder that, like civic liberties and human rights, science and knowledge are results of the action of humans and we should never take for granted that knowledge moves."-- "Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society"
"This lively and innovative collection explores the diverse conditions that shape how--and whether--scientific knowledge travels across borders. It encompasses the full range of activities and circumstances, from the basic materiality of the everyday to the strictures of institutions, bureaucratic systems, and state structures, that define the transnational peregrinations of knowledge, 'knowledgeable bodies, ' technologies, and scientific practices. How Knowledge Moves is an indispensable addition to the literature on science and transnationalism in the twentieth century."
--Jessica Wang, University of British Columbia
"Focuses mainly on the transnational history of science in the context of the rise of U.S. hegemony . . . Thanks to this focus, the volume is compact, not merely an assemblage of disparate studies. . . . The main potential pitfall of edited volumes is that the editors sometimes fail to set the various subjects into one unifying framework. How Knowledge Moves avoids this drawback, providing a coherent narrative. Its clearly defined general context unifies the particular subjects, allowing details which might otherwise get lost to stand out and be fully appreciated. Editors clearly played an important role in this process."-- "Centaurus"
"[Krige] has assembled 13 essays that represent the state of the art in transnational history of science. The collection joins recent works (such as Audra Wolfe's Freedom's Laboratory, 2018) that seek to go beyond mere comparison of national contexts or simple de-emphasis of the nation-state in the name of transnational history. Instead, it seeks to develop a nuanced and sophisticated account of how geopolitical forces (including nation-states) shaped the production, transmission, and reception of scientific knowledge. The volume begins with a detailed analytical introduction that sets out the motivating methodological agenda and closes with a brief afterword that situates it in the current political moment. The essays in between--which are tightly edited, accessible, and largely well written--offer a broad picture of 20th-century science from the perspective of the intellectual ties that bound its scientific communities together. The book presumes some familiarity with major issues in the history of science and technology, but constitutes an invaluable, agenda-setting resource for anyone with an interest in these subjects. . . . Highly recommended."-- "CHOICE"
