17 March 2014
How does tacit knowledge relate to the possibilities and difficulties of cooperation? The concept of tacit or implicit knowledge rests on Michael Polanyi’s famous assumption that “we can know more than we can tell”. Any trial to take a grasp on tacit knowledge is confronted with a paradox: If such embodied and pre-reflective ‘knowing how to do something’ is the basis for all of our (inter-)actions, how can we access and describe it in the propositional language of scholarly discourse?
The workshop mainly discussed how tacit knowledge enables or obstructs intercultural cooperation. Intercultural communication is of special interest because we can assume that it poses the problem of how to coordinate different forms of culturally specific forms of tacit knowledge. The workshop was organized as a roundtable discussion with each participant starting with a rather brief statement. The aim was to discuss and wrap up openly and participatory the research state of the art in the social sciences as well as possible future research.
Contributors:
Gregor Bongaerts (Professor of Sociology, University of Duisburg-Essen)
Jens Loenhoff (Professor of Communication Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen)
Christian Meyer (Professor of Sociology, University of Bielefeld)
Organization: Frank Adloff & Frank Gadinger
Time: 15.00–18.00 h
Venue: Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Schifferstr. 44, Duisburg
