Specialization, territoriality, and jurisdiction : Librarianship and the political economy of knowledge

RECENT WORK ON INTERDISCIPLINARITY and knowledge growth has produced a variety of models to capture a process of bewildering complexity. Prominent among these are organic models, which compare knowledge growth to biological processes (e.g., hybridization), and spatial models, based on various suggestive geographical parallels. Part of the background of the dynamic formation, interaction, and dissolution of disciplines is a broader and perhaps more pervasive social process that particularly affects the knowledge-intensive occupations in the advanced industrial societies and indirectly affects all forms of work. This process is presented as an opposition between the impulse to integrate and consolidate across fields and the impulse to discover and perhaps colonize new knowledge domains in a manner resembling territorial conquest, expansion through annexation, and resulting claims to exclusive jurisdiction. This article draws on some key ideas of recent social theory, the sociology of the professions, and other sources to outline librarianship's current situation.