Some knowledge belong to particular communities? (ToK Exh prompt #14)

ToK Exhibition prompt #14 ("Does some knowledge belong to particular communities of knowers ?") is a very popular prompt, I see lots of student exhibition commentaries from around the world who have written this prompt. I frequently see the same couple of problems, or anomalies, in student's responses to this prompt. The key point is the question: Does knowledge belong to communities ?

We will cover:

1. Problems / anomalies that are specific to this prompt.

2. Ways of avoiding / dealing with these problems.

3. Wider approaches to answering this question.

Problems / anomalies that are specific to this prompt.

Problem part 1: defining communities of knowers.

The first part of the problem comes from the idea of defining communities of knowers.  Often students will define this as an ethnic, religious or linguistic group, for example the community of Asian Americans, or Protestant Christians, or speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. These are all examples of communities of knowers, but they’re very large communities of knowers. There’s a lot of diversity of knowledge in large groups of communities of knowers such as ethnic, religious, linguistic or national groups. As such it becomes harder to talk about knowledge which may be specific to those groups.

Recommendation #1:

Therefore I recommend that we use more specific communities of knowers, you can define a community of knowers down to much smaller groupings, for example the students in your year group at school, the students in your ToK class, or even just the students who sit at the same table as you in ToK. These are far more specific communities of knowers. They allow you to develop far more specific claims about knowledge. Once you start to be more specific you tend to gain a better score in the ToK Exhibition.

Problem part #2: misinterpreting the prompt.

However, the second part of the problem is that this prompt isn’t really about the communities of knowers, the prompt is about the whether some knowledge belongs to those groups. There needs to be far more focus on the word belongs than on the communities of knowers. Far too often I see commentaries in which students have rewritten the prompt in their head as “describe knowledge that belongs to particular communities of knowers”, and their commentary is along the lines of: here’s a something that belongs to this religious group, and here’s a something that belongs to this linguistic group, and here’s a something that belongs to this national group. Of course, that is not answering the question does some knowledge belong to particular communities of knowers, as such those commentaries get fairly low scores.

Recommendation #2:

We need to focus on the main question of whether knowledge belongs to a particular community. The most obvious and straightforward way is to argue that Yes it does for one object, No it doesn’t for a second object, and maybe / sometimes for the third object. 

It is best to have 3 different knowledge arguments, one for each object. The knowledge argument is what in the marking scheme is termed the ‘justification’ for the inclusion of the object in the Exhibition. Having a different justification (or knowledge argument) for each object will place you in the marking bands above 5 marks for that criterion.

Some of the wider ways of answering this prompt.

focus on 'belong'

The whole prompt revolves around your definition of ‘belong’. It doesn’t really matter whether you argue that knowledge does or does not belong to a particular community, and it doesn’t really matter what that knowledge is, what matters is how you define ‘ belong’. Let’s quickly have a look at some of the ways in which we could define belong:

A suggestion for developing 3 knowledge arguments for the prompt relating to belong

Firstly we could define Belong as meaning that the knowledge was initially produced by that community. Therefore we can argue that the knowledge of the Cuban song Los Barbudos belongs to the knowledge community of the original Cuban socialist revolutionaries because they produced that knowledge.

Secondly we could define the concept of belong as when the meaning of knowledge is defined by a particular community of knowers. As such we could argue that knowledge of hip hop music does not belong to hip hop writers and artist as they do not define the meaning of the genre, but it does belong to the community of the mass media and music marketing companies who define the meaning of the music for other knowers.

Finally we could define the concept of belong as representing a community of knowers or assumptions. For example we could argue that knowledge of Hollywood belongs to the community of knowers of artists, writers and producers who work in the film and tv industry in the United States. They may not actually work in Hollywood, nor have access to knowledge of Hollywood, but knowledge of Hollywood represents the knowledge that they do have.

If you would like help to develop this ToK Exhibition prompt, or any of the other prompts in a lot more detail, you can pick up any of the ToK Today guides  - every ToK Exhibition prompt explained. The link to the ebook explaining prompt 14 is here, and the link to the book explaining every prompt is here.

The link to all of the ToKToday Exhibition resources is here.

Finally, the link to all of the blog posts on ToK Exhibition prompts is here, this includes (free) explanations of other Exhibition prompts.

If you have suggestions for other content that you would like covered (eg unpacking of another ToK Exhibition prompt) then please let me know (Daniel@ToKToday.com).

Stay Toktastic my friends!
Daniel, Lisbon, Portugal, Nov 2023