Knowledge of other cultures is judged by the needs of the producing society.

Evidence

Knowledge of the social world, in short, is always no better than the interpretations on which it is based. All our knowledge of so complex and elusive a phenomenon as Islam comes about through texts, images, experiences that are not direct embodiments of Islam (which is after all apprehended only through instances of it) but representations or interpretations of it. In other words, all knowledge of other cultures, societies, or religions comes about through an admixture of indirect evidence with the individual scholar’s personal situation, which includes time, place, personal gifts, historical situation, as well as the overall political circumstances. What makes such knowledge accurate or inaccurate, bad, better, or worse, has to do mainly with the needs of the society in which that knowledge is produced. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 356

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that accuracy of cultural knowledge is determined mainly by the producing society’s needs, not correspondence to reality, is a paradigm-shifting idea with profound epistemological consequences.

Related

• Societal needs, not reality, determine whether knowledge counts as accurate. (similarity 0.83)
• Understanding Islam’s coverage requires demystifying the power-knowledge link (similarity 0.82)
• Knowledge of other cultures requires conscious effort crossing distance. (similarity 0.82)
• The Islamic world increasingly learns about itself through Western-produced images (similarity 0.81)
• Truth about human societies is relative to its producer (similarity 0.80)
• Western scholarship on Islam grew from positions of colonial dominance. (similarity 0.80)
• Knowing another culture needs uncoercive contact and interpretive self-consciousness (similarity 0.80)
• Understanding another faith requires sincere suspension of doubt about its core claims. (similarity 0.79)
• The reified notion of Islam has hindered rather than helped understanding of Muslim societies (similarity 0.79)
• Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.78)