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The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy by Ellen C. Lagemann (review)
- Canadian Review of American Studies
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 23, Number 3, Spring 1993
- pp. 254-257
- Review
- Additional Information
254 Canadian Review of American Studies daughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women, edited by Paula Gunn [Beacon Press, 1989]).Nevertheless, I found the discussion of marriage, divorce, and adultery interesting, especially with the editorial asides of the interpreters (mostlypeople from within the communities) included. We are told, for instance, that "informants knew of men who had cut gashes with flint stones in the cheeks of their unfaithful wives .... 'That is what they did to women; but it was quite all right for men to have two wives!' remarked a Nett Lake interpreter'' (162). O'Brian's introduction and Hilger's scrupulous detailing and attention to issues concerning women and gender roles make this study both informative and pleasurable. It is completely readable, and no undergraduate should have difficulty with either the introduction or the text. Jeanne Pe"eault Universityof Calgary •••••• Ellen C. Lagemann. The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1989. Reprinted in paperback: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Until the 1980s,the history of American philanthropic corporations tended to be written by insiders; they secured access to documents and provided very favourable accounts in return. With the opening of materials at facilities like the Rockefeller Archive Center to researchers on a more professional basis, however, a significant body of scholarship bas emerged. Among the most important of these new studies are Ellen Lagemann's 1983 history of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and her present volume on the first seventy years of the Carnegie Corporation. From its founding in 1922 until 1982, the Carnegie Corporation gave away over half a billion dollars and spent over $36 million to do so. This funding helped to establish and to sustain the infrastructure of American universities, libraries, scholarlycouncils , research institutes, and media for professional and scholarly communication . Lagemann has divided her account of corporate givinginto four overlapping periods: (1) Between 1911 and 1919,the organization began to depart from Andrew Carnegie's efforts to facilitate self-improvement and the general diffusion of knowledge with few strings attached. Carnegie had simply donated money to communities and people for local libraries, for church organs, and for whatever else struck his BookReviews 255 fancy. As his personal influence receded, the corporation introduced managerial controls; it became an agency that focused its largesse on enhancing the organization of knowledge in America. (2) The completion of this shift was marked by the 1919-23 period of "scientific management." In these years, the corporation consciouslyfunded private expert elites to create and develop agencies like the National Bureau of Economic Research and the American Law Institute. Organizations such asthese were established to effect synthesis and clarity within large bodies of vital information, thereby enhancing the utility of data bases for governmental policy making without enlarging the size of governments in the process. (3) Between 1923 and 1943, Frederick Keppel shifted the focus of the corporation from "scientific management" to cultural enhancement. He sought to facilitate wider popular access to high culture (without "debasing" that culture) through agencies like the American Association for Adult Education and the American Library Association, and by promoting acquisition lists and standards for college libraries. (4) The Corporation assumed its most recent phase, "strategic" funding, during World War II, beginning with its substantial funding for Gunnar Myrdal'sAn American Dilemma. The Corporation sought to directly facilitate specific strategies and plans that might help to resolve outstanding national educational, political, and social science questions. As such, it evolved into a national policy-making agency. As the Carnegie Corporation moved through these four periods, or stages, of development, Lagemann maintains that it also faced three interrelated and sometimes conflicting directional shifts that posed periodic dilemmas for its staff. First, Andrew Carnegie's initial grants to foster local libraries wherever there was interest was consistent with democracy, as were many subsequent grants for equal public access to education and scholarship. Over time, however, the Corporation became more and more attentive to professional elites within rising professions who had the expertise that was necessary to respond to vital issues with precision and skill. Toe corporation also witnessed a parallel pull in directions-between a...