5. Research Methods in Architectural History | Arjun Appadurai | The right to research | 2006 When the article mentioned “their world of city”1, there are two meanings behind this sentence. The first meaning is that the author suggests a distinction of citizens. The citizens are distinguished by the language they used, so they are divided into non-English speakers and English speakers. The second meaning behind this is that the author believes that these two groups of citizens have different perceptions and understandings of the cities in which they live. Under the wave of globalization, some people who have not participated in the process of globalization, perhaps language is one of the reasons, “feel uncertain”1 about the city in which they live after huge changes have taken place in their city. At the same time, they feel that they have been abandoned by globalization. Such a group of people actually represent the situation of localization, which is the opposite of globalization. They probably have gradually become a disadvantaged group from the mainstream of the city. To some extent, they have become victims of asymmetric information under globalization. I like the concept of PUKAR1, and I appreciate the unique documentation technology invented by Rahul to involve different groups of people living in the city and to integrate and share the information they gathered. I think “the right to research”1 that is discussed in this article is a very broad concept and complex topic. By explaining many social phenomena, the author exposes the importance and problems of research by ordinary people. There exist completely different problems in the right of research in different countries and regions. I think that when discussing the right of research, there are two other points that need to be paid special attention to, that is, the boundaries of the information2 and intellectual property rights3. The right of research should be equal, but the access of reaching the knowledge and the context of the knowledge may never be truly equal. Information is always bounded2. For example, if we equip everyone in the world with computers and the same internet speed, and we assume that everyone holds the ability to retrieve information, but different people will still get different levels of information because of different abilities. Furthermore, not all knowledge could be shared. It refers to intellectual property rights3. Some kind of knowledge belongs to the re-creation of some people, such as personal entrepreneurial experience, intellectual creation experience, literary and artistic creation experience, etc. This type of knowledge itself is highly valuable. Even if people have the same right in research, they still cannot reach all knowledge or they need to pay more to obtain the knowledge. The right of research is facing to full citizens, thus the accessibility of knowledge should be considered: what type of knowledge is open to access, and what type of knowledge is limited to access? The management of knowledge itself should also be stricter. 1. Arjun Appadural, Globalisation, Societies and Education: The Right to Research. (New York, NY: Duke University Press, 2001). 2. Warren B Brown, “Systems, Boundaries, and Information Flow.” The Academy of Management Journal 9, http://www.jstor.orgstable/2549 50 (accessed March 3, 2021). 3. Peter K Yu, Copyright and Related Rights: Intellectual Property and Information Wealth. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007).
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