(Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 1992) Bailis, Stanley; Gottlieb, Stephen; Klein, Julie Thompson; Fiscella, Joan
When the World Bank created its Environment Department, no institutional mechanism existed to create, collect, or
disseminate environmental information that had accumulated in the Bank. Considering the ethical and political dimensions of
environmental information, designers of an environmental database began to conceive it as a source for arguments rather than as
a storehouse of data. Conceived in terms of argument, the database was developed in light of rhetorical principles that recognized
that "factual" and "objective" knowledge shifts radically in destabilized contexts and is inseparable from values and beliefs.