scholarly journals The gendered politics of researching military policy in the age of the ‘knowledge economy’

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Sergio Catignani ◽  
Victoria M. Basham
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Gendered Politics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Army Reserves ◽  
Multiple Challenges

Abstract This article explores our experiences of conducting feminist interpretive research on the British Army Reserves. The project, which examined the everyday work-Army-life balance challenges that reservists face, and the roles of their partners/spouses in enabling them to fulfil their military commitments, is an example of a potential contribution to the so-called ‘knowledge economy’, where publicly funded research has come to be seen as ‘functional’ for political, military, economic, and social advancement. As feminist interpretive researchers examining an institution that prizes masculinist and functionalist methodologies, instrumentalised knowledge production, and highly formalised ethics approval processes, we faced multiple challenges to how we were able to conduct our research, who we were able to access, and what we were able to say. We show how military assumptions about what constitutes proper ‘research’, bolstered by knowledge economy logics, reinforces gendered power relationships that keep hidden the significant roles women (in our case, the partners/spouses of reservists) play in state security. Accordingly, we argue that the functionalist and masculinist logics interpretive researchers face in the age of the knowledge economy help more in sustaining orthodox modes of knowledge production about militaries and security, and in reinforcing gendered power relations, than they do in advancing knowledge.

scholarly journals Margaret Atwood’s Visions and Revisions of "The Wizard of Oz"

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Teresa Gibert
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
The West ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Wizard Of Oz ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Literary Borrowings ◽  
Power Of Words

L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and Victor Fleming’s film The Wizard of Oz (1939) play an important intertextual role in Margaret Atwood’s critical and fictional writings. Atwood has often been inspired by both versions of this modern fairy tale and has drawn attention to the main issues it raises (e.g. the transformative power of words, gendered power relationships, the connection between illusion and reality, the perception of the artist as a magician, and different notions of home). She has creatively explored and exploited themes, settings, visual motifs, allegorical content and characters (Dorothy, her three companions, the Wizard and the witches, especially Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West), subversively adapting her literary borrowings with a parodic twist and satirical intent. Parts of Life Before Man (1979) may be interpreted as a rewrite of a story defined by Atwood as “the great American witchcraft classic”.

Art Criticism in the Contracted Field1

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Roundtable Discussion ◽  
Cultural Field ◽  
Intellectual Labor ◽  
Critical Discourses

Abstract Just over a decade-and-a-half ago, a roundtable discussion published in the pages of October worried that the periodic renewal of critical discourses had slowed to a standstill and that art criticism was faced with obsolescence. Such an obsolescence should be understood in a broadly Hegelian manner: the danger is not that art criticism would disappear from the cultural field, but that it will continue—although drained of its previous necessity. Such fears perhaps run the risk of exaggeration, yet this article shall suggest that there seems a sense in which the field of art criticism has contracted in recent years. Self-reflexivity in art and the popularization of “para-curatorial” approaches, for instance, often underpin the artwork discursively before the arrival of art criticism upon the scene. To be sure, such circumstances are viewable positively as interdisciplinary dialogical opportunities, but the negative flipside here is that art criticism’s potential contribution becomes increasingly minimized. From another angle, critics such as Isabelle Graw have contended that the economic-cultural regime of post-Fordism, with its attention on intellectual labor and knowledge production, might actually hold possibilities for the contemporary art critic—but even here, I argue, art criticism becomes contracted, albeit in the other meaning of the word.

From crisis to the everyday: Shouldn't we all be writing economies?

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110680
Author(s):  
Priti Narayan ◽  
Emily Rosenman
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Public Economic ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

This commentary explores the politics of writing about the economy in a culture, society, and discipline that tends to prioritize masculinist (and white) theories and definitions of economy over embodied experiences of people living their everyday lives. Inspired by Timothy Mitchell's problematization of the economy as an object of analysis, we press further on the seemingly singular unit of “the” economy and who is allowed to define it as such. We are animated by questions of who is considered an expert on the economy and how, or by whom, crises in the economy are recognized. Drawing from our own writing experiences during the pandemic and from social movements we research, we argue for alternate ways of thinking about experiences of and expertise on the economy. In reckoning with how social movements speak to power in a bid to transform economies, we consider the role of economic geography in the economy of writing and knowledge production surrounding “the economy” itself. We make the case for a more public economic geography grounded in the social and economic embeddedness of knowledge production, the material consequences of who gets to define what is economically “important,” and the potential for this expertise to be located anywhere.

The transdisciplinary health research apparatus: A Baradian account of knowledge boundaries and beyond

2020 ◽  
pp. 136345932096142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Thorpe ◽  
Marianne Clark ◽  
Julie Brice ◽  
Stacy Sims
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
Transdisciplinary Research ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Low Energy Availability

This paper engages with new materialist theory to reimagine transdisciplinary health research. In particular, we draw upon Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism and concept of apparatus to rethink the processes of doing transdisciplinary research. A Baradian inspired approach to transdisciplinarity encourages us to not only explore ways of knowing health phenomena differently by working across disciplines, but also to pay close attention to the politics and practices in such research. We offer a case study based on a two-year transdisciplinary research project focused on the health condition known as Low Energy Availability (LEA) in sportswomen. Through this case we highlight three key ways that Barad’s concept of apparatus helped us know transdisciplinarity differently: (1) Reading disciplines through each other, (2) Intra-actions and the everyday performativity of disciplinary boundaries, and (3) Troubling the boundaries of the apparatus. Ultimately this paper illustrates the value in feminist new materialist conceptual tools for encouraging different questions of transdisciplinary research as ethico-onto-epistemological practices, processes, and politics of knowledge production.

scholarly journals Negotiating racialised (un)belonging: Black LGBTQ resistance in Toronto’s gay village

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802091485
Author(s):  
Rae Daniel Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Everyday Resistance ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Trans Youth ◽  
The Village

This article explores the ways in which homeless Black queer and trans youth embody and perform everyday acts of temporal and spatial resistance in Toronto’s gay village. By analysing interviews, mental maps and photographs from my research with homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and Two-Spirit (LGBTQ2) youth, I present how homeless Black queer and trans youth counter the whiteness and anti-Black racism they frequently experience in the village through acts of remembering and placemaking. Specifically, I argue that despite the small-scale reach of the everyday resistance that manifests in our interviews, temporal and spatial resistance challenge the whitewashing of Toronto’s gay village, which is particularly crucial in a moment when the village is centred in conversations of anti-Black racism in the city’s queer community. Engaging in these forms of everyday resistance illustrates the ways in which homeless Black LGBTQ youth instruct their own placemaking in an otherwise uninhabitably racialised neighbourhood, shift narratives of their experiences in processes of knowledge production and spark processes of their own politicisation and community building.

‘You Decide’: Relationship-Based Knowledge and Parents’ Participation in High-Risk Child Protection Crisis Interventions

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 1743-1757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuval Saar-Heiman ◽  
Michal Krumer-Nevo
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Parental Participation ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Risk Child ◽  
Distinguishing Features ◽  
Crisis Situations

Abstract In the scholarly writing on child protection, there is a broad consensus regarding the importance of parents’ participation in knowledge-production processes. However, there is limited research on the conditions required to make parental participation possible in high-risk crisis situations. In particular, there is a dearth of writing that takes into consideration the context of poverty that influences families’ lives and the power imbalances between social workers and parents that are evident in these processes. Through a case illustration of a high-risk crisis situation in the Israeli child protection system, this article examines the potential contribution of a developing critical paradigm—the Poverty-Aware Paradigm—to the promotion of parents’ participation in high-risk crisis situations. Specifically, it points to ‘relationship-based knowledge’ as an organizing axis for knowledge production, and to its derivative, ‘dialogue on power/knowledge’, as a useful practice in child protection interventions. The case analysis reveals three distinguishing features of this dialogue: (i) the social worker holds a dialectic stance regarding knowledge; (ii) the social worker and the parents negotiate their interpretations; and (iii) the social worker shares common hopes and worries with the parents.

To be a diplomat abroad: Diplomatic practice at embassies

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérémie Cornut
Keyword(s):  
Social Skills ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Social Fields ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Work ◽  
Simultaneous Management ◽  
State Actors

This article shows that the simultaneous management of three different social roles – knowledge producer, representative of a government, and bureaucrat – defines the everyday work and practice of contemporary diplomats posted at embassies. This argument rests on an analysis of information gathering in Western embassies before, during and after the eighteen days of the revolt that ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. I first identify various practices influencing diplomatic knowledge and prompting the production of particular interpretations of the revolt in Egypt. I then analyze how actors manage multiple positions and dispositions within overlapping social fields. This point illustrates what practice theorists mean when they assert that agents are always speaking from a position. Overall, the article unravels what being a diplomat posted abroad actually consists of in practice, complementing existing studies on the diplomatic mode of knowledge production. I provide insights on the interactions between diplomats and non-state actors and show that diplomats’ social skills and analytic competence constantly require and support each other.

The ‘dark side’ of the LEAP CCT programme in Ghana

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-41
Author(s):  
Dennis Puorideme
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Governmental Intervention ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Social Transfer ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency

Studies of social transfer targeting practices and mechanisms, including the proxy means test (PMT) instrument, have often assumed that the essential purpose of these mechanisms is to ensure fairness, cost-effectiveness and efficiency, yet there is limited consensus on their optimal performance. This article builds on recent studies of social transfer targeting practices in developing countries by providing a better interpretation of the power dynamics involved in ‘translating’ the PMT instrument at the intersection of official, public and cultural discourses. It is a Foucault-based study that combines ethnography and discourse studies to analyse the everyday actions and practices of programme officials and caregivers. This study demonstrates that officials legitimise and translate the PMT instrument, separate individuals from families, and constitute them as objects for governmental intervention to achieve efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The re-categorisation of family members into households ‘outside’ of everyday sociocultural relations and practices is contested and resisted, creating a complex system of power relationships around the PMT. 

Beyond constructivism: navigationism in the knowledge era

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom H. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Impact Of Technology ◽  
Available Information ◽  
The Impact ◽  
And Training

PurposeThis paper seeks to discuss past and present paradigm shifts in education and then to explore possible future learning paradigms in the light of the knowledge explosion in the knowledge era that is currently being entered.Design/methodology/approachNew learning paradigms and paradigm shifts are explored.FindingsLearning processes and learning paradigms are still very much founded in a content‐driven and knowledge production paradigm. The rapid developments in information and communication technologies already have and will continue to have a profound impact on information processing, knowledge production and learning paradigms. One needs to acknowledge the increasing role and impact of technology on education and training. One has already experienced enormous challenges in coping with the current overflow of available information. It is difficult to imagine what it will be like when the knowledge economy is in its prime.Practical implicationsInstitutions should move away from providing content per se to learners. It is necessary to focus on how to enable learners to find, identify, manipulate and evaluate information and knowledge, to integrate this knowledge in their world of work and life, to solve problems and to communicate this knowledge to others. Teachers and trainers should become coaches and mentors within the knowledge era – the source of how to navigate in the ocean of available information and knowledge – and learners should acquire navigating skills for a navigationist learning paradigm.Originality/valueThis paper stimulates out‐of‐the‐box thinking about current learning paradigms and educational and training practices. It provides a basis to identify the impact of the new knowledge economy on the way one deals with information and knowledge and how one deals with learning content and content production. It emphasizes that the focus should not be on the creation of knowledge per se, but on how to navigate in the ocean of available knowledge and information. It urges readers to anticipate the on future and to explore alternative and appropriate learning paradigms.

scholarly journals Knowledge Economy in Brazil: Analysis of Sectoral Concentration and Production by Region

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
José Antonio de França ◽  
Wilfredo Sosa Sandoval
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Concentration Index ◽  
Concentration Level ◽  
Regional Economics ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Location Quotient ◽  
Significant Evidence ◽  
Postgraduate Level

The research presented in this article investigates and analyzes the concentration of knowledge production in Brazil, in the context of a public policy, at postgraduate level, by using the spectral methods grounded on the LQ (location quotient) and CI (concentration index) indicators, in three dimensions, from 2013 to 2018. The dimensions are economics, geography, and time. Economics is represented by Fields and Major Fields of knowledge production. Geography corresponds to the regions identified by each Federation unit (FU). Time is a chronological unit of the timeline in which knowledge is produced. The research then evaluates knowledge concentration in the income performance of the families by FU. The results are robust and indicate significant evidence that sectorial knowledge production in Brazil is regionally unequal and impacts on family incomes, but those family incomes evolve regardless of the knowledge concentration level produced. The research contributions are relevant to assist public policy regulators and monitoring managers, as well as to encourage future discoveries in regional economics applications.

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