A Field Guide to Academic Becoming

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (8-9) ◽  
pp. 1110-1121
Author(s):  
Susan Ophelia Cannon
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Field Guide ◽  
Field Researcher ◽  
The Way

This article twists, folds, iterates, and proliferates figurations of field in/of/outside the academy as it works to undercut the taken-for-granted assumptions about the field and its borders and boundaries. I question how making boundaries fuzzy might work to open up radical possibilities for knowledge production and becoming with/in fields. Furthermore, the article considers how the way in which we tell ourselves stories of fields and our place(s) in them matters. How might we do different research or do research differently if we reconsider the cuts we always already make between field/researcher/researched? Can fieldness disappear and would we want it to?

scholarly journals Naturvidenskabernes kanonisering. Forskere, erkendelser eller kulturarv

1970 ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Skills ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Science Museums ◽  
The Public ◽  
Science Centres ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

This paper concerns recent official attempts to place science in Denmark within the context of a cultural canon. Based on differentiation between Mode 1 and 2 knowledge production, the paper points out that such attempts are highly contextualised and contingent on their different modes of application. Consequently, they entangle scientific expertise with other social skills and qualifications. Like science museums and science centres, they are a means of dealing with science in the public agora, i.e. the public sphere in which negotiations, mediations, consultations and contestations regarding science increasingly take place. Analysing the ambiguities and uncertainties associated with the recent official placing of science within an overall cultural canon for Denmark, this paper concludes that even though the agora embodies antagonistic forms of interaction, it might also lead the way to producing socially robust knowledge about science.

The Biopolitical Logics of Settler Colonialism and Disruptive Relationality

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Way

This essay argues that the biopolitical logics of settler colonialism function according to a naturalization in Western thought of politics as a project of hierarchically ordering life in relation to the sphere of politics. Significantly, such a mode of thinking discredits socio-political orders that operate on the basis of a non-hierarchical place-based relationality of all life forms including the land. Through a reading of Foucault and Agamben in their use of Aristotle, I want to show how hierarchy as a principle of the political is already implemented in the premise they draw upon for analyzing the biopolitical. In the same way it remains unrecognized in their analysis of biopolitics, this principle also becomes operative within settler colonial logics of life and land. Recently, however, Indigenous scholars and writers have mobilized relationality in its formative characteristic for Indigenous polities and politics as strategy to disrupt biopolitical logics and denaturalize settler colonial rule, which I want to show through engaging Daniel Heath Justice’s Indigenous fantasy trilogy The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles as a site of disruptive relationality and political knowledge production.

scholarly journals (Re)claiming humanity, reclaiming hope: the role of higher education in the 21st century

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Prinsloo
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Role Players ◽  
The Way

This essay explores questions pertaining to who has had and has the power to define who is human and what it means to be human, and the way higher education is but one of the role-players that define humanity and what it means to be human. It also examines the potential of decoloniality as an alternative and critical onto-epistemology which is  essential for (re)claiming and (re)building humanity. Further pointers for consideration are addressed such as rethinking, epistemic disobedience, entrapment of knowledge production, among others.

scholarly journals Ecologies of evidence in a mysterious epidemic

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Clinical Diagnosis ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Children And Young Adults ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
The Way

An epidemic in a Venezuelan rainforest in 2007-2008 killed 38 children and young adults, puzzling clinicians, epidemiologists, and healers alike for over a year. This essay traces the way each contribution to knowledge production formed part of a larger ecology of evidence. Focusing on how the parents' knowledge was exploited and denigrated by clinicians, epidemiologists, and healers alike points to the health/communicative inequities—grossly unequal distributions of access to the production and circulation of evidence—that structured ecologies of evidence in ways that thwarted diagnosis. Recruiting a nurse, a healer, a physician, and an anthropologist, two indigenous leaders launched an investigation that juxtaposed parents' narratives, vernacular healing, epidemiology, and clinical medicine, resulting in a clinical diagnosis of bat-transmitted rabies. This case suggests that perspectives in global health will fail to become fully critical unless they attend to health/communicative inequities, how they structure ecologies of evidence, and strategies for transforming them.

scholarly journals The Authority of Written and Oral Sources of Knowledge in Ludolf of Sudheim’s De itinere Terre Sancte

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
The Way

After the German priest Ludolf of Sudheim returned from the Holy Land in 1341, he wrote an account of his travels that is far more complex than scholars have assumed. Ludolf expanded the genre of pilgrimage narrative in the way he draws on written sources, such as Hethum’s Flos historiarum Terre Orientis and William of Boldensele’s Liber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus, while blending into his narrative oral sources of knowledge picked up from his personal contacts while traveling. Pilgrimage literature has often been denigrated by scholars for being repetitive, impersonal, and lacking originality. Yet if scholars were to adopt a less historiographically presentist approach to pilgrimage writing that is more open to the values and strategies of narratives like De itinere Terre Sancte, research could meaningfully focus on what might be called the “mental library” of pilgrim-authors — the full range of written and oral resources at their disposal in the complex processes of knowledge production in pilgrimage narrative.

scholarly journals Plurality of Points of Views and knowing of a Plural Reality

2018 ◽  
Vol Épistémologies du pluriel (Articles) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Compagnone
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Interactional Features ◽  
The Way

International audience El objetivo de éste artículo es dar cuenta de la manera por la cual las concepciones plurales de la realidad son inherentes al proceso de conocimiento. Asimismo, el artículo apunta a mostrar de qué manera los distintos puntos de vista de los actores sobre ésta realidad son social y materialmente situados. Apoyándose en el enfoque de J.-P. Darré , el neo-pragmatismo de H. Putnam, así como en los aportes de lingüistas y psicólogos, el presente trabajo ilumina la manera en la cual la relación entre realidad y conocimiento puede establecerse. El artículo destaca que la verdad depende de la adecuación del conocimiento a la realidad y pone en relieve las propiedades interactivas de las cosas. Finalmente, permite revelar la naturaleza social de las concepciones y discute, a partir de la noción de punto de vista de A. Schütz, la caracterización social de estos puntos de vista. The purpose of this article is to report the way in which the plural understandings of reality are inherent to the process of knowledge production. It alsoaims to show what it means that actors’ point of view are socially and materially situated. Relying on J.-P. Darré’s approach, Putnam’s pragmatism, as well as on linguists’ and psychologists’ works, it highlights how the relationship between reality and knowledge may be understood. It underlines that truth depends on the adequacy of knowledge to reality and emphasizes the interactional features of things. Then, it focuses on the social nature of understanding and discusses the social characterization of points of view, drawing on A. Schütz’s works. Le but de cet article est de rendre compte de la façon dont desconceptions plurielles de la réalité sont inhérentes au processus de connaissance.Il vise aussi à montrer comment on peut entendre que les points de vue des acteurs sur cette réalité sont socialement et objectivement situés. S’appuyant sur l’approche de J.-P. Darré, sur le néopragmatisme de H. Putnam, ainsi que sur les travaux de linguistes et de psychologues, il éclaircit la façon dont on peut entendre le rapport qui peut être établi entre réalité et connaissance. Il souligne que la vérité dépend de l’adéquation de la connaissance à la réalité et met en valeur les propriétés interactionnelles des choses. Il fait ensuite apparaître la nature sociale des conceptions et discute, à partir de la notion de point de vue de A. Schütz, de la caractérisation sociale de ces points de vue.

The Worldmaking Agency of the Sri Lankan Travel Blogger

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-127
Author(s):  
Gauthami Kamalika Jayathilaka
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
English Language ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Alternative Representation ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Link ◽  
The Way

This article presents a scrutiny of the powerful "worldmaking" role performed by English language travel writers in the context of Sri Lanka. It critically positions travel representations as a crucial means of knowledge production that shapes the way Sri Lanka is known and experienced. In that, it examines an emerging version of the country produced by young Sri Lankan travel bloggers through their employment of an "activist gaze" alongside the use of a "promotional gaze" by professional tourism writers. The article illuminates each of these distinctive worldmaking roles; the latter engaging the authority of tourism in constructing/perpetuating a particular favored version of the country to persuade the global tourist, and the former's "aware" agency in constructing a potential or alternative representation distinctive from the first. However, surpassing an exploration of representations and their worldmaking power, the article sheds light on the way writers are inculcated into certain standpoints and their negotiation of these through the employment of the Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, capital, and field. As such, it innovatively combines structure and agency in the study of tourism representations, unveiling the social implications underlying worldmaking and thereby elucidating the critical link between the English language, travel writing and social class in an understudied postcolonial context of South Asia.

Gaming against the greater good

First Monday ◽  
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan McGrady
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
Greater Good ◽  
The Way

Wikipedia has grown to be one of the most visited Web sites in the world. Despite its influence on popular culture and the way we think about knowledge production and consumption, the conversation about why and how it works - or whether it's credible at all - is ongoing. This paper began as an examination of what the concept of "authority" means in Wikipedia and what role rhetoric might play in manufacturing this authority. Wikipedia's editors have functioned well as a community, having collaboratively developed a comprehensive set of social norms designed to place the project before any individual. Hence ideas like authority and rhetoric have only marginal roles in day-to-day activities. This paper takes an in-depth look at these norms and how they work, paying particular attention to a relatively new guideline that exemplifies the spirit of the Wikipedia community - "Gaming the system."

Liberating the Mind: Rastafari and the Theorization of Maroonage as Epistemological (Dis) engagement

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy R. Goldson
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Opting Out ◽  
Sociopolitical Context ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Engagement And Disengagement ◽  
The Way

This article explores the concept of maroonage (other spellings “maronage,” “marronnage,” and “marronage”) as a process of epistemological engagement and disengagement using the way in which the Rastafari movement constructs, organizes, and legitimates knowledge and knowledge production. By focusing on the Rastafari processes of knowledge production and legitimation, this article allows for a theorization of maroonage as a constant engagement not only in the sense of physical withdrawal from hegemonic systems of dominance but an ideological opting out. While many Rastafarians live in secluded communities and choose not to participate in systems that work against their interest, many have renegotiated the process of knowing such that they can be in Babylon but not of Babylon. The epistemic shifts in Rastafari discourse on a Black God, King, and Zion stand as exemplars of epistemological self-determination characteristic of the maroonage on the ideological level. The article develops by: (a) looking at ideology, (b) the contours of Rastafari epistemology, (c) the sociopolitical context of epistemological (dis) engagement, and (d) the epistemic shift in Rastafari discourse on a Black God, King, and Zion as epistemological self-determination.

scholarly journals The Imperial Sociology of the ‘Tribe’ in Afghanistan

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nivi Manchanda
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Politics Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
The Way

The ‘tribe’ is a notion intimately related to the study of Afghanistan, used as a generic signifier for all things Afghan, it is through this notion that the co-constitution of coloniser and colonised is crystallised and foregrounded in Afghanistan. By tracing the way in which the term ‘tribe’ has been deployed in the Afghan context, the article performs two kinds of intellectual labour. First, by following the evolution of a concept from its use in the early 19th century to the literature on Afghanistan in the 21st century, wherein the ‘tribes’ seem to have acquired a newfound importance, it undertakes a genealogy or intellectual history of the term. The Afghan ‘tribes’ as an object of study, follow an interesting trajectory: initially likened to Scottish clans, they were soon seen as brave and loyal men but fundamentally different from their British interlocutors, to a ‘problem’ that needed to be managed and finally, as indispensable to a long-term ‘Afghan strategy’. And second, it endeavours to describe how that intellectual history is intimately connected to the exigencies of imperialism and the colonial politics of knowledge production.

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