scholarly journals Navigating interdisciplinarity: negotiating discipline, embodiment, and materiality on a field methods training course

Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Rebecca Rotter ◽  
Laura Jeffery ◽  
Luke Heslop
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Research Training ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Interdisciplinary Collaboration ◽  
Marine Ecology ◽  
Field Methods ◽  
Course Structure ◽  
Interdisciplinary Learning ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Interdisciplinary Courses

This article elucidates some of the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in teaching, drawing on our participant observation as both instructors of anthropological methods and honorary students of marine ecology and geomorphology methods on a research training field course. We argue that interdisciplinary methods training offers educators opportunities for self-reflexivity, recognition of the taken-for-granted aspects of our knowledge, and improved communication of the value of our work to others. However, we also show how decisions about course structure can reinforce disciplinary boundaries, limiting inter-epistemic knowledge production; how one epistemological approach may overshadow others, hindering interdisciplinary learning; and how methods training involves tacit and embodied knowledge and mastery of material methods, requiring repetition and experimentation. We offer insights into how we as educators can improve our communication of the value of anthropology and its methods. First, instructors in any discipline should develop an awareness of how their tacit knowledge affects the pedagogical process. Second, instead of enskilling instructors to teach a variety of methods, it may be more beneficial for instructors to teach their own areas of expertise, in dialogue and collaboration with other disciplines. Third, interdisciplinary courses must be carefully planned to allow equal participation of different disciplines, so that anthropology is understood on its own terms and embedded in the course from the outset.

scholarly journals Spationomy Simulation Game—Playful Learning in Spatial Economy Higher Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Vít Pászto ◽  
Jiří Pánek ◽  
René Glas ◽  
Jasper van Vught
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Interdisciplinary Collaboration ◽  
Simulation Game ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Simulation Games ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Interdisciplinary Knowledge ◽  
Interdisciplinary Problems

Simulation games, as a method of playful learning, have been used for more than 70 years in various disciplines with the economy as a leading application field. Their development has been tied with advances in computer science, and nowadays, hundreds of simulation games exist. However, simulation games are not just useful for encouraging disciplinary knowledge production; they also promise to be effective tools for interdisciplinary collaboration. To further explore these promises, we report on the design and playing of a simulation game on the boundary of geoinformatics and business and economics; an interdisciplinary field we have termed Spationomy. Within this game, students from different disciplinary (and cultural) backgrounds applied their knowledge and skills to tackle interdisciplinary problems. In this paper, we also analyze students’ feedback on the game to complement this aspect. The main goal is to discuss the design process that went into creating the game as well as experiences from play sessions in relation to this increase of interdisciplinary knowledge among students. In the end, we present a new gaming concept based on real-world data that can be played in other interdisciplinary situations. Here, students´ feedback on individual features of the game helped to identify future directions in the development of our simulation game.

scholarly journals Critical Qualitative Inquiry in China Studies: Introduction to the Special Issue

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780042110146
Author(s):  
Ping-Chun Hsiung
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
China Studies

This Special Issue aims to advance critical qualitative inquiry in China studies and contribute to a vibrant, inclusive global community. It builds upon debates and efforts in the behavioral and social sciences among area specialists in two eras: researchers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the diaspora in the 1980s who sought to sinologize behavioral and social sciences, and sociologists in China in the 2000s who are seeking to indigenize these fields. The Issue takes a two-pronged approach toward advancing critical reflection in knowledge production: (a) it aspires to diminish the current influence of Western and positivistic paradigms on behavioral and social sciences research; (b) it seeks to challenge discursive hegemonic influences to create and sustain space for critical qualitative inquiry. The Issue traverses disciplinary boundaries between history and behavioral and social sciences within China Studies. It opens dialogue with the non-area specialists who are the primary audience of the Qualitative Inquiry.

scholarly journals Centering the Margins: Knowledge Production in the Introductory Archaeology Course

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kylie Quave ◽  
Shannon Fie ◽  
AmySue Qing Qing Greiff ◽  
Drew Alis Agnew
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Course Structure ◽  
Student Reflection ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Full Picture

Teaching introductory archaeology courses in US higher education typically falls short in two important ways: the courses do not represent the full picture of who contributes to reconstructing the past and do not portray the contemporary and future relevance of the archaeological past. In this paper, we use anti-colonial and decolonial theories to explain the urgency of revising the introductory archaeology curriculum for promoting equity in the discipline and beyond. We detail the pedagogical theories we employed in revising an introductory archaeology course at a small liberal arts college in the US and the specific changes we made to course structure, content, and teaching strategies. To examine the impacts on enrolled students and on who chose to enroll in the revised archaeology curriculum, we analyze student reflection essays and enrollment demographics. We find that students developed more complex understandings of the benefits and harms of archaeological knowledge production and could articulate how to address archaeology’s inequities. We also found that enrollment in archaeology courses at the college shifted to include greater proportions of students of color. These results support the notion that introductory archaeology courses should be substantially and continually revised.

scholarly journals Knowledge Production Methods in Human Rights Research: Constraints and Opportunities for the Promotion of an Interdisciplinary Approach

2019 ◽  
pp. 75-98
Author(s):  
Cristina De la Cruz-Ayuso
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Training ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Production Methods ◽  
Spanish Universities ◽  
Circulation Of Knowledge ◽  
Clear Predominance

This article asks about the current modes of production in human rights research and how they are (or may be) determined by the structures where that knowledge is generated. These questions will be answered by looking at the results of a preliminary study on the reception and subsequent institutionalisation of studies on human rights in stable structures that are dedicated to their research, training and dissemination in Spanish universities. The starting hypothesis is that this institutionalisation causes conceptual, epistemological and methodological biases in the rationales for knowledge construction in the field of human rights that determine and hinder the interdisciplinary approach demanded by its study. Interdisciplinarity has become a dominant aspect of human rights research. The question about how this feature is articulated and who articulates it in the academic institutional framework is pertinent in a field of knowledge that cannot avoid asymmetries in the production and circulation of knowledge. The results show that human rights research has been mainly institutionalised in stable university structures in Spain within the field of legal sciences, with a clear predominance of the area of the Philosophy of Law. It can be concluded that this has been conditioned by the reception and subsequent development of the study of human rights in Spain. While it has been found that the line developed by these centres and research groups has been consolidated and recognised, it can also be confirmed that their modes of knowledge production do not match the rationale of interdisciplinary research. These limitations are not just endogenous. There are some features of Spanish institutional R&D&i culture that make interdisciplinary research on human rights difficult.

Knowledge-production in journalism: Translation, mediation and authorship in Brazil

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomás Undurraga
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Interactional Expertise ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Investigative Reporting ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
The Public ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Multiple Obstacles ◽  
Lay Public

Based on a multi-site ethnography of two influential newspapers in Brazil, this article examines how Brazilian journalists mediate knowledge claims made by experts, policy makers and the lay public. It asks whether and how these journalists experience themselves as knowledge-makers. More specifically, it argues that Brazilian journalists index their production of knowledge in reference to four main characteristics: depth, authorship, influence, and expertise. Journalists tend to consider newsmaking a contribution to knowledge when: (1) they have the resources to do proper investigative reporting (depth); (2) they are able to help define the public agenda through their reporting and to express their opinion (authorship); (3) they have impact on the polity, the economy or other fields they cover (influence) and (4) their journalistic knowledge is recognized by readers and by specialists (expertise). In practice, however, there are multiple obstacles that make Brazilian journalists hesitant about their contribution to knowledge, including intensified working conditions, the lack of plurality within the mainstream presses, and their informal methods for dealing with knowledge claims from other fields. This research reveals that Brazilian journalists have different understandings of the nature of knowledge in journalism. These understandings cluster around two distinct poles: an expert notion of knowledge associated with disciplinary boundaries, and a distinct conception associated with journalists’ capacity to mediate between jurisdictions. When journalists’ production is assessed from the former point of view, the informality of their methods is seen as undermining their knowledge credentials. By contrast, when journalists’ contribution is assessed from the latter point of view, their ‘interactional expertise’ comes to the fore.

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.

Queer Adventures in the Forum and the Archive: Or, the Flood Made Immersion Possible

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-175
Author(s):  
Michaela Frischherz
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Summer Institute ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Field Methods ◽  
Relational Experience

Inspired by the Queer Archival Immersion Seminar at the Kinsey Institute during the 2017 Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Summer Institute, this article engages the queerness of archival research to illustrate how the productive tension between the delight of discovery and the discomfort of anxiety and inadequacy emerges from the process of research and archival immersion. Combining archival field methods and autoethnographic reflection, I ask how cohabitation and a collective dwelling in the archive compelled my body to feel both delight and anxiety. This story aims to illustrate how the relational experience of archival research contains within it the capacity to queer the processes of research and knowledge production. To animate this claim, I narrate how my body in the archive both resists and complies with the call of the objects in front of me. This is the story of being in the Kinsey with fellow archival queers and explores how that being with facilitates embodied lines of inquiry and potential moments of queer worldmaking for our objects of desire and research.

scholarly journals Discusiones de metodología La observación en la investigación social: la observación participante como construcción analítica

2017 ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Francisca Fernández Droguett
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Analytic Construction ◽  
The Social

ResumenEste trabajo tiene como propósito reflexionar sobre la importancia de la observación en la investigación social, cuestionando la idea de que la observación constituye una práctica objetiva neutral. La objetividad responde a una construcción analítica, situada en los marcos de referencia del observador, siendo siempre la observación una interpretación determinada por el contexto de producción de conocimiento, que parte de la realidad pero cuestionándola, convirtiendo el hecho en dato.Palabras clave: Observación, Observación participante, Observación exógena, Observación endógena, Auto-observación.Abstract This essay has the goal of thinking about the importance of the observation in the social research through the critics of the idea that observation constitute a neutral objective practice. The objectivity answers to an analytic construction placed within the reference background of the observer. In this sense, the observation is always an interpretation determined by the context of knowledge production which comes from the reality but questionning it and changing the fact in a piece of information.Key words: Observation, Participant observation, Exogenous observation, Endogenous observation, Self observation.

scholarly journals Reflexive Encountering and Postgraduate Research Training in South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gretchen Erika Du Plessis
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Research Training ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
Tertiary Institution ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Research Production ◽  
Rapid Appraisal ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
Inclusive Learning ◽  
Postgraduate Research

This article, based on theoretical reflections and empirical examples, outlines dilemmas in the social positioning of postgraduate research when students are challenged with their locations as insiders and outsiders in terms of the issues they investigate in Development Studies. Encountering the “other” and oneself in, against and beyond the scholarship-activism binary offers fertile ground for engaged research yet is entangled with configurations of power and regulation in academia. This argument is developed by drawing on three recent examples of postgraduate research production and a quantitative rapid appraisal of postgraduate production at a tertiary institution. The analysis of quantitative data and case studies evinces particular issues in outsourcing of knowledge production, researcher reflexivity, possibilities for co-production and tenacious anticipatory-procedural ethics as embedded in institutional practices and orthodoxies that direct, enable and constrain such matters. The author questions the normalisation of knowledge-production power when the imperative to mutual, inclusive learning, coupled with critical self-reflection by researchers in Development Studies is thwarted. Possibilities to overcome these dilemmas in Mode three institutions are suggested.

scholarly journals The market as lived experience: on the knowledge of markets in antitrust analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-190
Author(s):  
Gustavo Onto
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Analytical Work ◽  
Sociological Literature ◽  
Market Practice ◽  
Lateral Modes ◽  
Antitrust Analysis

This article describes some of the reported thoughts, anecdotal observations and analytic practices of advisors and commissioners working at the Brazilian antitrust body (CADE) regarding the markets, industries, sectors - i.e. the economic world - which they aim to understand and regulate. The activity of these professionals primarily requires an evaluation of certain market characteristics in order to establish strategies for the investigation of allegations of anti-competitive market practice and for passing judgment on administrative cases filed before the antitrust tribunal. Based on interviews with these professionals and participant observation of their analytical work, this article seeks to describe modes of knowing and conceiving markets which are parallel to the modes officially and more explicitly relied upon by antitrust bureaucrats. We present these lateral modes of knowing as a set of personal lived experiences and compare them to ethnographic practices of knowledge production, in order to reflect on the importance of lived experience in the anthropological and sociological literature on markets.

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