Knowledge Production and Domesticating Social Science Textbooks in Nigeria

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akinpelu Olanrewaju Olutayo ◽  
Olusegun Fariudeen Liadi ◽  
Godwin Etta Odok
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Science Textbooks

scholarly journals Reframing the public sociology debate: Towards collaborative and decolonial praxis

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Arribas Lozano
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Public Sociology ◽  
Good Opportunity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Professional Sociology ◽  
Different Types

This article presents a critical analysis of Michael Burawoy’s model of public sociology, discussing several of its epistemic and methodological limitations. First, the author focuses on the ambiguity of Burawoy’s proposal, problematizing the absence of a clear delimitation of the concept of ‘public sociology’. Second, the author links the academic success of the category of public sociology to the global division of sociological labour, emphasizing the ‘geopolitics of knowledge’ involved in Burawoy’s work and calling for the decolonization of social science. Then, the author expounds his concerns regarding the hierarchy of the different types of sociology proposed by Burawoy, who privileges professional sociology over other types of sociological praxis. Reflecting upon these elements will provide a good opportunity to observe how our discipline works, advancing also suggestions for its transformation. Along these lines, in the last section of the article the author elaborates on the need to go beyond a dissemination model of public sociology – the unidirectional diffusion of ‘expert knowledge’ to extra-academic audiences – and towards a more collaborative understanding of knowledge production.

Understanding researchers’ strategic behaviour in knowledge production: a case of social science and nanotechnology researchers

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 1148-1167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kasia Zalewska-Kurek
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Resource Sharing ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Group Leaders ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Strategic Behaviour ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Scientific Fields

Purpose This paper seeks to understand the strategic behaviour of researchers when producing knowledge in two scientific fields – nanotechnology and social sciences. Design/methodology/approach The author conducted semi-structured interviews with 43 researchers to analyse the needs for strategic interdependence (resource-sharing) and for organisational autonomy (decision-making) in knowledge production. When aligned, these two concepts form three modes of behaviour: mode1, mode2 and mode3. Findings The empirical study results show that, besides well-studied differences in various publications, there are large behaviour differences between social science and nanotechnology researchers. While nanotechnology researchers’ behaviours are mostly in mode3 (sharing resources; highly autonomous), social science researchers’ behaviours tend to be in mode1 (highly autonomous; no need to share resources). Practical implications This study delivers an understanding of the differences in the strategic behaviours of researchers in different scientific fields. The author proposes managerial interventions for research managers – university and research group leaders. Originality/value While most studies that compare scientific fields look at knowledge production outcomes, the author analyses conditions that differentiate these outcomes. To this end, the author compares individual researchers’ behaviours in different fields by analysing the need for collaboration and the need for autonomy.

scholarly journals 'A Return to the World': Diffraction and Truth-telling in Post-Cartesian IR

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liberty Chee
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Centripetal Force ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference

This paper presents an ethics premised on a post-Cartesian ontology: that what we know is how we know and vice-versa. The acknowledgment of the IR scholar’s constitutive relation to the world she seeks to describe, and of which she is a part, entails an ethics that is also a practice and an agency. I build on the notion of diffraction in Karen Barad’s quantum theory and on Foucault’s notion of parrhesia. In place of reflection, Barad offers diffraction as a nonrepresentationalist methodology which attends to the difference knowledge can make rather than the accuracy of our representations. Parrhesia is the ‘third hermeneutic’ which problematizes our relationship with the activity of knowing itself. In the pragmatist sense, we are asked not only to be of use to our communities, but to be mindful of who we are and what kind of subject we become in our inscriptions of the world. This diffractive research ethics addresses two problems in IR theory as they present in the conduct of fieldwork – the limits of reflexivity, notably the impossibility of objectively representing ourselves to ourselves, and the critique that the pragmatist concerns in the ‘doing’ of science pays insufficient attention to how power conditions knowledge production. I suggest that this ethic, which is a performance of our relation to truth, allows us to better realize the pragmatist ideal of a democratic social science by allowing us to resist the centripetal force of epistemic sovereignty.

scholarly journals Solovey and Cravens: Cold War Social Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Bortolini
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Science Knowledge ◽  
Social Science Knowledge

Book Review of: Mark Solovey and Hamilton Cravens (eds.), Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production, Liberal Democracy, and Human NatureNew York: Palgrave Macmillan 2014First paperback ed., xvii + 270 pp.ISBN 978-1-137-38835-3Price: € 31

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