Is Modernity Single and Universal?: Olaju and the Multilateral Modernity

This essay confronts two orthodoxies at the heart of the modernity debate. The first is that modernity, which supposedly originated from the West, is a sin­gle and universal historical development. The assumption therefore is that any genuine modernity elsewhere must proceed from aping the structuratlon of western modernity. The second orthodoxy challenges the first, and coalesces around the idea of multiple modernities, which do not share the historical con­tours of western modernity. Yet, these modernities supposedly take their ini­tiatives from the original source in the West. On the contrary, I will argue that these orthodoxies ignore a critical fact of global history: The concept of the modern was shaped and reshaped within a multilateral framework of confron­tations and conflicts amongst cultures and societies, which enabled each soci­ety to creatively respond and adapt itself to the changes it confronted. I will use the Yoruba concept of olaju as a conceptual foil to reconfigure the understand­ing of this multilateral modernity. With olaju, we arrive at the conclusion that both Europe and non-Europe are complicit in the formation and configuration of what it means to be modern. It is only from this premise that the foundation of multiple modernities can properly be erected. It is also from this premise that various societies can take charge of the elements of social change as well as the power and knowledge dynamics involved in it.

Knowledge Dynamics and Behavioural Equivalencesin Multi-Agent Systems

We define a process calculus to describe multi-agent systems with timeouts for communication and mobility able to handle knowledge. The knowledge of an agent is represented as sets of trees whose nodes carry information; it is used to decide the interactions with other agents. The evolution of the system with exchanges of knowledge between agents is presented by the operational semantics, capturing the concurrent executions by a multiset of actions in a labelled transition system. Several results concerning the relationship between the agents and their knowledge are presented. We introduce and study some specific behavioural equivalences in multi-agent systems, including a knowledge equivalence able to distinguish two systems based on the interaction of the agents with their local knowledge.

Exploring, browsing and interacting with multi-level and multi-scale dynamics of knowledge

The ICT revolution has given birth to a world of digital traces. A wide number of knowledge-driven domains like science are daily fueled by unlimited flows of textual contents. In order to navigate across these growing constellations of words, interdisciplinary innovations are emerging at the crossroad between social and computational sciences. In particular, complex systems approaches make it now possible to reconstruct multi-level and multi-scale dynamics of knowledge by means of inheritance networks of elements of knowledge called phylomemies. In this article, we will introduce an endogenous way to visualize the multi-level and multi-scale properties of phylomemies. The resulting system will enrich a state-of-the-art tree like representation with the possibility to browse through the evolution of a corpus of documents at different level of observation, to interact with various scales of description, to reconstruct a hierarchical clustering of elements of knowledge and to navigate across complex semantic lineages. We will then formalize a generic macro-to-micro methodology of exploration and implement our system as a free software called the Memiescape. Our system will be illustrated by three use cases that will respectively reconstruct the scientific landscape of the top cited publications of the French CNRS, the evolution of the state of the art of knowledge dynamics visualization and the ongoing discovery process of Covid-19 vaccines.

Informality, innovation, and knowledge co-creation: characterising collaborative creativity and adaptation in rural development

This article characterises informal knowledge creation and co-creation between development and pastoralist actors, drawing on qualitative data gathered during an in-depth case study in Northern Kenya. Using thematic analysis, this article identifies three intersecting narratives: knowledge and exchange, barriers and drivers, and risk and uncertainty. These concepts are interpreted using wider literature on knowledge dynamics and co-creation to evaluate the suitability of existing analytical frameworks for further research on pastoralist development. The study results highlight the value of cross-cultural informal knowledge co-creation for pastoralist development, and the need for more robust future research.

Exploring and Predicting the Knowledge Development in the Field of Energy Storage: Evidence from the Emerging Startup Landscape

The distribution and deployment of energy storage systems on a larger scale will be a key element of successfully managing the sustainable energy transition by balancing the power generation capability and load demand. In this context, it is crucial for researchers and policy makers to understand the underlying knowledge structure and key interaction dynamics that could shape the future innovation trajectory. A data-driven approach is used to analyze the evolving characteristics of knowledge dynamics from static, dynamic and future-oriented perspective. To this end, a network analysis was performed to determine the influence of individual knowledge areas. Subsequently, an interaction trend analysis based on emergence indicators was conducted to highlight the promising relations. Finally, the formation of new knowledge interactions is predicted using a link prediction technique. The findings show that ensuring the energy efficiency is a key issue that has persisted over time. In future, knowledge areas related to digital technologies are expected to gain relevance and lead the transformative change. The derived insights can assist R&D managers and policy makers to design more targeted and informed strategic initiatives to foster the adoption of energy storage solutions.

Resistance is in the air: From post-politics to the politics of expertise

Knowledge about air pollution is key, both to contest the status quo and to propose a different environmental imaginary as to how urban reality should be. Empirically, this paper focuses on Brussels and its history of air pollution contestation over the last fifty years, in order to trace how knowledge dynamics shape the politics of air. Theoretically, the paper offers a critical reading of the ‘post-political city’ literature that has been omnipresent in urban studies, human geography and political ecology over the last decades, in order to offer a more sophisticated theorization of expertise and knowledge. The paper offers at least three key insights. First, lay as well as public knowledge is of key importance in making air pollution manifest as a matter of concern. Making a perceived problem visible to a wider public in itself can be transformative and can pressure governments to respond, albeit rarely adequately. Second, the use of scientific knowledge by social movements and civil society plays a central role in contesting established priorities and in developing counter strategies, often alternating lay knowledge and more formal scientific knowledge in the process. At the same time, scientific knowledge and other forms of specialized expertise also play an important role in solidifying existing hierarchies of authority. Third, our analysis points to the centrality of the state as an arena for political action and to the importance of a politics of shifting blame and responsibility onto other layers of government or other societal actors.

How Cumulative is Technological Knowledge?

Technological cumulativeness is considered one of the main mechanisms for technological progress, yet its exact meaning and dynamics often remain unclear. To develop a better understanding of this mechanism we approach a technology as a body of knowledge consisting of interlinked inventions. Technological cumulativeness can then be understood as the extent to which inventions build on other inventions within that same body of knowledge. The cumulativeness of a technology is therefore characterized by the structure of its knowledge base, which is different from, but closely related to, the size of its knowledge base. We analytically derive equations describing the relation between the cumulativeness and the size of the knowledge base. In addition, we empirically test our ideas for a number of selected technologies, using patent data. Our results suggest that cumulativeness increases proportionally with the size of the knowledge base, at a rate which varies considerably across technologies. Furthermore, this rate is inversely related to the rate of invention over time. This suggests that the cumulativeness increases relatively slow in rapidly growing technologies. In sum, the presented approach allows for an in depth, systematic analysis of cumulativeness variations across technologies and the knowledge dynamics underlying technology development. Peer Review https://publons.com/publon/10.1162/qss_a_00140

Minimal interplay between explicit knowledge, dynamics of learning and temporal expectations in different, complex uni- and multisensory contexts

While temporal expectations (TE) generally improve reactions to temporally predictable events, it remains unknown how the learning of temporal regularities (one time point more likely than another time point) and explicit knowledge about temporal regularities contribute to performance improvements; and whether any contributions generalise across modalities. Here, participants discriminated the frequency of diverging auditory, visual or audio-visual targets embedded in auditory, visual or audio-visual distractor sequences. Temporal regularities were manipulated run-wise (early vs. late target within sequence). Behavioural performance (accuracy, RT) plus measures from a computational learning model all suggest that learning of temporal regularities occurred but did not generalise across modalities, and that dynamics of learning (size of TE effect across runs) and explicit knowledge have little to no effect on the strength of TE. Remarkably, explicit knowledge affects performance—if at all—in a context-dependent manner: Only under complex task regimes (here, unknown target modality) might it partially help to resolve response conflict while it is lowering performance in less complex environments.

Protecting Food Cultural Biodiversity: From Theory to Practice. Challenging the Geographical Indications and the Slow Food Models

A global expansion in public and private initiatives seeks to strengthen the link between traditional products and sustainable development by creating a niche in the market for these products. Relevant examples are the Geographical Indications and the Slow Food Presidia models. This paper compares both types of Origin Food Schemes (OFS) to disclose the main commonalities and differences in their institutionalization, and their complex outcomes on cultural biodiversity (CB), which is a major concern for the sustainability of rural communities. We used underpinning knowledge dynamics as an analytical lens through the cross-comparison of ethnographic findings collected in four case studies of origin cheeses located in France, Italy and Morocco. Our findings suggest that OFS have high potential to defend CB because of their collective and context-dependent approaches. We argue that knowledge and practices mobilized in OFS are the result of power relations and confrontations among local actors, and show how four identified tensions between different forms and types of knowledge differently shape food culture, food technique, perceptions, and representations. In conclusion, the institutional approaches, practices and knowledge dynamics compared in this analysis show six effective ways to link OFS and CB, facilitating the trajectory toward sustainable development.