Narratives of Failure

This chapter interrogates the challenges and obstacles that are a frequent theme in the WPS stories I have collected. Specifically, it examines the ways in which failure, limitations, and challenges are narrated in the WPS agenda and juxtaposes these “failure narratives” with the “success stories” presented in the previous chapter. The first section, which sketches out the fabula of these tales of failure, shows how the telling of these stories produces a collective subject jointly responsible for the limitations perceived in the agenda as it stands. This construction reinforces the authority of the UN as well as its culpability as a WPS actor in the stories of these shortcomings, relevant to the logics of (dis)location that situate the agenda at/in the Security Council, and simultaneously disperses it spatially, locating it “in country” or “on the ground.” The resolution to the acknowledged shortcomings is often presented as more frequent, more granular monitoring (in addition to further resources and stronger political will), which reinforces the construction of the agenda itself as a quantifiable knowledge object.

Knowing new managerial directions: the role of AIS

Purpose This paper aims to better understand how an accounting information system (AIS), working as a multidimensional knowledge object, engages users in a new round of knowledge development which allows them to explore new managerial directions. Drawing on the concept of the knowledge object and the knowing in practice perspective, this study considers the relationships between subjects and objects in the explication of accounting practice, underlining how AIS could become a knowledge object that can assume a variety of forms, starting from such contradictions emerging from practice. Design/methodology/approach Theoretical argumentations are applied to a case study at a global logistics provider in the South of Italy, which manages the supply chain from origin to destination, offering a multitude of services in the transport and distribution sector. Findings The case study shows that the process of knowledge accumulation promotes the mutation of AIS into a knowledge object that, in its variety of forms, allows managers to explore new managerial directions such as the reorganization of warehouse activities. Originality/value The paper seeks to enrich the interpretation of AIS as a multidimensional knowledge object becoming a catalyst of new managerial directions through knowing. That helps to understand the role of accounting tools as a social practice supporting decision-making and how accounting systems’ openness and questioning nature makes them objects of enquiry able to support the identification of new managerial directions and lead the AIS to continually explode and mutate into something else.

The Greatest Aporia in the Parmenides (133b-134e) and the Reciprocity of Pros Relations

ABSTRACT The extant attempts in the literature to refute the greatest difficulty argument in the Parmenides have focused on denying the parallelism between the pros relations among Forms and those among particulars. However, these attempts are unsatisfactory, for the argument can reach its conclusion that we cannot know any Forms without relying on this parallelism. I argue that a more effective strategy is to deny the more essential premise that the knowledge-object relation is a pros relation. This premise is false because pros relations require definitional and ontological codependence between the relata, and the knowledge-object relation does not satisfy this reciprocity condition.

Creative Subversion: Staking a Claim for Critical Qualitative Inquiry

It is important to define the ethnographical practices as a way of thinking and doing critical qualitative inquiry. Creative subversion currently arises as a breaking of rules, institutional change, social or political protest, popular or civic rebellion, fighting the law or simply radical transformation of situations. Today it is everywhere even though there is too much silence around it, which could be catastrophic for qualitative research. Reflexive methods could be enriched if researchers looking for social transformation and collaborating in civil resistance integrate in their ethnographical practices the creative subversion as shared knowledge object. It is pertinent to interpret the social action involved in such transformative processes as a poetics of rage collective or individually performed. Doing a review of how creative subversion has been dealt in the contemporary social science, this article is an effort to provide a nuance and rigorous definition.

Semantically Enriching the Knowledge Payload of Knowledge Objects Through the Utilization of Knowledge Object Wrappers

Aim/Purpose: In this research the authors present the designs of three different knowledge object meta-data wrapper models as a supportive technology to assist the knowledge intensive operations of a network of knowledge, such as a living lab. Background: Within any knowledge driven network environment there is a need to increase the corporate knowledge capacity of the network. The role of experts and knowledge brokers are emphasized, and the exchange of knowledge based on prior experiences informing corporate memories of the members, is the departure point of this research. Methodology: The primary research method applied is that of the design science research methodology supported by experience and application research and the literature. Contribution: Three different metadata models are presented that will when implemented support the informing process within the network of knowledge. The models are grounded on the utilization of metadata elements composing of various key descriptors as found in activity theory and normal means of heuristic enquiry which entail common questions. The elements are annotated and fur-ther enriched using standard JSON-LD IRI pairs. The presented models expand on the extant knowledge of the use of metadata annotations and present a novel way in encapsulating the corporate memories of knowledge workers in the form of knowledge object wrappers. Findings: The results of the evaluation process of the design science research methodolo-gy applied, showed that there is a consensus that the use of knowledge object wrappers as additional metadata, containers could enhance the knowledge ca-pacity and efficiency of a LL and in particular the knowledge brokers.

Incorporación de los saberes ancestrales en la educación ordinaria.//Incorporation of ancestral knowledge in ordinary education.

El presente trabajo discute esenciales fundamentos históricos, antropológicos, económicos e ideológicos del modo de producción de conocimiento a partir del modo de producción de vida general del ser humano, a fin de cuestionar las matrices de la hegemonía epistemológica racionalista de la modernidad capitalista, que ancla su razón de ser en una estructura económico-política dominante que destruye material e intelectualmente al Otro para construirlo como objeto dominado y de conocimiento, lo cual se traduce en el posicionamiento centenario de una dicotomía jerárquica conocimiento/”saberes ancestrales”, y realiza, finalmente, algunas sugerencias respecto de la incorporación de los denominados saberes ancestrales en la educación ordinaria. Con base en las premisas críticas del materialismo histórico de Karl Marx y la filosofía y la ética de la liberación de Enrique Dussel, entre otros, se apunta brevemente la necesidad de replantear el problema de la validación de todo saber o conocimiento en la vida, lo cual implica subvertir las bases epistemológicas de las diversas disciplinas con base en un diálogo teórico-práctico intercultural en equidad, y los fundamentos económicos, éticos, políticos e ideológicos que nutren tales bases y que destruyen, invisibilizan, discriminan e instrumentalizan las producciones materiales e intelectuales contrarias o contradictorias al statu quo del capital. AbstractThis paper discusses essential historical, anthropological, economic and ideological foundations of the mode of production of knowledge from the general mode of production of life of the human being, in order to question the matrices of the epistemological rationalist hegemony of capitalist modernity, which anchors its raison d'être in a dominant economic-political structure that materially and intellectually destroys the other in order to construct it as a dominated and knowledge object, which translates into the centenary positioning of a hierarchical knowledge/"ancestral knowledge" dichotomy, and finally makes some suggestions regarding the incorporation of so-called ancestral knowledge into ordinary education. Based on the critical premises of Karl Marx's historical materialism and Enrique Dussel's philosophy and ethics of liberation, among others, the need to rethink the problem of the validation of all knowledge or knowledge in life is briefly pointed out, which implies subverting the epistemological bases of the diverse disciplines based on an intercultural theoretical-practical dialogue in equity, and the economic, ethical, political and ideological foundations that nourish such bases and that destroy, invisibilize, discriminate and instrumentalize the material and intellectual productions contrary or contradictory to the status quo of capital.