Abject Object Relations and Epistemic Engagement in Clinical Practice

The article engages with medical practice to develop a philosophically informed understanding of epistemic engagement in medicine, and epistemic object relations more broadly. I take point of departure in the clinal encounter and draw on French psychoanalytical theory to develop and expand a taxonomy already proposed by Karin Knorr-Cetina. Doing so, I argue for the addition of an abject type object relation, that is, the encounter with objects that transgress frameworks and disrupt further investigation, hence preventing dynamic engagement and negatively shaping our epistemic pathways. The article is primarily theoretical although partly grounded in qualitative fieldwork.

Diaries as “Soul Portraits”? Interpretation and Theorization of Adolescents’ Self-Descriptions in the German-Speaking Youth Psychology of the 1920s and 1930s

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the figure of the adolescent (Jugendlicher) was introduced into public discourse in the German-speaking world. The adolescent soon became an epistemic object for the still loosely defined field of psychology. Actors in the slowly differentiating scientific field of youth psychology were primarily interested in the normal development of adolescent subjects and sought out new materials and methods to research the inner life of young people. In order to access this inner life, they turned to the interpretation of diaries and other self-descriptions. This article takes up the questions of how diaries were used in the scientific context of psychology, and how diary writing was psychologically interpreted and theorized. The theoretical and methodological contexts of psychological knowledge production grouped around the subject of the diary will be examined in keeping with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of historical epistemology. This analysis is carried out by using the example of three central actors who were in conversation with each other during the 1920s and 1930s: the developmental psychologist Charlotte Bühler (1893–1974), the psychologist and founder of personalistic psychology William Stern (1871–1938), and the youth activist Siegfried Bernfeld (1892–1953), who was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis.

“A matter of time”: Evidence-making temporalities of vaccine development in the COVID-19 media landscape

This article investigates how evidence of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is enacted in news media via a focus on the temporality of vaccine development. We argue that time constitutes a crucial object of and mechanism for knowledge production in such media and investigate how time comes to matter in vaccine evidence-making communication practices. In science communication on vaccine development, the vaccine object (along with the practices through which it is produced) undergoes a material-discursive shift from an imagined “rushed” product to being many years in the making and uninhibited by unnecessarily lengthy processes. In both these enactments of vaccine development, time itself is constituted as evidence of vaccine efficacy and safety. This article traces how time (performed as both calendar time and as a series of relational events) is materialized as an affective and epistemic object of evidence within public science communication by analyzing the material-discursive techniques through which temporality is enacted within news media focused on the timeline of COVID-19 vaccine development. We contend that time (as evidence) is remade through these techniques as an ontopolitical concern within the COVID-19 vaccine assemblage. We furthermore argue that science communication itself is an important actor in the hinterland of public health practices with performative effects and vital evidence-making capacities.

Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos: Image? Concept? Conception!

The key term for the scientific discourse of Alexander von Humboldt is “Kosmos”. The paper interprets the term in connection with an idea, which is widespread in modern Russian philosophy, that conception as a special epistemic object is an alternative to the logical concept. This study substantiates the statement according to which Alexander von Humboldt in his widely known work Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe combines scientific and aesthetic perception of reality. The author makes an assumption that the term “Kosmos” encodes an epistemic object that combines the properties of concept and image and is a conception. For its investigation, the author discusses a few interpretations of the conception as a phenomenon: 1) the equivocalist interpretation, which sees conception as an ambiguous semantic formation, combining transcendent and immanent meanings; 2) the imaginistic interpretation, which considers conception as a semantic entity that has not evolved to an abstract concept; 3) the emotive interpretation, which interprets conception as an emotional semantic entity; this entity is object of thinking and object of emotional experience; 4) the linguo-philosophical interpretation, which considers conception as an element of the conceptual framework of language and thinking. The paper demonstrates that each of indicated interpretations of the conception corresponds to the sense of Humboldt’s term “Kosmos”.

Bringing maker practices to school: tracing discursive and materially mediated aspects of student teams’ collaborative making processes

The present investigation aimed to analyze the collaborative making processes and ways of organizing collaboration processes of five student teams. As a part of regular school work, the seventh-grade students were engaged in the use of traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing, designing, and making artifacts. To analyze complex, longitudinal collaborative making processes, we developed the visual Making-Process-Rug video analysis method, which enabled tracing intertwined with social-discursive and materially mediated making processes and zoomed in on the teams’ efforts to organize their collaborative processes. The results indicated that four of the five teams were able to take on multifaceted epistemic and fabrication-related challenges and come up with novel co-inventions. The successful teams’ social-discursive and embodied making actions supported each another. These teams dealt with the complexity of invention challenges by spending a great deal of their time in model making and digital experimentation, and their making process progressed iteratively. The development of adequate co-invention and well-organized collaboration processes appeared to be anchored in the team’s shared epistemic object.

Enacting governance at the local level through management control systems: the case of a multinational energy company

Purpose This paper draws on the case of a multinational energy company to explore the role played by management control systems (MCSs) in enacting governance policies at the local (subsidiary) level. Design/methodology/approach This research mobilizes the literature on governmentality to interpret MCSs as technologies of government that can be drawn upon to translate governance policies into practice. In particular, the authors discuss this process by interpreting “governance” as an epistemic object, that is an object that generates knowledge because of its inherent incompleteness and abstract nature. Findings The paper shows how MCSs act as technical objects insofar they attract, bind and engage local subsidiary managers in the generation of knowledge about governance policies (i.e. the epistemic object) set at the global level, thereby enacting these policies locally. Practical implications The findings have practical implications by showing how subsidiary managers engage with MCSs to translate and implement broader governance policies in their daily activities. Originality/value This research contributes to the accounting literature on governmentality by showing the role of MCSs as technologies that enact governance at the local level through the process of knowledge generation that these technologies enable. Such knowledge is triggered by the engagement between different participating subjects, attracted by MCSs in the attempt to define governance in practice.