Co-productive Relationships Research Articles

Cosmotechnical Difference in Architecture and Urbanism

This issue of Footprint explores the intersection between architecture, technology and cosmology. It does so by examining the concept of ‘cosmotechnics’, as proposed by the philosopher Yuk Hui. Cosmotechnics – defined as ‘the unification of the cosmic and moral order through technical activities’ – proposes that technology is not a universal category but always exists in a co-productive relationship with a specific cosmology. While cosmotechnics has fomented new scholarship in philosophy, STS and cultural theory, its implications for architecture remain underexplored. Here, we introduce the concept of cosmotechnics, distinguish it from previous approaches to technology and cosmology, and outline its unique relevance to architectural discourse. In doing so, we present a core theme of the issue: technologies, cosmologies and architectures do not only influence one another, but are indeed inseparable, mutually Introduction Cosmotechnical Difference in Architecture and Urbanism Dulmini Perera and Samuel Koh, editors Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany constitutive, and conjoined in continual coevolution. Finally, we introduce the contributions that comprise the issue – a diverse set of explorations of the theoretical and practical intersections between cosmotechnics and architecture.

A service ecosystems perspective to explore social prescribing value co-creation for vulnerable young people in NEET situation

BackgroundSocial prescribing inherently embodies a co-productive nature, particularly within the ‘holistic’ model facilitated by the pivotal role of Link Workers. Most attention is focused on collecting evidence about the micro-level relationship between Link Workers and their clients. However, little is known about how this co-productive relationship influences or is influenced by value co-creation at different levels, given the involvement of multiple actors in delivering the intervention. To advance research on the operational processes underlying social prescribing, we propose a conceptual framework utilizing the Service Ecosystems perspective to investigate the application of social prescribing with young people in NEET situations in Italy.MethodsA single case study was conducted as part of the European C.O.P.E. (Capabilities, Opportunities, Places, and Engagement) initiative, examining the implementation of social prescribing targeting young NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) in Italy. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 participants, including six members of the C.O.P.E. coordination team, six Link Workers, and 15 young people aged 15–34 years.ResultsFindings are presented showing the ecosystem dynamics at each intervention phase: the referral process, co-production of an individualized action plan, and connection with and activation of community assets.DiscussionThis research illustrates how social prescribing is not a linear path but rather a complex intervention with multiple interacting elements across ecosystem layers. The dyadic relationship between Link Workers and clients operates within broader care services, fostering continuity of care. The service ecosystem perspective offers a valuable framework for examining the dynamic interactions between actors and understanding how their resource integration processes and institutional arrangements foster the emergence of opportunities to support an invisible and hard-to-reach target group, such as young people in NEET situations.

The Emotional Dimension of Shrine Formation in Early Modern Catholicism

ABSTRACT Early modern Catholic shrines were sites of emotional encounters. It was there that the sacred manifested and lives were changed by miracles. This article contributes to our understanding of what made a shrine legitimate in early modern Catholicism through close examination of the sixteenth-century Italian shrine of the Madonna of Lendinara. The role of miraculous shrines in devotional life came under new scrutiny in the period following the Council of Trent (1545–63). By foregrounding the co-productive relationship between emotions and sacred space, I argue that emotional practices endowed the Lendinara shrine with spiritual authenticity and contributed towards its institutional approval.

Towards a unified ontology of cybernetics: bridging mechanology and CAS for cooperative societies through thematic synthesis

PurposeThis paper aims to conceptually unite an ontology of cybernetics, bridging living and technical systems, to facilitate future epistemological and theoretical advancements applicable to highly technical societies by crafting a set of definitions that elucidate the nature of the world in which these systems operate.Design/methodology/approachThe research uses a thematic synthesis of two systems/cybernetic traditions: complex adaptive systems and mechanology. The primary sources for this research were the main theses and correlated papers published in the Simondon case for mechanology, and the seminal literature preselected by the Santa Fe Institute for complex adaptive systems.FindingsThe study proposes the following concepts: Individuation: the emergence of new properties in an individual composed of synergistically related parts; Technical evolution: the notion that technical objects evolve into living beings; circular causality: the notion that feedback and feedforward processes shape the organisation and structure of systems and their relationship with the environment; The milieu refers to the part of the environment that has a relationship of co-production, co-dependency, and co-evolution with systems. Metastability is a state that transcends stability and instability and motivates changes in the system. Transduction is the cumulative process of individuation in which systems change structure and organization to maintain operational coherence with their surroundings.Originality/valueThe concepts the paper identifies can serve as a starting point for an extended study on the ontology of cybernetics or as the basis for an evolutionary epistemology both in humans and machines.

Post-extraction Possibility: Genre and Landscape in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss

Abstract Set in an era of increasing global extraction, George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860) explores the coproductive relationship between humanity and nature in Victorian fiction. Victorian texts frequently depicted mines and quarries as dystopic sites of environmental exhaustion and human suffering. However, The Mill on the Floss centers an exhausted quarry, called “the Red Deeps,” to imagine utopic alternatives to environmental and human ruin. In Eliot's experimental bildungsroman, Maggie Tulliver's coming of age is doubled with and embedded in the Red Deeps’ vibrantly regenerating landscape. Though Eliot's novel famously ends with a tragic flood, Maggie and Phillip Wakem's mid-novel meetings in the Red Deeps entwine feminist and environmental possibility into a narrative arc that looks beyond the spatiotemporal limits of its immediate ending. The result is a mutually open-ended sense of futurity for post-extraction sites and their inhabitants. At the dawn of the Anthropocene, Eliot's redevelopmental bildungsroman counters the capitalist fantasy of endless, extractive progress.

What does environmental justice look like in Vermont? Centering perspectives from the margins

Until 2022, Vermont was one of the few US states that did not have an Environmental Justice (EJ) policy. In 2016, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) initiated a process to create an EJ policy based on an agreement with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A coalition of academics, non-profit organization leaders, legal experts, and community-based partners formed in response to the DEC’s initial approach because it lacked a robust process to center the voices of the most vulnerable Vermonters. The coalition developed a mixed-method, community-based approach to ask, “What does EJ look like in Vermont?” This article reports the door-to-door survey portion of that broader research effort. The survey of 569 Vermont residents purposively sampled sites of likely environmental harm and health concerns and sites with existing relationships with activists and community organizations engaged in ongoing EJ struggles. The survey results use logistic regression to show that non-white respondents in the sites sampled were significantly more likely to be renters, to report exposures to mold, to have trouble paying for food and electricity, to lack access to public transportation, were less likely to own a vehicle, to have a primary care doctor, and reported higher rates of Lyme disease than white respondents. Our findings contribute to EJ theory regarding the co-productive relationship between environmental privilege and environmental harms within the context of persistent characterizations of Vermont as an environmental leader with abundant environmental benefits.

“There is a better you in you”: Promises and Ideologies of Self-Tracking Technologies

Self-tracking describes capturing and analysing the body and life using digital technologies. Its popularity is propelled by the widespread availability of enabling technologies like smartwatches or fitness-trackers. However, given the broad consensus on the co-productive relationship between technologies and social realities, reducing this phenomenon to technological feasibility alone would be inappropriate. This paper explores self-tracking by investigating its enculturated meanings, focusing on Western Europe. For this purpose, we analysed promises behind self-tracking technologies articulated in TV-commercials considering their relation to the late-modern socio-material constitution. The findings suggest that self-tracking addresses several ideal-typical late-modern problems, like the contingency of everyday living. Self-tracking technologies promise to counteract these problems by employing number-based rationalisation strategies. They aim to increase and condense performance capacities and activate the users. Thereby, they turn out to be technologies of an instrumental reason attempting to counter collective issues by optimising the individual.

Third-Sector Organizations in Area-Based Initiatives: Instruments for Public Policies or Partners in Co-Production?

Area-based initiatives are central government strategies for community development in particularly deprived urban areas. A core strategy in ABIs is to involve third-sector organizations through co-production. In these areas, the organized civil society is weak, and the public sector has special interests and a willingness to use resources. We ask: if and how can co-production be developed in areas with such power assymetries? Through documents and qualitative interviews, we examined seven ABIs in Norway. We find that managerial ability and coordination, autonomy of action, and, especially, the possession of resources are important dimensions for understanding the development of a co-productive relationship. In the ABIs, we find considerable interdependence between TSO and municipalities as both actors lack resources needed to fulfill their respective goals. This interdependence facilitated co-production.

Institutional Determinants of Co-Production: Norway as an Illustrative Case

This article focuses on collective engagement through voluntary organizations to advance a theoretical understanding of the determinants of varying patterns of co-production, and we conduct an empirical investigation of how these determinants shape local-level co-productive relationships in Norwegian municipalities. We use a policy fields approach in which we compare four policy areas that each constitute an institutional field. The study uses a qualitative design, with data from 89 interviews in 12 municipalities. We find strong systematic differences between the fields, suggesting that the institutional space for local co-production is structured by national welfare policies and public management practices. We also identify feedback processes in co-production between the design and implementation stages of the policy process. We conclude that, unlike the often-prescriptive embrace of co-production in the literature and among policymakers, co-production is a more suitable organizational form in some service areas than others, depending on the institutional context.

Co-Creation and Co-Production of Health Promoting Activities Addressing Older People-A Scoping Review.

The global population is aging and the promotion of health and well-being for this generation is essential. Co-creative and co-productive practices can be solutions to welfare challenges in local policies. Therefore, this scoping review aimed to understand the extent and type of evidence in relation to the co-creation and co-production of health-promoting activities addressing older people aged 60+ years and to examine the influence of co-creative and co-productive activities on health and well-being, including influential factors for co-creation and co-production. We searched for peer-reviewed and grey literature in ten scientific and five non-scientific databases. From the 2648 studies retrieved, 18 articles were included in this review. Then, an inductive thematic content analysis was applied to the analysis. Three categories related to co-creative and co-productive activities emerged: “Social and physical activities”, “Development of age-friendly environments”, and “Discussions of healthy and active aging”. Facilitating factors for co-creation and co-production were related to the planning and structure of the process and recognition of participants’ time and resources, while the recruitment of participants and their time and resources were the main barriers. Future studies should target co-creative and co-productive interventions to concrete areas and specific sub-groups and be aware of factors influencing a co-creative or co-productive relationship with older people.

Independence and impact: a typology of researcher-user relationships for policing and crime prevention

ABSTRACT The transition from ‘Mode 1’ to ‘Mode 2’ knowledge-production has created an explicit focus on research impact which is reflected in the funding and organisation of research, the relationships between research and users, and the focus of research studies. It has also led to efforts to understand pathways to impact, although these studies have so far had little to say specifically about crime-related research. This paper comprises an effort to address this gap and explore variations in research-user relationships within research into policing and crime prevention. An ESRC-funded project researching the crime consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, of which we were team members, faced several challenges in terms of data access, data collection and the need to deliver strong academic research outputs, as well as maintaining a clear focus on real world research impacts. This led to a co-productive relationship between the researchers and a range of external partners. There is a dearth of literature theorising the nature of such researcher-user relationships, despite some rich accounts of individual experiences. This paper uses examples drawn from the writings of those who have been involved in research impacts (or who have been thwarted in their attempts), to set alongside the project on which we have been working. From this we present a typology of researcher-user relationships, that we hope will further theoretical discussion in the field and might usefully be applied more broadly to other areas of criminological interest.

Co-producing urban expertise for SDG localization: the history and practices of urban knowledge production in South Africa

ABSTRACT The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are used as an entry point to consider issues and questions surrounding the forms of urban expertise that are required to achieve transformative and sustainable urban development. The article builds on the authors’ experiences as researchers working co-productively with South African municipalities through the African Centre for Cities, an interdisciplinary research hub at the University of Cape Town. Insights from the literature on urban policy mobilities are deployed alongside those from an emerging literature on transdisciplinary research and knowledge co-production for global policy implementation. The aims are, first, to identify emerging kinds of urban expertise that are produced and mobilized by constellations of actors involved in the advancement of global development policies at the city scale and, second, to examine the role of city-university partnerships in producing particular forms of urban expertise to support SDG localization. Locating this work within a longer genealogy of urban governance reform in South Africa, it is shown that the conditions under which effective co-productive relationships can be built and institutionalized are highly context specific and geographically uneven. Understanding and assembling such conditions will enable cities to benefit from the forms of expertise these can engender.

On the Entanglement of Science and Europe at CERN: The Temporal Dynamics of a Coproductive Relationship

ABSTRACT The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is one of the oldest, largest, and most emblematic European research infrastructures. Its history, as expressed through narratives of its own organizational identity, does not only reflect the development of its technoscientific activities but also strongly references a multiplicity of performances of Europe. By analysing these narratives of organizational identity over nearly seven decades, it is possible to observe an ongoing coproductive relationship between technoscientific and sociopolitical orders—more specifically between particle physics and Europe. Furthermore, there has been a considerable shift in the justificatory and explanatory relationship between these orders. In its first three decades, CERN was envisioned as an organization in which European unity could be accomplished through science. A broad vision of science as a common European language contributed to an imaginary of postwar Europe (re-)united through its cultural/scientific roots. Roughly since 1990, however, CERN has been presenting itself as a ‘laboratory for the world’, thereby constructing a new imaginary of Europeanness as an organizational and cultural resource to support global particle physics. Thus, there has been a narrative shift from European collaboration being promoted through science, to science on a world scale being promoted by a specific idea of Europeanness. Studying the temporal dynamics of coproductive relationships like these sensitizes us to shifts of balance between sociopolitical and technoscientific orders: it reveals which orders are narrated as drivers and which as driven as well as how this opens up or closes down justificatory narratives and ways of acting.

Co-producing the science\u2013policy interface: towards common but differentiated responsibilities

Formulating adequate responses to pressing socio-ecological challenges requires effective and legitimate knowledge production and use. The academic debate has gradually shifted from a linear model of science–policy relations towards co-productive alternatives. Yet, in practice, the linear model remains lingering. This paper uses a case study of a collaboration between a Dutch research institute and a ministerial department to examine how and why this linear model is so persistent. Our analysis shows the dominance of the linear model in this collaboration, while openings for a more co-productive relationship remain largely unexplored. Our findings illustrate that an important reason for this persistence of the linear model is the lack of a convincing and attractive alternative imaginary of science–policy practices, which defines clear roles and competencies for researchers as well as policy actors involved. We argue this is symptomatic of a wider tendency among both researchers and policy actors to construct science as an obligatory passage point towards policy. However, this tendency not only enables policy actors to offload their responsibility but also fails to capitalise on the opportunities offered by these practices to explicate the politics embedded in and foregrounded by knowledge production. Such an engagement with the politics of knowledge by experts as well as policymakers can encourage more effective and legitimate knowledge production and use.

Knowledge mobilisation in public service reform: integrating empirical, technical and practical wisdom

Background Public service practitioners on all levels aim to solve increasingly complex policy problems by making use of different forms of evidence. While there are many complex models of knowledge mobilisation, not enough attention is paid to the types of knowledge that are mobilised for public service reform. Ward (2017) has returned to Aristotle’s knowledge types; empirical, technical and practice wisdom, to address this gap. Aims and objectives This paper applies the theoretical work of Ward (2017) and Flyvbjerg (2001) to the everyday work and practice of frontline public service providers with the aim of identifying core elements of knowledge mobilisation in the practice of public service reform in the context of local governance. Methods The data is from a case study of a Scottish local authority conducted as part of the What Works Scotland research programme. The paper derives insights from 16 qualitative interviews with service providers in housing, waste management, policing and greenspace services, and 12 observations, analysed using thematic analysis. Findings The findings suggest that empirical or technical knowledge is not sufficient on its own for sustainable solutions to localised policy problems. The practice wisdom of service providers, balancing ethical concerns with diverse perspectives, is a form of knowledge that is not fully valued or recognised in public service reform. Discussion and conclusions Future research should aim to understand how the integration of empirical, technical and practice knowledge might be achieved through more co-productive relationships between researchers, knowledge mobilisers and service providers.

“It’s in our DNA”: perspectives on co-producing services in the UK voluntary sector

In this paper we report on the perceptions of co-production in the UK voluntary, community and social enterprise sector from those directly involved. We conducted five case studies, each involving interviews with two people who had formed a co-production relationship. We found positive perceptions of co-production from all interviewees. We suggest organisational and individual factors that are important to successful co-production and provide practical examples. We reflect on implications for practice by considering co-production relationships, time and resources.

A Review and Scientometric Analysis of Global Building Information Modeling (BIM) Research in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry

In the recent decade, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has widely been adopted in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry and completely upended the way we build. While BIM continues gain momentum in the industry, it has also attracted increasing attention from researchers. However, most of the current study focuses on reviewing BIM for management, BIM for green building, BIM for infrastructure and BIM for Facilities Management (FM). There are few studies about Global BIM review and to discuss their complex inter-connections. In this study, we adopted a scientometric analysis method to review global BIM research during 2004–2019. In total, 1455 scholarly bibliographic records obtained from Web of Science Core Collection database were established for the analysis. This study has identified the top productive and influential researchers, research institutes, regions/countries, subject categories and journals in the BIM field. In addition, 11 clusters of global BIM research were also identified including construction project, green BIM, construction safety planning, automated IFC-based workflow and so on. The authors distinguished 11 clusters of global BIM research into three stages, namely formulating stage, accelerating stage and transforming stage. Furthermore, the authors reviewed the BIM policy of Singapore and observed there is a co-production relationship between evolution of BIM policy and global BIM research. These findings provide valuable information for researchers, practitioners and policymakers by visualizing the current progress in the research field of BIM and highlighting future research needs.

‘I‐as‐We’ – Powerful boundaries within the field of mental health coproduction

To date, there is little research on personal crisis experiences of mental health professionals. The aim of this study was to explore some of the reasons for why self-disclosure is so difficult and how these difficulties may prevent productive forms of coproduction. These questions are addressed both from a psychiatrist's autoethnographic account and from the perspective of a peer worker who works in various coproductive relationships. It is shown that mental health professionals often revert to an "I-as-we", speaking of themselves as a collective and thereby reifying the boundaries between 'vulnerable users' and 'invulnerable professionals'. Ethnographic examples are given, of how these boundaries are produced by a continuous, often invisible, and powerful category work. It is discussed how the dichotomous logic of these boundaries can cause people on both sides to feel reduced to a representation of a certain species, which can take on an existential dimension. Ways out are identified for mental health professionals to self-reflexively engage with their own crisis experience in coproductive and other relationships.

Avoiding a Post-truth World: Embracing Post-normal Conservation

In response to unexpected election results across the world, and a perceived increase of policy decisions that disregard scientific evidence, conservation scientists are reflecting on working in a ‘post-truth’ world. This phrase is useful in making scientists aware that policy-making is messy and multi-faceted, but it may be misused. By introducing three different scenarios of conservation decision-making, this perspective argues that a mythical era of ‘science or truth conservation’ has never existed. Since an ‘extended peer community’ of decision-makers (policy-makers, practitioners, stakeholders) are present in multi-layered governance structures, conservation has always been ‘post-normal’. To decrease the chances of ‘post-truth’ decision-making occurring, the perspective encourages scientists to think carefully about scientific workflows and science communication. Developing a conservation narrative which does not see values, beliefs, and interests, as key parts of modern functioning democracies risks upholding a perception of the disconnected ivory tower of science. Rather, co-productive relationships should be established with decision-makers, and we should harness the power of storytelling to engage people on a personal level. This perspective encourages scientists to take heed of research on stakeholder engagement and storytelling, and to embrace workflows suited to post-normal conservation, rather than trying to deny that a post-normal world exists.

Permission to Come Alongside? - The Story of Jorge and Yousef

Permission to Come Alongside? - The Story of Jorge and Yousef