Forms Of Knowledge Production Research Articles

Theorizing data analysis platforms – digital refractions and reconfigurations of pasts, presents and futures

ABSTRACT Digital platforms are a pervasive force in the transformation of business, organization and social order, but also an evolving phenomenon in need of further conceptualization and detailed analysis. This article offers a theorization and analytical framework for the study of a sub-type of digital platforms that we may think of as data analysis platforms, and which play an increasingly important role in organizations, business, and society more broadly. Starting from a theoretical focus on how data, algorithms and technological systems work as ‘digital prisms’ that refract and reconfigure social phenomena, the article articulates how data integration and data-driven prediction can be seen as forms of knowledge production that allow for new dynamics of seeing, knowing and governing. On this backdrop, the article highlights five analytical dimensions of data analysis platforms (domains, datasets, models, humans and temporality) and offers a conceptualization of three different types and uses of data analysis platforms (data merging platforms, data prognosis platforms and data projection platforms). Taken together, this analytical framework may guide conceptual and empirical investigations and pave the way for more nuanced understandings of the shape, workings and societal ramifications of data analysis platforms. The article contributes to emergent research seeking to articulate the shapes and workings of digital platforms. The conceptualization of digital platforms may help us understand as the digitalization and datafication of knowledge production, work and organization, the reliance on platforms, as well as broader questions about how data, algorithms and digital systems are used in attempts to grasp and shape futures.

‘The Real Data Set’: A Case of Challenging Power Dynamics and Questioning the Boundaries of Research Production

While the co-production of knowledge through community-engaged research is intended to be a reciprocally beneficial process, academic institutions have often devalued community expertise by treating community organizations as subjects rather than co-creators of knowledge. Drawing from ethnographic work with a community-based organization (CBO), Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), this paper shows how one CBO is challenging and critiquing these long-standing power dynamics between community and their university partners. LA CAN centered community expertise and formed long-term mutual relationships based on shared values, primarily an abolitionist framework and connection to Black Radical Thought. Drawing from LA CAN’s partnerships and their definition of power, we discuss how shifting power dynamics and centering community expertise leads to a different form of knowledge production, resulting in “the real data set”. This case shows how CBOs are movement researchers who are central to creating and interpreting theory.

Ethics and Best Practices of Studying Contemporary Human Populations

At the 2021 meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists, the “Ethics and Best Practices of Studying Contemporary Human Populations” symposium brought together a diverse panel of scientists to address the growing concerns related to consent, communication, and ethical practices in biological anthropology research. Drawing from historical parallels and current practices, the panel underscored the responsibilities of researchers to engage transparently and respectfully with the subjects of their studies. This article summarizes some of the topics raised and debated at that meeting, including the specific challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting surge in studies utilizing biological data from diverse populations, and the meaning of informed consent, genetic privacy, and data justice. The authors emphasize the importance of diversity and inclusion within research teams and leadership roles, and the role this can play in reshaping research approaches and fostering innovation in our field. They challenge the traditional notions of informed consent and encourage a more nuanced understanding that acknowledges the historical context and respects refusals as a form of knowledge production. The diverse perspectives shared at the symposium offer a glimpse into the ongoing efforts of biological anthropologists to navigate ethical challenges in contemporary human population studies. The collective aim is to spark sustained conversations and collaborative endeavors within biological anthropology and to promote continuous improvement in ethical standards and best practices.

Why we need to complicate things: The teaching and learning of religion beyond simplification

AbstractMuch knowledge production, both academic and non‐academic, is driven by a need to simplify the world in order to enable people to navigate the complexities of everyday life. Such simplifications not only risk offering less reliable representations of the world, they can also turn into disruptive and harmful images of the world. In this article, students and teachers in the field of religion and theology are encouraged to value scientific research as a form of knowledge production that complicates things. In an age in which scientific knowledge is constantly contested and in which it competes with other forms of knowledge production (including problematic ones such as fake news, conspiracy theories, stereotyped representations of religion and religious others, and poorly executed journalism), it is important for students to understand that complicating things is a key step in developing reliable knowledge on religion and the (ir)religious other. This article, written for students starting out in the field of theology and religion and for those who teach them, explains how complicating things takes shape in scientific research by discussing three basic elements: (1) not taking things at face value, (2) understanding science as knowledge production and reflecting on science as production, (3) and realizing that there is no absolute certainty.

Towards a Political Ecology of Knowledge: Reconnecting with the Legacy of Radical Science Movements

In this essay we discuss the legacy of the 1970s French radical science movement (FRSM) and the way they influence contemporary collective inquiries and personal commitments concerning different forms of knowledge production. Among other things, The FRSM explored new ways of knowledge production, inside and outside of academic institutions. However, due to the institutionalization of those critiques and their foundational function for disciplines like STS, their legacy has gradually become forgotten. The current renewal of critiques of science since the 2000s allows for a reconnection with this particular history. We show that even if many of them were more interested in a return to an ideal autonomous science, they often also underline the fact that precariousness constitutes a condition that reveals what really counts in science and knowledge. We claim that in this way those critiques help us seriously consider the living and dead aspects of science and, consequently, how to protect or undo them. Critical approaches that consider actual asymmetries and precariousness could become the basis for a political ecology of knowledge.

Traffic in Asian Women

Traffic in Asian Women

Bat/Man: echolocation, experimentation, and the question of the human

ABSTRACT Sound studies research has demonstrated that hearing and listening are culturally constructed and historically contextual. Yet the construction of normative perceptual states has historically relied on interspecies comparison, particularly in the laboratory. In this article Iconsider the ways that scientific imagining constructs more than human subjects, particularly the entanglement of bats and humansin the violent history of echolocation research. Beginning with the notion of “sonic sight”, I examine early echolocation experiments as well as the biomimetic application of echolocation by humans who are blind or visually impaired. I conclude with an analysis of “Bat/Man”, an experimental piece by Austin-area composer Steve Parker, whose work suggests that human-animal relations are a product of anthropomorphic imaginaries. Drawing from recent work in critical animal studies, I argue that biomimetic practices in the laboratory and in music are central to the production of a perceptual normate that constitutes the category of the human. At the same time, I invoke Thom van Dooren’s concept of a “multispecies ethics” to consider the violent asymmetries that are implicit in such forms of knowledge production (Van Dooren 2019, 11).

Need for Collaboration Between Teachers and Academic Research: Implications for Pedagogy, Knowledge Production and Quality Assurance in Nigerian Schools’ Social Studies Curriculum

This paper discusses issues of power, privilege, voice and status in educational research and the need for collaborative research between world of Teachers and Academics. Most of the involvement of academics in the teachers’ research movement has been to produce an academic inter programme. Despite the so called revolution in teachers’ research around the world today, where there is a lot of talk about teachers as producers of knowledge, there is still the perception that Academic research is the superior to that of Teachers. Teachers still research in Nigerian schools as an activity conducted by those outside the Nigerian secondary schools classroom for the benefit of the Teachers and Pupils at the primary and Secondary schools in Nigeria. While Teachers feel that academic research is irrelevant to their lives and the pupils, many academics in higher schools in Nigeria dismiss teachers research as trivial, theoretical and inconsequential and hence incapable of addressing the numerous problems facing the education industry in Nigeria. The point here is that both teachers and academics till today in Nigeria still see their enquiries as essentially irrelevant to one another. The political economy of knowledge production and utilization which has accorded a high status and rewards to certain forms of knowledge Production used by teachers sometimes deny the legitimacy of their own knowledge that they have generated through their school based inquiries. Research to most Academics use a specialized language that is outside purview of teachers. Teachers on the other hand feel that academic researchers are largely insensitive to the complex circumstances with which they are faced in their works and frequently feel oppressed and exploited by higher school researchers. The paper therefore discuss the need to correct the present imbalance in knowledge generation and the need to bridge the gap between teacher research and academic research in Social studies using four hypotheses and four questions. Recommendations were made.

The trouble with maternal death narratives: Race, representation, and reproduction

ABSTRACTThe high risk of maternal death in Africa has cast a shadow over representations and experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. In the 1980s, amid new awareness of disparities in maternal mortality rates between high and low-income countries, tragic anecdotes of women dying during childbirth emerged as a tool to garner political and economic support for global health interventions aimed at women. While successfully raising public concern and billions of dollars in aid, given that these stories are some of the few stories of African women so widely circulated, it is important to ask: what else does the genre of maternal death narrative do? How might discursive practices around childbirth structure the care offered to African women? What power relations are revealed in this form of knowledge production and promotion? This article examines how maternal death narratives function, circulate, and structure potential solutions to the problem of maternal mortality. In focusing on the pathways to death, women’s bodies are foregrounded as sites of knowledge production over their experiences. I use fieldwork with pregnant and birthing women in southwest Nigeria to explore the ways that women piece together different sources of care in an effort to ensure successful deliveries amidst considerable uncertainty.

Analysis of the Characteristics of Mobile Audio Payment Platform

With the popularization and development of the Internet and mobile devices, the forms of knowledge production and dissemination are increasingly rich. Mobile paid audio platform has become one of the carriers of high-quality content due to its fragmentation, accompanying, social and other characteristics. As the largest mobile paid audio platform in China at present, Himalayan FM adopts the content production mode of "UGC+PGC+exclusive copyright" in terms of program content. The audio program content is mainly "fast, short and flat", which is more in line with the current fragmented scene environment. In 2016, the Himalayan FM took the lead in trying to produce and disseminate knowledge-based audio pay programs, creating a premium pay program zone, and playing a leading role in the mobile pay audio field. Although Himalayan FM is the "leader" of mobile pay audio platform, there are also some problems that must be solved in the development. Therefore, understanding its characteristics can provide some suggestions for the future development of Himalayan FM.

Disentangling entangled mobilities: reflections on forms of knowledge production within migration studies

European migration studies have been criticised for having certain epistemological and theoretical underpinnings that reproduce hegemonic structures, especially the ‘national order of things’ and colonial legacies. In this article, we propose the concept of ‘entangled mobilities’ to address some of these challenges. Entangled mobilities as a theoretical lens enables us to study specific global and transnational processes, the ways in which they are historically and locally situated, and how they materialise in individual mobilities of differently positioned actors within an unequal political global economy. This lens helps us simultaneously overcome nationality- and ethnicity-centred epistemologies, confront colonial aphasia, and be sensitive to the multiple inequalities and mobility regimes within which human mobilities evolve. Furthermore, the prism of entangled mobilities provides an ideal methodological departure point from which to systematically examine how human mobilities are intertwined and interdependent and to reveal how they are embedded in and shaped by asymmetric, historically evolved power structures. We propose three pragmatic entry points for mobilising the concept: in specific places, in terms of the intersections and interdependencies of different mobile people, and in the context of the biographical trajectories of individuals. Finally, we invite scholars from other fields, such as policy research, to innovatively adapt this approach to gain alternative knowledge and address inequalities.

Complexities of Practitioner Research: Seeking Hallmarks of Quality

The emphasis in Ed.D. programs on professional knowledge and practical research means methodological training in these programs must prepare their candidates for the career demands graduates will likely encounter; practitioner research is well-suited to this task. Yet, the lower status traditionally accorded to practitioner research, along with an absence of clear guidelines for its methodology and quality, challenge its acceptance as a form of knowledge production. The current study analyzes 74 accounts of practitioner research in literacy for evidence of methodological quality. Findings reveal ways practitioner researchers systematically conduct and report their inquiries as well as areas for improvement. The hallmarks of quality identified in this study can be used by research educators to advance practitioner research as a methodology and knowledge generating endeavor.

AI hyped? A horizon scan of discourse on artificial intelligence in education (AIED) and development

ABSTRACT The study seeks to understand how the AI ecosystem might be implicated in a form of knowledge production which reifies particular kinds of epistemologies over others. Using text mining and thematic analysis, this paper offers a horizon scan of the key themes that have emerged over the past few years during the AIEd debate. We begin with a discussion of the tools we used to experiment with digital methods for data collection and analysis. This paper then examines how AI in education systems are being conceived, hyped, and potentially deployed into global education contexts. Findings are categorised into three themes in the discourse: (1) geopolitical dominance through education and technological innovation; (2) creation and expansion of market niches, and (3) managing narratives, perceptions, and norms.

Aurality of images in graphic ethnographies: Sexual violence during wars and memories of the feelings of fear

This article examines the role of graphic ethnography in mapping the objects and feelings of fear through the silence of images, through the aurality of this silence. By aurality, I refer to the sounds and feelings felt by the reader when seeing these images in their colours, visuality and contexts which are not brought out by words and texts alone. The article explores the new sociographies that emerge from this intercitationality of visceral fear, from the aurality of this dread, that survivors of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war of 1971 feel till today. It suggests that we need to go beyond the search for the ‘unsayable and unseeable’ to understand how survivors and their quotidian existence are intertwined with these objects of fear. Nothing is unseeable or unsayable for survivors here as they live through fear ‘as an environment’. The article explores the intertextual, intercitational registers between my book The Spectral Wound and my co-authored graphic novel, Birangona, in order to bring out the reparative aspects of graphic ethnography and the new forms of knowledge production.

‘I know how researchers are […] taking more from you than they give you’: tensions and possibilities of youth participatory action research in sport for development

ABSTRACT Critical scholarship in sport for development (SfD) advocates transformative research to disrupt the historical colonising view of sport as a vehicle to acculturate people into the values and norms of dominant Western culture. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) involves youth throughout the research process and consequently has the potential to challenge hegemonic forms of knowledge production in SfD. In reality, however, authentic engagement of co-researchers in the research process is often largely confined to data collection. This article draws on the decolonising lens as a theoretical framework to examine tensions, possibilities, and power relations that researchers and co-researchers encounter when co-designing and implementing YPAR in SfD. The project comprised a sixteen-week YPAR in a community-based football programme in Melbourne, Australia. Data collection comprised weekly collaborative meetings, observations collected as field notes, artefacts produced by participants, interviews, and reflective meetings. Findings centred on three themes: (a) finding sensitive ways to navigate the tensions of building trust and rapport; (b) negotiating the struggle between the co-researchers and the coaches about the use of space within the sport context; and (c) the challenges of relinquishing power in research and knowledge production, as reflected in our collective struggle to communicate to participants the value of YPAR for themselves and their communities. The findings challenge a romantic view that YPAR is guaranteed to be an empowering experience for young people; instead, they foreground the complexities and messiness of the process of sharing power with co-researchers in SfD. We conclude by advocating for critical, reflexive YPAR with explicit social transformation objectives to work toward the co-production of knowledge with young people.

The Heresy of Didactic Art

The Heresy of Didactic Art

Diggin’ in the Racial Literacy Crates

ABSTRACT In this article, we introduce co-excavative letter writing as a method for developing racial literacy, deepening relationships, and challenging standard forms of knowledge production. Jordan and Karen, students in Yolanda’s cotaught graduate seminar, developed an epistolary exchange as part of their “(un)final project.” Collaborative epistles challenged the writers to explore their positionalities, allowing them to trace interrelated issues of power and identity in their past and present experiences. The co-excavative letter-writing process makes explicit the individual voices that combine to create coauthored academic articles, highlighting the process of collaboration in a way that traditional academic production obscures.

BEING CALLED TO ACTION: Contemporary Museum Ethnographies

abstract There has been wonderful work animating vectors of relatedness, negotiation, and collaboration between museums and “source communities”; foregrounding the significance of objects, what they can/might do, and how they act in and through museums; and highlighting the particularity of the photographic archive (and especially photographs as things in need of specific kinds of attention and care) in contemporary cultural reclamation and (re)vitalization projects. In this special issue of Museum Anthropology entitled “Materiality, Belonging, and the Activation of Difference,” we seek to bring these three fields into conversation. We seek to extend recent work arguing for an expanded view of museums as sites of translation (between local needs and global agendas) and frames for more inclusive, dynamic, collaborative, politically informed action. As a set, these articles argue that museum anthropology as a discipline must allow for ethnographic exploration of, coexistence with, and engagement across these emphases: the centrality of objects and how they are mobilized in various forms of knowledge production; debate over what a museum is and what its social role(s) might be (can a home be a museum? Can a city? What happens to our notion of “museum” when we expand beyond architectural objectifications of state/national authority?); and the embodied, affective, and sensorial experiences of museums and museum‐like spaces. [museum objects/things, museum places, heritage, tourism, authenticity]

Embodied Engagement with Scientific Concepts: An Exploration into Emergent Learning

In response to an invitation to integrate science and art pedagogy, science and dance students enrolled in specific disciplinary courses, collaboratively produced choreography based on scientific principles. This paper reports students’ experience of this process. Science students reported an increased understanding of concepts, while dance students found inspiration for choreography within scientific concepts. Tensions and misconceptions were evident in the process with respect to disciplinary language, the notion of scientific thought, and the level of physical awareness. The relationship between movement and forms of knowledge production in science was investigated as well. The paper ends with recommendations for future classes.

Knowledge and Power: Social Science and the Social World

The world’s centre of gravity is changing, from the North Atlantic to Eastern Asia. As world centres of knowledge have correlated historically with world centres of power, this ongoing geopolitical change is likely to bring changes also to the global map of cognition. Knowledge and power are intrinsically related, knowledge is power, it is based on power, and it produces instruments of power. Moreover, the vistas of social scientists and scholars are always circumscribed by the power relations of the social world they are studying. A way of looking into this is to analyse the concepts and the narratives they use and produce. What features do they highlight, and what do they hide? Cognitive change is driven by two kinds of change, change (i.e. new discovery) of evidence, and change of power. On a macro scale, the major forces of power change bearing upon cognitive change have been social mobilizations, for example, of classes, women, and ethnic groups, the rise and decline of states, and, third, economic or ecological crises disrupting the functioning of existing powers. Indigenization and de-Westernization are different programmes. The former is synonymous with nativization and rooting in the particular culture of a population, whereas the latter may be, and often is, an emancipation from Western cultural domination in the name of another universalistic culture. De-Westernization is inherently confrontational, whereas indigenization may range from supplementary to isolationist. Academic indigenization and de-Westernization have in their cognitive challenges similarities with contemporary critical identity movements, such as feminism and ethnic movements. The cognitive challenges mounted by both types of currents proceed across four levels of cognitive depths, claiming canon inclusion of certain thinkers and role models, questioning and rejection of prevailing social narratives, practising new forms of knowledge production, and fourth epistemological or meta-sociological reflections on the old and the new knowledge paradigms. Indigenization should be treated as a limited supplementary project, whereas de-Westernization is likely to advance. It should be an opening of global horizons, not a closure. Pluralism of critique, challenge, and search for other, better ways are decisive for the development of knowledge.