Hierarchy Of Knowledge Research Articles

Of the everyday and play in improper education

This article explores the role of the everyday and play in alternative school practices. I propose theconcept of a democratic 'common school' as one based on mundane daily experiences and differentways of knowing. The everyday and play are usually seen as complementary tools in pedagogicalpractices, rather than active cultural agents in cultivating the subjectivities of school participants. Ipropose exploring the everyday and play in alternative education practices as a contribution to thediscourse of alternative pedagogies. This article is based on my observations and reflections fromparticipating in the School of Improper Education (SoIE) initiated by KUNCI Study Forum & Collective.The article proposes that the everyday and play are not only tools in SoIE's day-to-day operations, butalso ways of learning that enable participants to question knowledge hierarchies and to develop self-determined and emancipatory ways of knowing.

Whiteness Should Be Introduced to Postcolonial Critiques of FSTS

Subramaniam et al. (2016) exhorts postcolonial critiques of feminist STS to include Indigenous and decolonial knowledges from Latin America. I suggest that these intersecting contributions should also theorize whiteness as an important and overarching power structure. Whiteness historically contributed to and contemporarily still contributes to the shaping of our understanding of gender, sexuality, disability, class inequality and race relations, but has also structured and informed colonial conquests and empires. This also applies to the hierarchies of knowledge established within the academy, where, for example, contributions from Indigenous communities remain irrelevant and ignored. My article, using broad strokes of the brush, hopes to briefly establish the importance of considering whiteness in postcolonial analysis as it; 1) has globally structured socioeconomic and political relations by race, 2) was established through colonial violence, 3) necessitated the social construction of whites as a racial category, and 4) procured societal protections by law, enabling its op-erations to become entrenched in the norms of contemporary (postcolonial) society.

BlendMR: A Computational Method to Create Ambient Mixed Reality Interfaces

Mixed Reality (MR) systems display content freely in space, and present nearly arbitrary amounts of information, enabling ubiquitous access to digital information. This approach, however, introduces clutter and distraction if too much virtual content is shown. We present BlendMR, an optimization-based MR system that blends virtual content onto the physical objects in users’ environments to serve as ambient information displays. Our approach takes existing 2D applications and meshes of physical objects as input. It analyses the geometry of the physical objects and identifies regions that are suitable hosts for virtual elements. Using a novel integer programming formulation, our approach then optimally maps selected contents of the 2D applications onto the object, optimizing for factors such as importance and hierarchy of information, viewing angle, and geometric distortion. We evaluate BlendMR by comparing it to a 2D window baseline. Study results show that BlendMR decreases clutter and distraction, and is preferred by users. We demonstrate the applicability of BlendMR in a series of results and usage scenarios.

Evaluation of the Hierarchical Correspondence between the Human Brain and Artificial Neural Networks: A Review.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) that are heavily inspired by the human brain now achieve human-level performance across multiple task domains. ANNs have thus drawn attention in neuroscience, raising the possibility of providing a framework for understanding the information encoded in the human brain. However, the correspondence between ANNs and the brain cannot be measured directly. They differ in outputs and substrates, neurons vastly outnumber their ANN analogs (i.e., nodes), and the key algorithm responsible for most of modern ANN training (i.e., backpropagation) is likely absent from the brain. Neuroscientists have thus taken a variety of approaches to examine the similarity between the brain and ANNs at multiple levels of their information hierarchy. This review provides an overview of the currently available approaches and their limitations for evaluating brain-ANN correspondence.

A critical review of status quo and future directions of owner dynamic capabilities: Dimensions and key factors

Abstract Existing studies agree that owner dynamic capabilities are crucial in dynamic environments. Based on a systematic literature review of 44 research with CiteSpace and the content analysis method, this study aims to elucidate the dimensions and key factors of owner dynamic capabilities. Owner dynamic capabilities are studied in the context of a construction project due to their resource-constrained, goal-urgent, and uncertainty characteristics. Cognition capabilities, resilient change management capabilities, integrated organization capabilities, and strategic innovation capabilities are identified as the dimensions. Critical factors have also been analyzed at different levels. This study proposes a discriminatory framework of owner dynamic capabilities that combined organizational ambidexterity and resilience. Moreover, this study contributes to the clarification of the concept of owner dynamic capabilities and the enrichment of their knowledge hierarchy. Practitioners can track the main contradictions that owners are currently facing against the actual situation and seek strategies.

Separating the territory from the map: The intersection of cartography, memory and identity in autobiographical comics

Alison Bechdel said in an interview with Lynn Emmert that both maps and comics ‘take a complex or confusing three-dimensional reality and iron it out into a much more manageable two-dimensional version’. Yet the way maps weave together space, place, history, tradition and personal experience through multiple levels of signification points to anything but transparency of form, especially when deployed within autographics. We often encounter maps in autobiographical comics, where their uses can be as different as the lives they help to illustrate. When the layers of historical, cultural and personal references that intersect on the map plane are embedded in the formalist structures of comics, the levels of signification become multiplied – panel borders and topographical borders intersect, the geography of space merges with the geography of the page, and the subjectivity of the illustrated line overlays the objectivity of cartography. While the semiotic structures of maps and comics are presentationally different, both derive narratorial power from the relationships they make explicit through the marks on the page, and how their boundaries carve up space and time. Mapping traditions may be referenced to signpost authentication strategies within graphic memoirs. The structures of the map may be utilized – or even disrupted – in order to illustrate dynamics that cannot be signified through text or representational mimesis. This article will critically examine mapping modalities used in a variety of autographic narratives, focusing on the link between representation and experience of place for both the author and reader. By analysing what is included and excluded in a map, as well as the relationships the maps create between signifier and signified, we can draw some conclusions about how the mapmaker is positioning themselves within such frameworks as cultural background, socio-economic structures and hierarchies of knowledge.

Negotiating Professional Tasks in a Hospital: A Qualitative Study of Rheumatologists and Occupational Therapists in the Management of Hand Osteoarthritis.

Societal change and rise in demand for healthcare call for new health professional practices and task redistribution. Through negotiated order theory, this study explores how hospital rheumatologists (RT) and occupational therapists (OT) negotiate professional tasks in the clinical management of hand osteoarthritis. Fourteen qualitative interviews and 16 observations in clinical consultations were conducted in two hospitals specialized in rheumatology in Norway. Participants included eight OTs, six RTs, and patients in consultations. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three themes were developed from codes: hierarchical ordering of hospital work impacts interprofessional negotiations; diagnostic organization of tasks preserves RT authority; and evidence-based recommendations in rheumatology enhance OT responsibilities. Overall, RTs and OTs enact tasks in succession where higher-ranking RTs establish a diagnosis and decide the subsequent in-hospital trajectory entrenched in a medical knowledge system. When medicine does not hold evidence-based treatment alternatives for patients, OTs respond by providing therapeutic interventions that are legitimized through international recommendations in rheumatology when they equip patients with tools to cope with chronic illness. Negotiations over tasks do not take place from equal power positions when status and knowledge hierarchies frame professional practices. The enactment of tasks is concurrently highly influenced by the arena of the workplace, where the two professional groups both cross boundaries and work together in concert despite professional differences in order to meet patient interests and provide relevant healthcare.

Navigating STEMification for critical geography educators: finding leverage in classroom and institutional pedagogies

ABSTRACT This paper grapples with the challenges posed to critical geography educators by STEMification, or the enshrinement of market-oriented forms of science and technology education as the normative ideal for education in general. In both reactionary and progressive contexts, STEMification decontextualizes scientific and technological activity and deepens existing hierarchies of knowledge based on quantification, perceived scientific rigour, commercialisation, and employability. Critical geographical knowledges often incur misrecognition, dismissal, and in some cases, outright prohibition under such conditions. Offering strategies for navigating and contesting STEMification, this paper draws on collective auto-methods, analysing narrative vignettes from our pedagogical practices as critical geography educators. We offer the notion of seeking leverage in the face of STEMification: protecting ourselves and seeking traction within our institutions by translating our goals into familiar or sanctioned forms, while using those forms to alternative ends. To that end, we highlight seven pedagogical strategies: (1) meeting students where they are, (2) using applied examples, (3) grappling with the limits of problem-based learning, (4) disalienating students from assessment, (5) integrating critique with alternatives, (6) anticipating both resistance to and desire for critical content from students and colleagues, and (7) recognising the limits of institutional environments.

Applying ‘merging of knowledge’ in Tanzania: What can we learn about interrupting patterned relationships to reveal hidden dimensions of poverty?

Merging of Knowledge is a research approach that creates the conditions for people with lived experience of poverty to participate at an equal level with academics and practitioners, in the co-generation of knowledge about poverty. This paper reflects critically on the application of ‘Merging of Knowledge’ to study poverty in Tanzania, assessing its challenges, achievements, and lessons learned about revealing hidden knowledge about poverty. It also provides a brief literature review to place the Merging of Knowledge alongside other participatory approaches. This paper finds that Merging of Knowledge can effectively interrupt patterned social relationships, and empower individuals and peer groups, thereby stimulating transformation of both academics and people and poverty. It does so by addressing imbalances in social status, empowering all groups of participants at each stage of the research, and building trust, confidence, and freedom from fear in a sustainable manner. The conclusion drawn is that Merging of Knowledge holds great promise for future research on topics where strong hierarchies of knowledge exist, and where the physical inclusion of participants in data collection is not readily translated into intellectual inclusivity during analysis and the dissemination of findings.

Medicalisation of Ayahuasca as a Depression Treatment

This paper examines the possible consequences of medicalising the psychedelic Ayahuasca to be used as a treatment for depression. Through a science and technology studies (STS) understanding of the social construction of scientific facts, I consider how traditional indigenous uses of Ayahuasca are translated into Western medicine. Two special points of attention are: (1) the cultural reductivism entailed in the standardisation of the active substance of Ayahuasca (DMT), understood through Martin’s (2000) analysis of neuroreductivism in Western medicine, and (2) the issue of biopiracy, wherein biological resources are appropriated without fair compensation for indigenous communities. In conclusion, I suggest that the dangers of medicalising ayahuasca boil down to an unjustified hierarchy of scientific knowledge over indigenous knowledge systems, which might lead to serious consequences also for the effectiveness of the proposed treatment. Keywords: Medicalization, Ayahuasca, Neuroreductivism, Biopiracy

What Counts as Transitional Justice Scholarship? Citational Recognition and Disciplinary Hierarchies in Theory and Practice

Abstract Since its emergence as a field of scholarship and practice, transitional justice has coalesced around a set of mechanisms to deal with a legacy of violence. The “pull” toward mechanisms, institutions, and structures as a means of delivering justice has led to certain kinds of knowledge being recognized as “transitional justice research” in the mainstream. Drawing on the theory of epistemic positioning, we reveal how hierarchies of academic knowledge and the dominant “ways of knowing” in and of transitional justice are created. Through citation analysis, we reveal an emerging canon, a central body of valuable and seemingly “inevitable” knowledge of transitional justice consisting primarily of structure and outcome-oriented inquiries in the disciplines of politics, international relations, and law and consolidating a standardized model of how to “do” transitional justice. We argue that this canonization comes at the expenses of alternative approaches that challenge the core assumptions of the field. Inquiries that prioritize agency or process and reimagine what transitional justice could be remain bounded to their disciplines and subfields. We demonstrate how certain anxieties about the survival of the field result in policing of the boundaries of the field, creating hierarchies of “valuable” knowledge, and resisting the “decolonizing” impulse.

“I haven't even taken them to the doctors, because I have that fear of what to expect”: a qualitative description study exploring perceptions and experiences of early childhood healthcare among ethnically diverse caregivers in Aotearoa New Zealand

Equity underpins Aotearoa New Zealand's publicly funded healthcare system; however, ethnic inequality persists. This qualitative study explored the perceptions and experiences of ethnically diverse parents accessing health services for their children. A qualitative description methodology informed interviews and focus groups that were conducted with caregivers of preschool aged children who identified as being of Māori, Pacific, Asian and/or European ethnicity (n=145). Data were analysed following a reflexive thematic analytic approach. Five themes were constructed. Hierarchies of knowledge and trust Caregivers relied on multiple sources of health information and particularly trusted providers or other caregivers who had children. Relational versustransactional health encounters Caregivers were often disappointed that health providers did not build trusting relationships to support positive experiences. Bad mother vibe Mothers often felt judged by providers when accessing care and felt pressure to conform. The 'slow burn' of waiting Caregivers were often frustrated by how slow and fragmented the health system was, which was particularly distressing if their child was unwell or required referral. Navigating complexity Caregivers had to be proactive and assertive to ensure their child received care amidst the numerous barriers they faced, including discrimination and bias. While many commonalities were shared by ethnicity, unique to Indigenous Māori caregivers were the ongoing colonial traumas that impacted their ability to trust the healthcare system. A non-judgemental, competent, and culturally sensitive approach by healthcare professionals and services may help foster trusting relationships and positive health encounters. Strategies to improve trust, ease of access and navigation are needed to mitigate existing complexity, fragmentation, and counter-intuitive nature of the NZ healthcare system. Caregivers require more autonomy over decisions about their child's care and availability of services that reflect their cultural values. Policies are required to alleviate the indirect costs of accessing healthcare, prioritising of whānau/family-centred care, and addressing pervasive racism and bias within the system. Health Research Council of New Zealand (19/263) .

Decolonising Southern knowledge(s) in Aidland

ABSTRACT South–South Co-operation (SSC) has become increasingly important in international development policy and practice as both alternative and complementary to North–South Co-operation. Crafted through the acceptance, appropriation, and instrumentalisation of a colonialist idea of an underdeveloped world, SSC has been historically defined as an expression of Southern solidarity, through which developing countries collaborate to achieve progress, modernity, and development. It is often claimed to involve mutually beneficial, horizontal exchange of resources between developing countries – particularly knowledge – and to foster decolonising practices. In this paper, I argue that while one of the starting points for SSC was opposition to North–South knowledge hierarchies, its legitimisation has been constructed through postcolonial power inequalities and new forms of authoritative knowledge that reiterate old hierarchies. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research conducted as part of my doctoral studies, I show how the building and international legitimatisation of Brazilian ‘best practices’ – in the gender equality field – has produced a political economy of opportunities and mobility for these professionals; their professional pathways to Mozambique are indicative of the processes of production of Southern expertise and new knowledge hierarchies. I also discuss Brazilian development workers’ discourses about the relevance of Brazilian experiences to Mozambique. Theoretically, the paper is inspired by critical development theory with a feminist and postcolonial approach. It uses postcolonial literature, usually applied to relations between colonisers and former colonies, to look at how colonial discourses and discourses about Africa, the ‘Third World’, and the West historically intervened in the encounters between people from former colonies and continue to be activated. Specifically, I analyse imaginaries of ‘Southern’ and ‘developing country’ identity embedded in expertise claims.

Decolonizing Mental Health/Social Work Practice in Uganda: Reconstructing an African-Centric Framework Through Traditional Values and Beliefs

ABSTRACTDecolonization is an ongoing process of addressing power imbalances and knowledge hierarchies. The role of social work is to serve the wellbeing of people and communities. However, social work in Uganda is part of a colonial legacy situated within systems of power. Due to colonization, social work practice bears the vestiges of colonialism often disconnecting the indigenous peoples from their cultures, history, traditions, land, water, resources, and knowledges. In some cases, social work practice has further alienated the very people it purportedly seeks to serve reproducing oppression and systemic inequities. This paper examines the impact of colonialism in service provision and proposes ways to break free of structures of coloniality. It proposes an African-centric framework through the reclamation of traditional values and beliefs.

Cybersecurity and the politics of knowledge production: towards a reflexive practice

ABSTRACT How does a reflexive scholarly practice matter for producing useful cybersecurity knowledge and policy? We argue that staking relevance without engaging in reflexivity diminishes the usefulness of knowledge produced both in academia and in policy. To advance a reflexive research agenda in cybersecurity, this forum offers a collective interrogation of the liminal positionality of the cybersecurity scholar. We examine the politics of ‘the making of’ cybersecurity expertise as knowledge practitioners who are located across and in between the diverse and overlapping fields of academia, diplomacy and policy. Cybersecurity expertise, and the practices of the cybersecurity epistemic community more broadly, rely heavily on the perceived applicability and actionability of knowledge outputs, on the practical dependency on policy practitioners regarding access, and thus on the continuous negotiation of hierarchies of knowledge. Participants in this forum reflect on their research practice of negotiating such dilemmas. Collectively, we draw on these contributions to identify obstacles and opportunities towards realising a reflexive research practice in cybersecurity.

Prediction and Art Appreciation

AbstractEvery art encounter requires making predictions given that art is rife with uncertainty. What is it to appreciate art while relying on predictions, and to what consequences? I argue that art appreciation involves engaging our predictive systems in such a way as to correct predictive failure at least at some levels in the processing hierarchy of information that we receive from art works. That art appreciation involves predictive processing best explains the mechanism for cognizing art works in categories, cases of appreciative failure, and why art appreciation is a form of valuing. To articulate the explanatory value of predictive processing for cognizing art works in categories, I introduce a sub-type of predictions that I call art-historical estimates – i.e., predictions that take as their object the temporal relationships between works and their place in art history – and identify their features within a broader typology of predictions and related mental structures such as schemas and scripts. I examine the way predictive processing explains the correction of predictive failure, and its consequences for the affective value that we attach to the appreciation of art.

How to promote the Chinese Certified Emission Reduction scheme in the carbon market? A study based on tripartite evolutionary game model

The Chinese Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme is of great significance for China to achieve its “dual carbon” targets. However, limited effort has been made to explore the CCER scheme due to poor data availability and the short implementation time. Therefore, this study constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model involving the government, carbon emission control enterprise, and renewable energy enterprise, to analyze the evolutionary stability of each subject's strategy choice. The results indicate that: (1) Strict regulation of the government could promote carbon emission control enterprise to actively purchase CCER quotas, and motivate renewable energy enterprise to declare CCER projects. (2) When the corresponding condition is met, the system could reach the ideal evolutionary steady state of (1,1,1), and keep a stable operational status for the CCER scheme market. (3) The condition of the CCER price below the carbon price, appropriate penalties for non-compliance of carbon emissions, the dynamic balance between carbon offset rate and project declaration cost, and proper subsidies for CCER project declaration, all could promote the development of CCER projects in the carbon market. This study could enrich the knowledge hierarchy of CCER and provide important decision references for developing the CCER scheme in the carbon market.

Behind Women’s Emancipation and Oppression: Contested Expertise in Global Microcredit Governance

ABSTRACT Experts often debate global microcredit governance along two opposing spectrums: microcredit as either an emancipatory or oppressive instrument for women. Expert debates about women’s emancipation and oppression through microcredit, however, neither consider the women for whom the debate is staged as experts nor explore in sufficient detail the role and effects of expertise. Drawing on a series of interviews in rural Bangladesh, the article offers expert reflections on microcredit governance of three women, often referred to as ‘poor women’ by experts. It puts the three women’s worldviews in an analytical comparison with those of selected microcredit experts. Far from engaging with women’s agency, the article argues that well-known microcredit experts often overestimate their own knowledge and underestimate the knowledge of women, rendering the latter as docile subjects of social and legal reform. With the help of the three women, the article illuminates the role of expertise in the reproduction of knowledge and social hierarchy in global microcredit governance.

Engaged Social Anthropology and Indigenous Land Claims in Malaysia

ABSTRACT The use of litigation has become an important strategy for customary land claims for the Orang Asli, the aboriginal people of Peninsular Malaysia. Increasing displacement from their customary territories, and having exhausted other official avenues, the Orang Asli are resorting to legal measures to protect their rights. Several landmark cases in the Malaysian courts favouring Orang Asli rights have given the Indigenous People hope in the legal system. However, lawsuits are risky, require an enormous amount of time and resources, and take a toll on the communities and others involved in the process. Relying on the court process risks reifying state power, reinscribing unequal power dynamics, and reinforcing essentialised notions of indigenous ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’. In this article, I draw upon my long-term research on Orang Asli activism and my experience serving as an expert witness in several Orang Asli customary land claims to discuss the limits and possibilities of social anthropological knowledge in the legal arena. Focusing on the Malaysian context, I reflect upon the challenges of speaking across different fields, translating social anthropological research into a form legible to the legal process, and the dilemma of being complicit in reifying hierarchies of knowledge. I consider how social anthropologists in their cultural expertise role might use the legal space to centre Indigenous knowledge, and challenge the more static understanding of indigenous culture and tradition.

Climbing up the ladder of abstraction: how to span the boundaries of knowledge space in the online knowledge market?

The challenge of raising a creative question exists in recombining different categories of knowledge. However, the impact of recombination remains controversial. Drawing on the theories of knowledge recombination and category-spanning, we claim that the impact of knowledge spanning on the appeal of questions is contingent upon questions’ knowledge hierarchy in the knowledge space. Using word embedding models and network analysis to quantify knowledge spanning and knowledge hierarchy respectively, we test our hypotheses with the data collected from a large online knowledge market (N = 463,545). Knowledge spanning has an inverted U-shaped influence on the appeal of questions: the appeal of questions increases up to a threshold, after which point the positive effect reverses. However, with the increase in knowledge hierarchy, the inverted U-shape is weakened and disappears quickly. We fill the research gap by conceptualizing question-asking as knowledge-spanning and highlighting the theoretical underpinnings of knowledge hierarchy. The theoretical and practical implications for future research on knowledge recombination are discussed.