Modes Of Knowledge Production Research Articles

Walking as a method for epistemic justice in sustainability.

We argue that walking as a method provides an integrative approach to advance epistemic justice in sustainability research. The theory and practice of walking as a method has grown quickly within the social sciences and arts but remains underrepresented in sustainability research, where walking is typically an object of study (e.g., urban walkability). We argue that walking should be valued as an important mode of knowledge production that simultaneously widens sustainability knowledge, integrates diverse knowledge systems, and supports transdisciplinary sustainability solutions. In this perspective article, we consider the following questions: (1) Why is walking important to sustainability knowledge? (2) How can walk-based methods advance epistemic justice in sustainability knowledge? (3) What outcomes might we expect from cultivating walking as a method for sustainability knowledge? We reflect on how walking as a method centers equity and the contributions of walk-based sustainability knowledge for research and policy.

A New Geography of Theological Education and the Ethics of Community-Centered Learning

Institutions and scholars working in the area of community-based education are keenly attuned to the ethics of engaging those communities and their members. The concern is that the local community not be exploited but be treated with respect and understood as a mutual partner in the program. Yet continually, as we argue in this essay, such programs tend to repeat the very instrumentalization they are hoping to avoid because their design focuses more on student-centered experiences of individual growth and enrichment constructed upon a relational geography that privileges the ends of the learning institution. Such a dynamic shapes community-based theological education too, the institutional location we focus on in this essay. Hence, we propose that our institutions of learning need to be (re)located within local communities if we are going to shift this structural dynamic. To develop more just and transformative learning institutions, we argue, requires a new geography of education by developing community-centered modes of knowledge production through action-research practices that foster collaboration, solidarity, and collective action to forge a shared ethic. Moving in this direction will require a new geography of education for community-based learning. As an example, we offer a sketch from our own work at The Black Mountain School of Theology & Community.

Pluralising China as method: Between exceptionalism and universalism

To not only celebrate the launch of this double special issue, but also to shine a spotlight on the variety of China as Method epistemological approaches shared by the special issue’s editors and authors, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Hong Kong Institute of Asia Pacific Studies, the University of Amsterdam’s Media Studies Department, and Global Media and China, co-organised a hybrid symposium to generate intellectual exchanges on such a de-westernising mode of knowledge production. While the research articles in this double special issue extensively examine ‘distinct’ characteristics of China, in this introduction, we reflect on if we are essentialising China. We do not want to apply a universalist logic that exists in theories by and from the Global North to be ‘experimented on’ in the Global South; yet, we also seek to move away from ‘China exceptionalism’ and express the stance that China can only be understood in its positionality to other areas (and modes of knowledge production) of the world. Thus, this special issue seeks to further deconstruct China as Method, challenge the existing power imbalance, and pluralise knowledge production.

Representations of an Ebola ‘outbreak’ through Story Technologies

BackgroundAttempts to understand biosocial phenomena using scientific methods are often presented as value-neutral and objective; however, when used to reduce the complexity of open systems such as epidemics, these forms...

Particulate Matters: Air Pollution and the Political Ecology of a Boundary Object

Air pollution now affects 92 percent of the global population and is responsible for one out of nine deaths, nearly two thirds of which occur in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. Emerging work on the political ecology of air pollution examines how its noxious effects are unevenly distributed across social categories such as race and class. Geographers know much less about the social mechanisms through which air pollution and its risks and mitigation efforts are calculated, however. Situated within northern Thailand’s haze crisis and its broader agrarian transitions, we employ ethnographic and geospatial methods to theorize air pollution as a boundary object. Throughout the region, uncertainty over the causes and constitution of air pollution and its flexible interpretation have driven the development of civil society sensor networks and the adoption of portable Air Quality Index monitors and hot spot locating apps. These increasingly widespread technologies not only democratize data but also play a growing role in shifting environmental narratives of seasonal air pollution. By homing in on the boundary work of air pollution, however, we argue that although new, more widely accessible modes of knowledge production can seemingly reduce uncertainty and shift environmental policy, they can also obscure the long-standing political-economic inequalities on which environmental problems are based. This article advances current debates at the nexus of political ecology and science and technology by demonstrating how particulate matter matters differently within and between social groups and the role of sociality in environmental change and the production of political space.

Interdisciplinary Talent Cultivation and Development of Drama, Film and Television Literature in the Perspective of New Media

Abstract With the change in knowledge production mode, “inter-specialization of drama, film and literature” has become an important cradle of innovation. In this paper, under the perspective of new media, we have constructed an interdisciplinary talent cultivation mode of drama, film, and literature and its quality evaluation index system, and after standardizing the indexes by using the extreme value method, we calculate the index weights of the inter-disciplinary talent cultivation quality evaluation system by using the entropy weight method. Combining the indicators obtained at all levels and the gray correlation analysis method, the quality level of interprofessional talent training in drama, film, and literature is comprehensively evaluated. To further explore the effectiveness of inter-specialty talent cultivation in drama, film, and literature, a quantitative analysis is carried out with the drama, film, and literature major of T College of Arts as an example. The results show that: In the evaluation of talent cultivation quality, the weight values of ideological and moral level and relocatable ability are 0.342 and 0.207, and the overall proximity of the overall level of interprofessional talent cultivation of drama, film, and literature from 2018 to 2022 has been increased by 0.16. The enhancement of the quality of interprofessional talent cultivation of drama, film, and literature needs to break down the current professional barriers, coordinate the planning, share the resources, and collaborate in the cultivation of human beings to ensure that inter-professional education is steadily promoted and the quality of talent cultivation is effectively improved.

Transformative research for sustainability: characteristics, tensions, and moving forward

Abstract Technical summary The question of how science can become a lever in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals permeates most recent sustainability research. Wide-ranging literature calling for a transformative approach has emerged in recent years. This ‘transformative turn’ is fueled by publications from fields such as sustainability science, social-ecological research, conservation science, sustainability transitions, or sustainability governance studies. However, there is a lack of a shared understanding specifically of what is meant for research to be transformative in this developing discourse around doing science differently to tackle sustainability problems. We aim to advance transformative research for sustainability. We define transformative research and outline six of its characteristics: (1) interventional nature and a theory of change focus; (2) collaborative modes of knowledge production, experimentation and learning; (3) systems thinking literacy and contextualization; (4) reflexivity, normative and inner dimensions; (5) local agency, decolonization, and reshaping power; (6) new quality criteria and rethinking impact. We highlight three tensions between transformative research and traditional paradigms of academic research: (1) process- and output-orientation; (2) accountability toward society and toward science; (3) methodologies rooted in scientific traditions and post-normal methodologies. We conclude with future directions on how academia could reconcile these tensions to support and promote transformative research. Non-technical summary Dominant ways of doing research are not enough to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The typical response of science to dealing with the current local and global sustainability crises is to produce and accumulate more knowledge. Transformative research seeks to couple knowledge production with co-creating change. This paper defines the transformative way of doing research to pro-actively support society's fight against pressing societal and environmental problems. We present six characteristics of transformative research. We reflect on the challenges related to implementing these characteristics in scientific practice and on how academia can play its part. Social media summary Sustainability transformation needs to be reflected in science, but what makes sustainability research transformative?

Introduction: MoHoA guest editorial

AbstractThis special edition of Curator on Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene draws on the 2nd International MoHoA conference of the same title held from October 26 to 28, 2022, at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK), in partnership with the University of Liverpool's School of Architecture. As a global collaborative established in 2020, MoHoA is concerned with decentring the theory and practice of modern heritage and joins the wider global effort to decolonize institutional practices that engage with the research, collection, valorization, or transformation of material culture associated with our collective recent past—from museum curators and creative practitioners to academics, and the built environment professions. Founded on the fact that our precarious present reflects an inequitable past and a perilous future, MoHoA asserts that modern heritage—inextricably bound as it is to Western notions of progress, modernization, and modernity—conceptually, practically, and as artifact, uniquely and disproportionately privileges western, invariably white, experiences and values. Unlike other kinds or classifications of heritage, modern heritage also reflects the existential paradox central to MoHoA whereby the cultural legacies of our recent past are simultaneously of modernity and yet threatened by its consequences. Through its workshops, conferences, publications, and website, MoHoA provides a platform for sharing knowledge, methods, and approaches that challenge the modernist canon and support the construction of new epistemologies centered not on race, color, or ethnicity but on humankind and our self‐inflicted precarious position on this planet. This epistemic and canonical reconfiguration has important implications for museums and heritage practice globally as the reconstitution of modern heritage and its associated modes of knowledge production and registers will direct the composition of collections, lists, and archives away from mythologizing hegemonic Western epistemic traditions, to reflect instead decentred planetary experiences, whether human or non‐human. An important outcome of this collective and restitutive endeavor is the publication of The Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage, an equitable and decentering policy proposal presented to UNESCO and its advisory bodies in 2023.

Research on the patterns of the organic growth knowledge production based on a dual perspective of content and behaviour

AbstractA new mode of knowledge production, known as the ‘organic growth pattern’, has emerged within the online learning environment. It exhibits several unique features, such as iterative growth, fuelled by collective intelligence, fuzzy complexity, etc. It is more valuable and adaptable to support knowledge innovation within rapidly changing fields. To reveal its new evolutional production pattern and the interaction mechanism of different generative topics, We take a dual perspective of content and behaviour into consideration. A total of 1855 interactive data points were collected from a connectivist massive open online course. The study employed methods, such as latent Dirichlet allocation, content analysis and lag sequential analysis. Results showed that (1) the paths of knowledge innovation were complex and diverse. The process typically began with an ill‐structured question and was driven by collective contribution and cognitive conflict. (2) Knowledge production involved interactive evolution and collaborative growth of multiple generative topics. (3) The four stages of knowledge production were cyclic, with sense‐making acting as a bridge between way‐finding and innovation. Several implications of the findings are recommended to enhance the quality of knowledge growth, such as designing ill‐structured questions, providing discussion activities from easy to difficult, introducing relevant topics, taking advantage of various platforms and mobilizing learners' or participants' quality attention‐related behaviours.

Universities as Anarchic Knowledge Institutions

ABSTRACT Universities are knowledge institutions. Compared to several other knowledge institutions (e.g. schools, government research organisations, think tanks), research universities have unusual, anarchic organisational features. We argue that such anarchic features are not a weakness. Rather, they reflect the special standing of research universities among knowledge institutions. We contend that the distributed, self-organising mode of knowledge production maintains a diversity of approaches, topics and solutions needed in frontier research, which involves generating relevant knowledge under uncertainty. Organisational disunity and inconsistencies should sometimes be protected by institutional structures and procedures in order for research universities to best serve their purpose as knowledge institutions. The quality control for the knowledge produced stems from knowledge fields, clusters of knowledge and research that exist beyond the confines of individual organisations. The diversity of epistemic contributions is therefore kept in check by the order imposed by the internal logic of science as a social practice. Our argument provides a new defence for the autonomy of research conducted at universities.

Magic of feminist bridging

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with difficult experiences and memories of othering and racialisation? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racialization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidentifying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions. Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives, such as automatic writing, epistolary formats, poems, fiction, collective memory-work, allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajectories as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, refl ections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well.

Beyond research as a dirty word? Searching for ethical and reflexive ways of doing research with and for migrant communities

Abstract What do “white” migration researchers, such as myself, need to learn from over-researched (undocumented) migrant youth and indigenous communities that consider research a dirty word? And how do such assertions not lead to an impasse, but can actually enable scholars to conduct ethical and reflexive research that directly engages and benefits migrant communities throughout the research process? These are the central questions I seek to take up in this article by critically reflecting on my engaged research with undocumented migrant youth (activists) in Los Angeles and the Netherlands. Building on epistemological and ethical considerations and practices from participatory action research, co-creative research, and arts-based research, this article argues for four essential shifts in our modes of knowledge production, which are then empirically illustrated through a critical examination of my own research. These four shifts are: (1) a move from epistemic violence and injustice to epistemic justice, (2) a move from damage-centred to desire-based research, (3) a move from singular to comprehensive narratives, and (4) a move from extractavist to engaged research.

Media Art on Wikipedia: Leveraging the Wikimedia Ecosystem to Address the Challenges and Opportunities of Media Art Institutions

“Media Art on Wikipedia” is a collaborative project launched by Amsterdam-based platform for media art LIMA (Living Media Art), conducted in partnership with national and international art collections, national universities, and Wikimedia Nederland. Involving coordination of edit-a-thons and ingest of collection metadata within the structure of Wikidata, the project aims to bridge and mobilize the domain knowledge of media art beyond the institutional silo through engagement with the ethos, procedures and affordances of the Wikimedia ecosystem. This article profiles and situates this attempt within the particular institutional context of media art and the broader turn towards open, participatory, and distributed configuration of public institutions. Comparing infrastructural topologies identified within the discourse of media art by mapping them to tensions between centralized and distributed approaches, this article positions the project as a composite of models blurring their unambiguous theoretical distinction. This analysis serves to investigate ways in which the project responds to the conditions underlying the field’s modes of knowledge production—on one hand the demand for the reimagining of methods of documentation, preservation, and historicization stemming from the specificity of media art; and the systemic precarity of media art’s knowledge infrastructures on the other.

Re-enacting/mediating/activating: Towards a collaborative feminist approach to research-creation

Worldwide interest in understanding art and creative practices as valid forms of knowledge production has led to the establishment of research-creation as an interdisciplinary academic field in the last twenty years in Canada as elsewhere. Its establishment relates to a growing interest in critical making and technological innovation and to the legacies of feminism(s) and its critique of the power dynamics of knowledge production within academia. This article outlines a series of interactive projects that bring visibility to Latin American women in art, science and technology and speculates on the legacies of feminism(s) in the emergence of research-creation. The four projects discussed build on each other and explore re-mediation, re-activation and re-enactment as part of a collaborative feminist research-creation methodology. I theorize their potential to activate political memory by highlighting how these three approaches to creation share a preoccupation for revisiting the past through repetition, iteration and the facilitation of intergenerational encounters among humans, non-humans and across media and technologies. While discussing the feminist orientation of these approaches, I suggest a critique of dominant modes of knowledge production that have obscured the contributions of Latin American women and offer four research-creation interventions in the media arts archive.

Decolonizing LIS Journal Publishing in International Context

In moving beyond words and taking action on diversity in the library and information field globally, equity, inclusion, accessibility and development need to be addressed. Diversity has been espoused to address inequality in our field including the lack of diverse representation in our professional and faculty ranks; women, ethno-racial minorities and developing nations being disadvantaged in science publishing; BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) voices not represented in our collections; and discrimination, harassment and lack of accommodation in the workplace and in education. Inequality is experienced globally and has been created and maintained by systems and structures that advantage and privilege some (mainstream society or majority culture), and discriminate against others. Recently, and especially, since the 2020 murder of George Floyd, there have been calls to decolonize knowledge and the academy as a strategy that recognizes systemic barriers, and critically engages and deconstructs inequitable structures in knowledge systems. What implications do decolonizing journal publishing in library and information science (LIS) have for equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and development (EDIAD), and how do we go about doing this in an international context?
 The issues raised by these questions are being engaged from an antiracism and inclusion lens by different organizations and coalitions. For example, the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) https://c4disc.org/, initiated in June 2017 by representatives of 10 trade and professional associations in scholarly communications, which aims to address diversity and inclusion issues in scholarly publishing, has published four important toolkits for equity https://c4disc.org/toolkits-for-equity/, namely: Guidelines on Inclusive Language and Images in Scholarly Communication; the Antiracism Toolkit for Allies; the Antiracism Toolkit for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; and the Antiracism Toolkit for Organizations. To understand the realities of systemic oppression, The Scholarly Kitchen published “On Being Excluded: Testimonies by People of Color in Scholarly Publishing” (Part I in April 2018 https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/04/04/excluded-testimonies-people-color-scholarly-publishing/ and Part II in May 2018 https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/05/10/excluded-testimonies-people-color-scholarly-publishing-part-ii/). In 2022, a learning lab at the Annual American Library Association (ALA) Conference, explored individual and collective actions to decolonize LIS journal publishing internationally.
  This panel will focus on examining ways to decolonize LIS journal publishing internationally, in content and practice, through bearing witness to publishing injustice, identification of factors that create inequalities in publishing, and development of strategies to decolonize LIS journal publishing. The panel will set the context, introduce past work, engage the participants in critical discussion of bias in LIS journal publishing that will challenge them to consider solutions, which will be followed by interactive engagement on short-term (1-2y), mid-term (3-5y), and long-term (>5y) actions to decolonize LIS journal publishing in international context. The panel will be co-facilitated by the co-editors of Library Trends, and the speakers will include editors and authors who will provide testimonies and share their expertise.
 Jaya Raju will bring a global south perspective in deconstructing inequitable ‘colonial’ structures, systemic barriers and injustices in current LIS journal publishing, and within this context, problematize the concept of decolonization. "Decolonization demands more than understanding the predatory modes of settler colonialism for resistance to them (as is often the stated goal within settler colonial studies), but also the resurgence of alternative modes of being, alternative futures." (Ritskes, 2016)
 Clara M. Chu will present the outcomes from the 2022 ALA learning lab engagement, sharing the short-, mid-, and long-term actions that LIS professionals and stakeholders prioritized. This data will set the context to stimulate continued discussion in the proposed session, and from which a complementary action agenda can be created.
 Bharat Mehra will interrogate past injustices and current systemic inequalities in LIS journal publishing and discuss actual/potential actions, drawing on select experiences and multiple perspectives from the vantage positionality as existing member of several journal editorial boards, author/co-author of  >180 publications on EDIA/international social justice content, book Series Editor of Advances in Librarianship (Emerald Group Publishing), PI/co-PI on EDIA-related grants, and as the EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor in a white-entrenched institution.
 All three speakers, in presenting their unique and diverse perspectives and expert knowledge, will address questions associated with the implications of decolonizing journal publishing in LIS for equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and development, and how to  navigate the challenging international terrain for transformational change. Robust interaction with the audience of academics, researchers, and professionals will also allow for engagement with these important questions to generate effective solutions and actions.
 Educators, scholars, students, and other stakeholders in LIS are invited to engage in this session to understand past injustices, acknowledge current systemic inequalities, and spell out ways to decolonize LIS journal publishing. They will also participate in setting an action agenda where LIS journal publishing is a generative and transformative space that embraces multiple ways of knowing and counters suppression, subversion, resistance and silencing of non-Western epistemologies, non-scientific methods, and other modes of knowledge production.

Passionate humility for global constitutionalism in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian war

Passionate humility for global constitutionalism in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian war

Researching Green Process Innovation Across Borders and Boundaries Through Collaborative Inquiry

Research involving multistakeholder collaborative partnerships is growing, as both academia and funding agencies align their objectives with societal challenges and undertake research in the context of application. In particular, the UN sustainable development goals mandate green process innovation research that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Responding to this opportunity, this article explores the question: how can researchers, as societal stakeholders, collaborate in the design and implementation of a green process innovation research initiative and produce actionable research-based contributions to knowledge? Drawing upon our shared experience of realizing green process innovation, we describe and conceptualize the collaborative inquiry process, reflecting on the interplay of modes of knowledge production and the complementarity of researchers’ roles. We conclude by noting how researchers collaborating in a green process innovation initiative can shape the environment in which Transdisciplinary research (TDR) develops and play different roles enabling breadth and diversity of interaction, depth of disciplinary integration, and production of different types of knowledge.

Intermediality in Academia: Creative Research through Film

This article provides an overview of the recent flourishing of research and pedagogy in higher education that seeks a greater rapprochement between criticism and creativity, bringing together diverse media, disciplines, and modes of knowledge production and expression. It focuses on transformations in film and screen studies and on the ethical and aesthetic possibilities of conducting creative, intermedial research through filmmaking, drawing on the author’s recent, first-hand experiences of conducting such research through her making of two films about the African women filmmakers Judy Kibinge (from Kenya) and Bongiwe Selane (from South Africa). The author gives specific examples from her filmmaking process to show how she has attempted to unsettle the generic space between documentary filmmaking, curatorial practice, and video-essay making to engage in a collaborative research practice with Kibinge, Selane, and their communities, as well as her research teams. Grounding itself in a decolonial feminist framework, this article draws on the perspectives of a wide range of thinkers and filmmaker scholars to explore ways in which the colonial, patriarchal values that have haunted many academic institutions can be reformed to allow for the envisioning of new futures that will lead to a more self-reflexive, socially just higher education environment.

Cognitive (In)justice and Decoloniality in Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse

Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021) is an insightful deliberation on the layered inequities and asymmetries created by the intersection of colonialism and anthropogenic activities. In The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh conceives the present-day climate and ecological crisis as fallouts of colonial thinking and its manifestations in dominant epistemic and ethical constructions. This article underscores Ghosh’s critique of the Eurocentric discourses for their instrumentality in producing the totalitarian binaries of human and non-human, in which the ‘human’ was always the whites and the ‘non-human’ comprised all ‘others’—the non-whites, indigenous people, nature and ecology. In attributing agency and signifying authority to the white capitalist, this dualistic thinking has always conceived of the ‘others’ as non-humans—those who could be objectified, commodified and tampered with. This article explores how Ghosh repudiates this colonialist monolithic demarcation, which, in compliance with the discourse of the Anthropocene, had annihilated non-Western forms of signification, knowledge and ethics. The article focuses on how the systemic othering of Western modernity’s episteme had been incremental, leading to occurrences of ‘testimonial injustices’ and ‘hermeneutical injustices’—which had culminated in severe forms of epistemicide and unleashed, what Boaventura de Sousa Santos terms ‘cognitive injustice’—relegating indigeneity and ecology to precarious conditions. In accordance with this, this article argues that Ghosh envisages a critical necessity to dismantle the matrix of Western capitalist modernity and its associated narrative of the Anthropocene and claims for a conceptualization of decolonial ecological ethics that would prioritize an encompassing of the episteme produced by the ‘other’. An engagement with the indigenous voices and a restoration of non-Western modes of knowledge production are crucial, as they can offer new ethical dimensions to envision ecology and life with its multiplicities and facilitate ‘cognitive justice’ for the oppressed and unrepresented ‘other’.

Reacting to rural problems or creating cognitive space? Knowledge production and the diffusion of the agroecology movement in Chiang Mai, Thailand

ABSTRACT This qualitative study explores how the agroecology movement in Chiang Mai, Thailand, has been diffused and what has contributed to its pathways to socioecological sustainability. During the diffusion of this social movement, non-governmental organization (NGO) activism, the introduction of organic farmers’ markets and local organic certification, and collaboration with universities have played significant roles. Our findings suggest that partnership, place, and knowledge have been important contributors to the agroecological transition. Utilizing the concept of cognitive praxis, we conclude that the participatory mode of knowledge production and the horizontal process of knowledge exchange have contributed to the movement’s diffusion by providing opportunities for local ecological knowledge to be produced, reinvented, and disseminated.