New Forms Of Knowledge Production Research Articles

Produção de imagens e construção de sentidos: uma oficina com jovens na escola

Este trabalho discute o processo de subjetivação dos jovens e as novas formas de produção de conhecimento. Analisa a criação e o desenvolvimento de uma oficina com alunos em uma escola pública da cidade de Niterói-Rio de Janeiro. A imagem (fotografia, fanzine, fotolog, etc.) é utilizada na oficina como estratégia de comunicação para criar um espaço de reflexão e construção de sentido com os estudantes. Utiliza o método da pesquisa-intervenção para construir um conhecimento com os jovens sobre sua relação com a escola hoje. O trabalho foi desenvolvido na Faculdade de Educação da Universidade Federal Fluminense e contou com o apoio da FAPERJ e do CNPq, através de bolsas de iniciação científica.

Energy and buildings research: challenges from the new production of knowledge

The current state and future challenges of energy and buildings research are explored from the perspective of the social study of science. Major trends in knowledge production are considered for practices within current energy and buildings research. New forms of knowledge production hold the potential to provide clearer strategies to overcome barriers between researchers and practitioners. These are investigated through an explorative survey of researchers based on their own accounts of energy and buildings research, their expectations of future challenges, and their perceptions of ‘good’ science. Two sets of challenges from knowledge production arise for building energy research. First, with an increasing focus on environmental and other impacts of the research, the framing and definition of these extra-scientific factors will become a significant challenge for researchers. Second, as buildings become simultaneously more complex and more connected, the already existing need for the integration of different kinds of expertise will increase further. L'état actuel et les défis futurs de la recherche en matière d'énergie et de bâtiments sont examinés du point de vue de l'étude sociale des sciences. Les principales tendances de la production de savoir sont envisagées sous l'angle des pratiques existant dans les recherches actuelles sur l'énergie et les bâtiments. De nouvelles formes de production de savoir offrent la possibilité de fournir des stratégies plus claires pour surmonter les barrières entre chercheurs et praticiens. Celles-ci sont étudiées au moyen d'une enquête exploratoire conduite auprès des chercheurs, basée sur leurs propres récits des recherches menées sur l'énergie et les bâtiments, sur les défis futurs qu'ils prévoient, et sur leurs perceptions de la « bonne » science. Deux séries de défis posés par la production de savoir découlent des recherches sur l'énergie dans le bâtiment. Tout d'abord, en mettant davantage l'accent sur les incidences environnementales et autres de la recherche, l'encadrement et la définition de ces facteurs extra-scientifiques deviendront un défi considérable pour les chercheurs. Deuxièmement, au fur et à mesure que les bâtiments gagnent simultanément en complexité et en connectivité, le besoin déjà existant d'intégrer différents types de compétences augmentera encore. Mots clés: bâtiments, énergie, collaboration interdisciplinaire, production de savoir, programme de recherche, science, durabilité

Measuring the World

Indicators are rapidly multiplying as tools for assessing and promoting a variety of social justice and reform strategies around the world. There are indicators of rule of law, indicators of violence against women, and indicators of economic development, among many others. Indicators are widely used at the national level and are increasingly important in global governance. There are increasing demands for “evidence-based” funding for nongovernmental organizations and for the results of civil society organizations to be quantifiable and measurable. The reliance on simplified numerical representations of complex phenomena began in strategies of national governance and economic analysis and has recently migrated to the regulation of nongovernmental organizations and human rights. The turn to indicators in the field of global governance introduces a new form of knowledge production with implications for relations of power between rich and poor nations and between governments and civil society. The deployment of statistical measures tends to replace political debate with technical expertise. The growing reliance on indicators provides an example of the dissemination of the corporate form of thinking and governance into broader social spheres.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009: When Biology Turns into Chemistry

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009: When Biology Turns into Chemistry

Vanguard, laggard or relic? The possible futures of higher education after the Epistemic Revolution

The early twenty-first century networked information economy has generated new communicative fields and literacies, and new forms of knowledge production, sociality and creative expression. The emergence of decentralized techno-social fields, exemplified by Facebook, Twitter, Second Life and virtual gaming communities, on teaching, learning, institutional hierarchies and sources of authority, presents both problems and opportunities. This article claims that the current moment represents an Epistemic Break in the Academy, and this piece traces some of how this is so. In doing so, we argue that as educational products and experiences contend with other multi–mediated forms of communication, significantly more attention must be paid to the aesthetic, functional and emotional elements of multimedia design creation and modification of course materials, as these materials vie for the attention of Digital Natives. The conclusion suggests both practices and policies needed for higher education to successfully compete for student attention in the current media intensive environment.

Science and Power in Global Food Regulation: The Rise of the Codex Alimentarius

The emergence of the global administrative sector and its new forms of knowledge production, expert rationality, and standardization, remains an understudied topic in science studies. Using a coproductionist theoretical framework, we argue tha the mutual construction of epistemic and legal authority across international organizations has been critical for constituting and stabilizing a global regime for the regulation of food safety. The authors demonstrate how this process has also given rise to an authoritative framework for risk analysis touted as ‘‘scientifically rigorous’’ but embodying particular value choices regarding health, environment, and the dispensation of regulatory power. Finally, the authors trace how enrollment of the Codex Alimentarius in World Trade Law has heightened institutional dilemmas around legitimacy and credibility in science advice at the global level. Taken together, the case illustrates the importance of attending to the iterative construction of law and science in the constitution of new global administrative regimes.

Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance

Indicators are rapidly multiplying as tools for assessing and promoting a variety of social justice and reform strategies around the world. There are rule of law indicators, indicators of violence against women, and indicators of economic development, among many others. Indicators are widely used at the national level and are increasingly important in global governance. There are increasing demands for “evidence-based” funding for non-governmental organizations and that the results of civil society organizations to be quantifiable and measurable. The reliance on simplified numerical representations of complex phenomena began in strategies of national governance and economic analysis and has recently migrated to the regulation of non-governmental organizations and human rights. The turn to indicators in the field of global governance introduces a new form of knowledge production with implications for relations of power between rich and poor nations and governments and civil society. The deployment of statistical measures tends to replace political debate with technical expertise. The growing reliance on indicators provides an example of the dissemination of the corporate form of thinking and governance into broader social spheres.

The intellectual structure and substance of the knowledge utilization field: A longitudinal author co-citation analysis, 1945 to 2004

BackgroundIt has been argued that science and society are in the midst of a far-reaching renegotiation of the social contract between science and society, with society becoming a far more active partner in the creation of knowledge. On the one hand, new forms of knowledge production are emerging, and on the other, both science and society are experiencing a rapid acceleration in new forms of knowledge utilization. Concomitantly since the Second World War, the science underpinning the knowledge utilization field has had exponential growth. Few in-depth examinations of this field exist, and no comprehensive analyses have used bibliometric methods.MethodsUsing bibliometric analysis, specifically first author co-citation analysis, our group undertook a domain analysis of the knowledge utilization field, tracing its historical development between 1945 and 2004. Our purposes were to map the historical development of knowledge utilization as a field, and to identify the changing intellectual structure of its scientific domains. We analyzed more than 5,000 articles using citation data drawn from the Web of Science®. Search terms were combinations of knowledge, research, evidence, guidelines, ideas, science, innovation, technology, information theory and use, utilization, and uptake.ResultsWe provide an overview of the intellectual structure and how it changed over six decades. The field does not become large enough to represent with a co-citation map until the mid-1960s. Our findings demonstrate vigorous growth from the mid-1960s through 2004, as well as the emergence of specialized domains reflecting distinct collectives of intellectual activity and thought. Until the mid-1980s, the major domains were focused on innovation diffusion, technology transfer, and knowledge utilization. Beginning slowly in the mid-1980s and then growing rapidly, a fourth scientific domain, evidence-based medicine, emerged. The field is dominated in all decades by one individual, Everett Rogers, and by one paradigm, innovation diffusion.ConclusionWe conclude that the received view that social science disciplines are in a state where no accepted set of principles or theories guide research (i.e., that they are pre-paradigmatic) could not be supported for this field. Second, we document the emergence of a new domain within the knowledge utilization field, evidence-based medicine. Third, we conclude that Everett Rogers was the dominant figure in the field and, until the emergence of evidence-based medicine, his representation of the general diffusion model was the dominant paradigm in the field.

Latin American Critical Enquiry and the Nature of the Political in the Era of Globalization

Along with essential political activism such as the emergence of the Zapatistas in 1994 and the World Social Forum in 2001, there has been a significant increase in research in the field of critical theory in the global South and especially in Latin America. This has generated new forms of knowledge production and contributed to a growing body of research on the changes in world politics. For many this has meant serious questioning of the capacity of the conventional social sciences to respond to the demands of the contemporary world. Latin American critical enquiry reflects the need to call attention to the shortcomings of the mainstream social sciences and to extend the understanding of the political.

Collective Cognition: Neural Fabrics and Social Software

AbstractFor decades, the MIT Media Lab has been a centre of innovative and highly influential research on emerging technologies, including responsive and interactive sensing systems, software programming and forms of artificial intelligence, and robotic design and communication systems for new forms of knowledge production and distribution. Therese Tierney writes about several aspects of the Media Lab's research, including the current work of John Maeda, as well as the work of collaborators such as CEB Reas and Ben Fry, who she argues are developing work in new and sophisticated directions. She positions this work within the larger thematic of collective intelligence by addressing the particularly social forms of practice and the necessary connection to intelligent software and sensing technologies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Modeling reality. Practice, knowledge, and uncertainty in atmospheric transport simulation

ABSTRACTComputer modeling, a new form of knowledge production implying new theoretical and experimental practices, has since the 1950s become an important tool in scientific investigation. This paper analyzes computer simulation in two cases of atmospheric transport modeling. First, it investigates pioneering efforts by the meteorologist Heinz Fortak in the 1960s to construct Gaussian models of local and regional air pollution transport. Second, it deals with the much more complex simulation efforts by a Norwegian group around Anton Eliassen in the 1970s and 1980s to model long distance transport and transformation of pollutants. In both cases, the simulation of air pollution phenomena implied a set of specific practices. The use of the computer as a tool required drastic simplifications; the collection and preparation of an enormous amount of input data; the adoption of control procedures to validate the models; and the execution of “computer experiments” in sensitivity studies. Because of uncertainty and ignorance, scientists enjoyed a large freedom of choice in the construction of models and simulation runs, and great interpretative flexibility of their outcome. Nevertheless, by relying on tacit expert knowledge and intuition, scientists were ultimately able to approach coherence and stability.

In Search of ‘Mode 2’: the Nature of Knowledge Production in Norway

This article investigates the contention that we are seeing the emergence of new forms of knowledge production, transforming the expectations and assessment of fundamental research. We examine three dimensions in the assessment of research. Our studies show little evidence of any significant change in practice in the three sectors in which research is undertaken in Norway.

Science in Africa: From Institutionalisation to Scientific Free Market—What Options for Development?

This paper represents a diagnosis of the changes going on in scientific professional practice in Africa (south of the Sahara, excluding South Africa). Thefree market approach and economic crisis have led to the dissolution of the national-based research systems, which had been elaborated in the 1960s and 1970s. With institutions disintegrated and their profession in ruins, researchers have been pushed into what became a free market for scientific work. However, this new form of knowledge production is encountering certain limitations. On the initiative of some researchers themselves or world sponsors, some reconstruction is under way. The new fledgling institutions are local or regional, rather than nationally based.

Change in the Innovation Process: New Knowledge Production and Competitive Cities--The Case of Stuttgart

The global integration of economic activities is bringing with it major changes in innovation processes. New kinds of innovation, such as service and organizational innovations, became increasingly important in the 1990s. The shift to new forms of knowledge creation reflects the emerging knowledge based economy. This has effects on the existing comparative advantages of metropolitan innovation systems and is a major challenge to the ability of cities to adjust, especially those in mature industrial sectors whose competitiveness is based on innovations in industrial technology and scientific and technological knowledge production. Stuttgart is one of these cities. Much of the comparative innovative strength of the Stuttgart region derives from the generation of synergy effects of its technological and institutional development paths. The high levels of industrial exports and the competitiveness of the global players in the Stuttgart region indicates how advantageous the technology based knowledge production and diffusion in the region has been for the innovativeness of the core industrial branches. The crisis at the start of the 1990s showed that the economic success of particular firms does not mean that the metropolitan region as a whole is innovative and competitive. The institutional structures used to establish and maintain the comparative innovative advantages of the industrial sector have hindered adjustment to new forms of knowledge production and diffusion. The paper examines the adjustment processes in the Stuttgart region which are changing the organization of innovation and learning in a way that makes it receptive to new forms of knowledge production and diffusion.

Global market competition and higher education

For higher education the globalisation of the economy and working life means increasing competition for resources, students and status. Today, as new forms of knowledge production are gaining ground, universities no longer hold the monopoly on scientific research and knowledge. This article seeks to chart appropriate strategies for the university of the 21st century. First it explores early and recent changes in higher education, such as the massification of higher education, various drifts affecting universities and harmonisation of the European degree structures. The globalisation of the market economy has meant changes in the survival strategies of universities and their research policies. Is it possible simultaneously to maintain excellence in research and in teaching? One of the challenges lies in providing high-quality education in the new fields without weakening the more traditional disciplines. One survival strategy could be to merge, another to specialise in few chosen fields. The article also ponders over the value of academic degrees in the future and concludes with a look at future prospects for the role and mission of the university. South African Journal of Higher Education Vol.16(1) 2002: 60-66

Re-Thinking Science, Re-Thinking Society

Re-Thinking Science starts from the much-discussed concepts of 'Mode-i science' and 'Mode-2 knowledge production' that were introduced in The New Production of Knowledge.' 'Mode-i science' designates the production of reliable disciplinary knowledge from within the autonomous sphere of science, while 'Mode-2 knowledge production' characterizes knowledge resulting from more interdisciplinary work carried out in close connection to a context of application. Compared to The New Production of Knowledge, this new publication displays a shift in tone, not so much heralding a new mode of knowledge production, but enlarging the former perspective and analysing the changes in the societal regime of science and technology. Regarding the critiques of the distinction between 'Mode-i' and 'Mode-2', the authors answer with a self-critique: they admit that, in the study of the evolution of science-society relations, too much emphasis has been put on the transformation of knowledge production, while broader social and historical changes have been overlooked. Common themes are the 'technicization' and the 'scientization' of society, but the 'socialization of science' is far less envisaged and explored. Pointing to this bias, the authors position the whole rhetoric of Re-Thinking Science in the perspective of the contextualization of science. The text is organized around four main arguments. First, the development of new forms of knowledge production is a corollary of broader societal evolutions. Second, although science has always 'spoken' to society, today a reversal of traditional communication channels is taking place; in the authors' phrase, 'the context speaks back' (this is the title of

Institutionalizing the triple helix: research funding and norms in the academic system

What are the institutional mechanisms that enable or hinder the development of new forms of knowledge production? This issue has been slightly neglected in the discussion of the “triple helix”. To redress this shortcoming, the authors suggest an institutionalist complement to the triple helix model. The article analyzes the institutional regulation of academic research, with a special emphasis on how norms in the academic system are constituted via research funding. It is argued that funding is a key mechanism of change in the norm system since its reward structure influences the performance and evaluation of research. The empirical analysis is based on the public financing of technical research in Sweden, with comparisons made with other countries. The structure of research funding has been reformed in all the countries studied. In addition to continuing recognition for scientific merit, the reforms have had the effect of emphasizing the commercial potential and the societal relevance of the research supported. The two dominant models of research funding, an intra-academic model and a top–down interventionist model, seem to be replaced partly with a catalytic one. However, there are counteracting tendencies. Some agencies still reproduce a model of reputational control and a collegial orientation among researchers. It is concluded, therefore, that the forces of change and continuity are engaged in a process of negotiation about the normative regulation of academic research.

Coping with uncertainty: New forms of knowledge production

The paper introduces the concept, of self-organisation as a concept which explains in a general way the emergence of order. It shows how this concept can be used to describe social dynamics, i.e. the mutual construction of social institutions and the social processes which are regulated by these institutions. The driving force of this mutual construction is called ‘coping with uncertainty’. This concept is shown to be fruitful in the discussion of innovation networks, a new form of knowledge production.

From “Finalization” to “Mode 2”: old wine in new bottles?

Discussions about “new forms of knowledge-production” refer to purportedly fundamental changes in the organization of science. A closer look reveals that these changes pertain to a particular sector of science, i.e. policy-related fields. It is suggested that a better understanding of the kind and scope of changes would be achieved by viewing them as resulting from a “scientification” of society and a correlate “politicization” of science, both of which processes signify the emergence of the knowledge society. Ironically, the “finalization thesis”, which foresaw much of this two decades ago, met with opposition, while the new claims were embraced. This is explained by the context of legitimation