Participatory Knowledge Production Research Articles

Teaching Tech by Rote: Socialization into Digital Literacies in a Ghanaian Classroom

ABSTRACT Building on decades of interdisciplinary language-centered research on literacies, this article is an exploration of the many ideologies about technology, literacy, and “good” learners, and the resulting tangle of contradictory practices, that converge in rural Ghanaian Information and Communication Technology (ICT) classrooms. In addition to tracing how Western ideologies of technological transformation were imported into the design of ICT policy and curricula via international development organizations, the article contrasts the enduring routines and practices of hierarchical knowledge transfer in Ghanaian classrooms with assumptions about exploratory users embedded in the design of technologies primarily produced in and for North American contexts. In doing so, the article highlights the regimes of participation (Flamenbaum & George 2023), or the interplay between these taken-for-granted ideologies, technological affordances, and available roles for participation in knowledge production, which dynamically structure participatory engagements with digital literacies. Such a lens highlights the ways in which persistent policy framings of digital literacies as universal, neutral universal encounters between individuals and particular hardware or software enable and reproduce longstanding processes of disciplining marginalized populations.

Postdigital Citizen Science: Mapping the Field

AbstractThis paper provides a brief overview of citizen science, attending to its tensions and possibilities. We acknowledge the creative potential of citizen science for expanding and diversifying public participation in knowledge production and dissemination, and we also draw attention to its contradictions. We point to emerging postdigital tensions as new technologies and vast public databases are increasingly becoming cornerstones of citizen science. We discuss how postdigital citizen science operates in the context of knowledge capitalism while aiming at its transformation and highlight three key challenges for postdigital citizen science: the challenge of technology, the challenge of political economy, and the challenge of participation. Different postdigital challenges cannot be separated from each other, so we call for a deep reimagination and reconfiguration of citizen science in and for the postdigital condition. We start this reimagination by asking three questions: What is postdigital citizen science? Who (or what!) is the postdigital citizen scientist? How to conduct postdigital citizen science?

Exploring co-research interviews with older adults:

Previous research has not only shown the potential of co-research with older adults but also pointed out the need for further study, for example on evaluation and how connections are forged between participants. To this end, this paper (1) describes and reflects on the development and implementation of a co-research interview methodology in the NGO sector and (2) analyses the experiences of the participants and the role of shared age group and locality. The results show that the structure of having several interviews and training and reflection sessions was the strength of the method. The co-researchers found the project interesting and even empowering. Expressions of shared age group and local knowledge were common in the interviews and helped build connections. The intervieweesvalued their participation in knowledge-production on issues related to ageing. Recruitment, resourcing and support for co-researchers when faced with difficult situations are some of the themes that require further attention.

Gender in Climate Litigation in Latin America: Epistemic Justice Through a Feminist Lens

Abstract Emerging strategic litigation in Latin America, in particular, and the Global South more broadly, brings visibility to marginalized groups and allows novel approaches to promote climate action. Rights-based claims have taken centre stage in Global South climate litigation, strengthening the links between human rights and the environment. However, the gendered impacts of the climate crisis are not broadly discussed within the climate litigation movement. This article focuses on how gender has impacted marginalized groups’ participation in knowledge production regarding climate change and litigation. This article draws on feminist epistemology theories to problematize epistemic injustices that fail to acknowledge socially situated knowledge of marginalized groups as relevant and vital. Knowledge production regarding climate change tends to reproduce power dynamics that exclude local and marginalized groups’ knowledge. It also recreates epistemic injustices through objectification and exploitation of the epistemic agent. Moreover, knowledge production in climate litigation fails to recognize marginalized groups’ agency. Drawing from the emerging body of climate cases in Latin America, this article assesses how gender is portrayed and understood by scholars, petitioners and judges working in the region and how this understanding, or the lack of it, impacts knowledge production and power dynamics that intersect with other forms of discrimination.

Dialogic negotiations of children’s narratives in classroom workshops

Abstract This article investigates how dialogic negotiations contribute to the enhancement of pupils’ epistemic authority. The analysis was based on two interactions collected in a primary school and a higher secondary school in Italy, as part of a European research project promoting dialogue-based activities. The aim of the research was to investigate children’s agency and participation in changing their social and cultural conditions of hybrid integration. Their participation was promoted in different ways to facilitate dialogue, which enhanced dialogic negotiations and narrative interlacement. The analysis demonstrates that, through dialogic negotiations, children and adults shape the meanings of children’s personal stories together and create a network of interlaced narratives. Both these conditions impact on children’s participation in knowledge production and identity construction.

Can service users speak? Dissenting voices and subaltern speech in social work

Service user involvement and participatory research are central concepts in social work practice and research. Inspired by Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak,” this article draws on the poststructural and postcolonial theory to unpack the assumptions about essentialism, representation, and division of labor underlying the concepts of involvement, participation, and voice. The article combines Spivak’s theory about the subaltern and Rancière’s theory about politics as dissensus to shed light on how the space for authentic service user voice risks being minimized, corrupted, and co-opted. I discuss the challenges arising from this for understanding service user involvement and participatory knowledge production and suggest possible steps toward handling these challenges.

The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France by Elizabeth Andrews Bond

The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France by Elizabeth Andrews Bond

The future as a public good: decolonising the future through anticipatory participatory action research

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to nurture reflections on the colonization of the future in the present with a particular focus on Africa. This paper aims at exploring how participatory research and particularly anticipatory action research can contribute to a decolonising process.Design/methodology/approachConsidering the future as a public good, this paper develops a reflection on the colonization processes that can turn it into a club or a private good. This paper mobilizes the notions of participatory knowledge production and local action research as a way to decolonize the future and empower imagination. This paper revisits the tenets of participatory action research as a means to achieve this objective and discusses the main features of a non-colonial anticipatory action research in the context of African futures.FindingsThis paper highlights the challenges associated with connecting anticipatory endeavours focusing on action research, the creation of collective intelligence and co-design, with the intention of encouraging the decolonisation process. It includes design principles and anticipates a possible process of counter-decolonization.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a conceptual paper, which does not provide field-tested evidence. Yet, the authors hope it serves as an input enabling to design methodologies that will prevent the colonisation of the future when engaging in future-oriented research activities in Africa and elsewhere.Originality/valueThis paper provides an integral approach to the colonisation of the future, as a renewed old question. This paper also connects this process with a reflection on the nature of what could be non-colonizing anticipatory action research.

The Writing Public. Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France

The Writing Public. Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France

The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France. By Elizabeth Andrews Bond

<i>The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France</i>. By Elizabeth Andrews Bond

Power, knowledge and the transformative potential of marine community science

Community science has gained momentum as a participatory knowledge production approach that can transform governance into more transparent, socially relevant, and democratic endeavours. In the marine context, where the rationalisation of economic knowledge and the marginalisation of local communities are growing concerns, community science is advanced as a potential solution to environmental governance challenges. By increasing monitoring efforts and empowering members of the public to take political action to protect the oceans, community science has helped to transform marine management to address issues, such as, sea-level rise, overfishing, and ocean acidification. However, many community science projects do not realise their transformative potential and, instead, contribute toward reinforcing the status quo of governance, meaning that management challenges remain unsolved. To understand how the full potential of community science can be achieved, research must reframe what transformation is and assess why projects often fail to instigate change. Within community science research, there is an under-appreciation of how transformational change must involve actions that challenge prevailing power relations. We seek to address this gap by initiating a discussion on the political and power dimensions of community science. Drawing on the broader field of co-production, we argue that community science has been depoliticised to reinforce, as opposed to alleviate, unequal arrangements of power that inhibit societal transformation. To combat this, we suggest that community science must develop a more explicit comprehension of power and how it relates to the use and production of knowledge. Informed by the Foucauldian concept of power/knowledge, we argue for a politicised paradigm of community science that recognises how transformation requires pluralism, the contestation of knowledge, and learning amongst all community science actors. This review concludes by considering how transformative community science could introduce new ways of knowing to marine governance and facilitate more active community participation.

Fixing Subjects, Fixing Outcomes: Civic Epistemologies and Epistemic Agency in Participatory Governance of Climate Risk

Participatory forms of policy-making have often been criticized for insufficiently theorizing the coproduction of publics and matters of concern. This paper seeks to investigate this relationship further by analyzing how the concept of civic epistemologies (CEs) can provide insights for understanding how political contexts shape both publics and contestable debates. Presenting fieldwork on cyclone governance in Odisha, India, based on the analysis of interviews with vulnerable fishing communities and state actors, the article shows how CEs influence the interdependent formation of vulnerable fisher and state subjectivities on one hand with representations of risk located in external biophysical atmospheric gases on the other, thereby sustaining reductive roles and futures. At the same time, the paper develops the concept of CEs by examining them as performative acts carried out by marginalized communities and state actors at the subnational level of a nonindustrialized country, thereby indicating sites at which epistemic agency can be increased and governed. Participatory knowledge production needs to understand how it is affected by CEs if it is to generate effective expertise for transformative futures in the face of increasing climatic risks.

Elizabeth Andrews Bond. The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France.

Reading The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France recalls the specific dramaturgical approach in Anton Chekhov’s plays called “underwater current.” It describes the hidden internal tensions and communicational complexities in his plays that engage the characters beyond the everyday topics of conversation and finally convey to the audience the conflict and its possible resolution. In a similar vein, the characters in Elizabeth Andrews Bond’s book—the letter writers to the information press in the last decades of the Old Regime and the first years of the French Revolution—may refer to literature, science, agriculture, philanthropy, or politics, but tangentially, their letters draw invisible lines of intellectual exchanges between the writers and their audience. Those lines enhanced their capacity for learning, for asserting themselves into a newborn public sphere, and for establishing norms for public good and national duty in view of the coming revolutionary storm. Through a close...

The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate in Latin America: Knowledge Gaps and the Urgency to Translate Science Into Action

Climate Change hazards to social-ecological systems are well-documented and the time to act is now. The IPCC-SROCC used the best available scientific knowledge to identify paths for effective adaptation and mitigation of climate change impacts on the ocean and cryosphere. Despite all the evidence highlighted by SROCC and the key role of the ocean and cryosphere for climate change at all levels, Latin America (LA) faces challenges to take effective action mostly due to socio-economic vulnerability, political instability and overall technical capacities. Countries have adopted diverse actions as the information needed by policy makers has been made available, not necessarily in accessible and inclusive ways. Regional imbalance in economic development, technological level, capacity development, societal involvement, and governmental oversight have contributed to skewed geographical and technological gaps of knowledge on key ecosystems and specific areas preventing effective climate actions/solutions. We analyze the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from the region as proxies to the incorporation of IPCC recommendations. The gaps and opportunities for the uptake of ocean and climate science to political decision making is discussed as five key aspects: (i) climate assessment information and regional policies, (ii) knowledge production, (iii) knowledge accessibility, (iv) knowledge impact to policy, and (v) long term monitoring for decision making. We advocate that the uptake of SROCC findings in LA policies can be enhanced by: (a) embracing local realities and incorporating local, traditional and indigenous knowledge; (b) empowering locals to convey local knowledge to global assessments and adapt findings to local realities; (c) enhancing regional research capabilities; and (d) securing long-term sustainable ocean observations. Local and regional participation in knowledge production and provision enhances communication pathways, climate literacy and engagement which are key for effective action to be reflected in governance. Currently, the lack of accessible and inclusive information at the local level hampers the overall understanding, integration and engagement of the society to mitigate climate effects, perpetuates regional heterogeneity and threatens the efforts to reverse the course of climate change in LA. Local researchers should be empowered, encouraged, rewarded and better included in global climate-ocean scientific assessments.

Enacting theories of change for food systems transformation under climate change

In the past few years, we have seen growing calls for a transformation in global food systems in response to multiple challenges, including climate change. Food systems are responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity and agricultural yields are at risk due to climate change impacts. Although many proposals have been made, there are fewer insights on what these imply for knowledge and innovation systems. We seek to advance the literature on transforming food systems under a changing climate, by identifying concrete next steps for scientists and practitioners. We do this by adapting a theory of change proposed by Campbell et al. (2018). We used the adapted theory of change to design the 5th Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture, which brought together different stakeholders within global food systems. Through conference sessions and a survey with 262 of the participants, we validate elements of the Campbell et al. framework, identify additional elements, and offer further nuance. The findings point at nine priority areas for a transformation in food systems under climate change: (1) Empowering farmer and consumer organizations, women and youth; (2) Digitally enabled climate-informed services; (3) Climate-resilient and low-emission practices and technologies; (4) Innovative finance to leverage public and private sector investments; (5) Reshaping supply chains, food retail, marketing and procurement; (6) Fostering enabling policies and institutions; (7) Knowledge transfer; (8) Addressing fragmentation in the knowledge and innovation systems; (9) Ensuring food security. We have identified three types of scholarly insights from innovation, transition and sustainability transformations studies that may inform the next steps: these relate to stimulating novelty across the priority areas, ensuring participation in knowledge production, and reconfiguring incumbent systems to enable implementation of the theory of change.

Challenges and solutions in developing legitimate online participation for EU biodiversity and ecosystem services policies

AbstractTo support legitimate European Union (EU) biodiversity policy development, there is a growing momentum to engage society in these policy processes and build meaningful and inclusive dialogue between science, policy, and society in policy deliberation. So far, engagement efforts have been made to encourage citizen participation in knowledge production via, for example, citizen science. At EU level means to encourage public participation have included a variety of online mechanisms for spreading information and promoting public deliberation. Despite these developments, the involvement of the general public in policy-making at the EU level has been rather inconsistent to date. In this article, we evaluate online science cafés as potential means to encourage dialogue between science, policy, and society; we ask what elements in their design and implementation are essential for inclusive dialogue between science, policy, and society. Our findings emphasise iterative dialogue when approaching multi-scalar challenges. This has important implications for developing legitimate participation across Europe.

More Democratic Sustainability Governance through Participatory Knowledge Production? A Framework and Systematic Analysis

This paper investigates how participatory knowledge production may contribute to more democratic sustainability governance. It develops an analytical framework in order to perform a systematic analysis of the GammaSense project in the Netherlands, on the measurement of gamma radiation by citizens. The paper first of all concludes that the way in which participation takes place throughout each and every stage of the knowledge production process, including technically complex issues such as the design of the measurement system and analytical toolset, has consequences for (a) which aspects of the gamma radiation decision-making process can potentially be democratized; (b) who gains a voice on the issue; (c) which form of democratization process is potentially facilitated. Secondly, the democratizing effects of setting the purpose of knowledge production, defining the research object and developing the methodological toolset are closely intertwined. Finally, providing space for multiple epistemologies and being attentive towards the role of material objects—the issue at hand and the methodological devices—are of crucial importance to realize the democratizing ambitions that the GammaSense project aimed to contribute towards.

Using Satellites to Track Indicators of Global Air Pollution and Climate Change Impacts: Lessons Learned From a NASA-Supported Science-Stakeholder Collaborative.

The 2018 NASA Health and Air Quality Applied Science Team (HAQAST) “Indicators” Tiger Team collaboration between NASA‐supported scientists and civil society stakeholders aimed to develop satellite‐derived global air pollution and climate indicators. This Commentary shares our experience and lessons learned. Together, the team developed methods to track wildfires, dust storms, pollen counts, urban green space, nitrogen dioxide concentrations and asthma burdens, tropospheric ozone concentrations, and urban particulate matter mortality. Participatory knowledge production can lead to more actionable information but requires time, flexibility, and continuous engagement. Ground measurements are still needed for ground truthing, and sustained collaboration over time remains a challenge.

Epistemic Democracy and International Students

In this 10th anniversary essay, I would like to address the topic I have been writing about for quite a while now- namely, how to create conditions for epistemic democracy for international students attending our universities. By ‘epistemic democracy’ I mean not being silenced and ‘wronged’ as knowers through teaching experiences which prevent any distortion and discreditation of particular intellectual traditions. I believe this topic is important because, despite institutional announcements which commit universities to building on the strengths that come from the diversity of internationalisation of higher education, the problem intellectual subordination of international students in university classrooms has still not been adequately addressed. &#x0D; In my recent monograph 'Inclusion, Epistemic Democracy and International Students: The Teaching Excellence Framework and Education Policy', I have argued that the intellectual benefits of learning alongside international students are insufficiently appreciated because educational policies, which for many years have represented international students as ‘foreigners’ who benefit from Western education systems, socialise university staff and home students into the view that these ‘foreigners’ are intellectually inferior. Home students therefore, on their own and without the help of their institutions, lack agency to engage with international students on epistemologically equal terms. But how can these home students be expected to deal with the lack of epistemic democracy on their own, if the limitations of the policies that govern their education systems, especially those that constitute official university rankings, do not establish any obligation for universities to engage with international people on more reciprocal terms? &#x0D; They can’t because when the problem is systemic, it needs to be addressed by a change in the system. This change needs to aim to socialise universities into new interdependencies with international students. That is why I argue in my work that we need a ‘ranking’ that will afford knowledge production to all people (as nowadays what is not measured, does not happen); one that will lead to epistemic democracy – that is, a situation whereby universities collectively work towards fighting coloniality in internationalisation (i.e. intellectual, social and political domination over international students in an education system). &#x0D; People have often asked me: ‘How could such a ranking work?’ Well, in my work I have specifically undertaken some data modelling of some sample national data in the UK to answer this question. I have shown sample analytical models which conceptualise and show in practice steps towards critical pedagogy of internationalisation (i.e. how to ‘measure’ the type of the education process which is guided by ‘teaching standards’ of equal, just and free from coloniality participation in knowledge production in the classroom). I have shown that it is possible, through specific data modelling, to capture the extent to which intellectual reciprocity is invited by university tutors, as the analyses that I have proposed ‘measure’ therelationalities between inclusive characteristics of the teaching process and realisation of students as epistemic equals. &#x0D; There are of course some limitations of the analysis I have used, which will probably annoy many statisticians. But they can be addressed and are no greater than that the caveats that characterise the current nature and scope of many university rankings. The most important thing however is that through the analyses I discuss,we can actually ‘measure’ the type of pedagogical intentionality that can lead to intellectual transformations in university seminar rooms. By nature, such intentionality is a relative concept, which means that we can measure how each university performs to their own specification (and consequently will be able to take account of any changes to these specifications when they occur).&#x0D; There are therefore no absolutes against which the output can be assessed, nor are there any universal benchmarks. This is the most significant difference that distinguishes the proposed ‘ranking for epistemic democracy’ from the existing ones. &#x0D; The absence of such benchmarks makes the proposed ranking apolitical as the analysis of data is focused purely on the educational process that underlies intellectual inclusion of all students. As such, the ranking can be distanced from any national self-interests which we know are often associated with internationalisation, and can also prevent further politicisation of international students. Instead, the universities can focus on assessing one core idea - that is, how and to what extent international students’ rights to knowledge production are actually shaped and enacted on the ground in our universities.

Field Philosophy and Social Justice

ABSTRACT Field philosophy is a method of philosophical practice. As such, it is open or neutral with regard to topic and content, to the social location of collaborators, and to the type of outcome or product that is its aim. With regard to its criteria, field philosophers may pursue philosophical collaborations in government, business, entertainment, religion, science, or other areas. In this paper, I respond to critiques of philosophers doing politically engaged work and then show that there are several reasons that field philosophy is strongly suitable for the pursuit of social justice. First, researchers with an existing interest in civic engagement and social justice will find field philosophy effective for achieving concrete goals. Second, social justice depends on ethical arguments, so there is an existing interest in incorporating philosophical perspectives. Third, field philosophers can draw on resources developed by feminist and racial justice scholars who have long theorized the association between academic practice and political engagement. And fourth, feminist and progressive inquiry develops insights into the functioning of social institutions. Cross-culturally, field philosophy is a research method that develops reflective participation in knowledge production and that supports academic engagement in decision-making for positive social outcomes, however, those are locally construed.