Politics Of Knowledge Production Research Articles

Good students & bad activists: The moral economy of campus unrest

Contemporary critical scholarship on the university firmly places new discursive and curricular formations within a global context of neoliberal, neoimperial, and neocolonial processes. Recently, some focus has been given to last century’s institutionalization of the interdisciplines (e.g. Ethnic Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies) and how the invitation to become a part of the university has mapped onto repressive liberal fantasies of tolerance and inclusion. With this history in mind, this paper begins with the current wave of student protests and how the institutionalization of difference has structured university responses to new formations of critique. We argue that, though de-escalating the politics of knowledge production and legitimation, a new moral economy has emerged in which universities trade on ‘good’ students who adhere to prescribed performances of critique and villainize the student–activists who threaten the status quo as a means to manage current crises while retaining social legitimacy.

Neoliberalism, Technocracy and Higher Education: Editors’ Introduction

ABSTRACTThis special issue of Social Epistemology has its origin in two symposia organised by the Contemporary Philosophy of Technology Research Group at the University of Birmingham (UK). These were ‘The Digital University in a Neoliberal Age’ in November 2017 and ‘The Neoliberal Imagination’ in February 2018. The articles published here explore the relationship between neoliberalism, technocracy and technology, with a special but not exclusive focus on universities, which are open to contestation concerning their role in the public sphere and the politics of knowledge production. Where universities are discussed, English higher education is focused on, because this is undergoing an intense audit-driven neoliberal re-engineering. English higher education is an outlier in Europe to the extent to which it has undergone marketisation, with top-down reforms imposed by the supposedly rolled back, less-interventionist neoliberal state (Shattock, Times Higher, 3 April 2019). Central to these are state-imposed technocratic audit regimes which are used to provide ‘objective’ data on ‘performance’, which has, always already, to be ‘excellent’ (see Readings’ 1997 classic critique of the vacuity of the notion of ‘excellence’). Before briefly introducing each article, we will situate the concerns mentioned above in the context of a social epistemological critique of knowledge production.

Autoarchaeology at Christiansborg Castle (Ghana): Decolonizing knowledge, pedagogy, and practice

ABSTRACTIn the African postcolony, archaeological research and fieldwork engage with a variety of communities of connection. Therefore, a decolonizing archaeological heritage inquiry seeks a deeper engagement with an archaeological site’s living direct descendant constituencies. Privileging Danish-Ga direct descendant communities in a collaborative archaeological heritage project at Christiansborg Castle in Osu, Accra, Ghana, this essay introduces the experimental, work-in-progress approach I term ‘autoarchaeology’. This is an analytical approach whereby the roles and subject positions of researcher, practitioner, and descendant are held by the same person, and foreground the Self. Autoarchaeology excavates multiple layers, namely: the politics of knowledge production, historiographical traditions, historical inquiry, colonial realities, and postcolonial legacies. Autoarchaeology at the castle attempts to challenge current dominant Western archaeological heritage orthodoxy concerning the study, use, and management of the past, and in so doing, offer possibilities for a decolonizing practice.

On hybridity, the politics of knowledge production and critical language studies

On hybridity, the politics of knowledge production and critical language studies

Enhancing urban resilience knowledge systems through experiential pluralism

Urban resilience to climate change scholarship has increasingly focused on increasing its salience for existing decision making processes. At the same time, large inequalities in vulnerability to climate change mirror inequalities in the social power of different urban residents. Existing approaches have improved epistemological pluralism and reflexivity in knowledge systems research, yet remain hotly contested by urban communities. Conceptual gaps have become evident on how knowledge systems research addresses highly unequal forms of decision-making largely responsible for the problems that resilience research now paradoxically seeks to address. Because of these dynamics, knowledge systems research continues to grapple with the fundamental and politically charged question of what constitutes ‘knowledge,’ in urban systems. Drawing upon our own experiences as resilience researchers and a select review of literature on the philosophy and politics of knowledge production, we offer the concept of ‘experiential pluralism,’ defined as the acknowledgement of the inherent validity of individual and collective experiences in framing knowledge needs despite their seeming contradictions, to explore how knowledge systems may address issues of social alienation prevalent in cities. We offer concrete examples of how such a shift makes ethics explicit in research, places greater emphasis on relationship building, and place based creativity in addressing urban climate resilience challenges. In closing, we discuss the role of addressing alienation through experiential pluralism in order to create more democratic modes of urban governance.

Englishization and the Politics of Knowledge Production in Management Studies

Concerns have been voiced in recent years about the widespread use of U.S.-dominated journal rankings in business schools. Such practice is seen to have the effect of spreading globally a U.S.-style scholarly monoculture and reconstituting other forms of scholarship as marginal and inferior. In this essay, we explore the ways in which the English language is implicated in these processes. Drawing on language-sensitive studies of academic work and our own experiences as nonnative speakers of English, we argue that the use of U.S.-dominated rankings is not just hierarchizing and homogenizing the global field of management but also contributing to its Englishization. This, we contend, furthers the homogenization of the field while also producing significant language-based inequalities and inducing demanding quasi-colonial forms of identity work by those being Englishized.

In/out of Nigeria: transnational research and the politics of identity and knowledge production

This article explores the murkiness of fieldwork and writing that often comes with simultaneous positioning as insider/outsider. I engage with two key themes: First, identity, legitimacy and representation and, second, the gray spaces between theory and reality. The first theme examines the contradictions of being perceived as both an insider and outsider; the complexities of identity and language while at ‘home’ in the field, and the challenges of performing the native informant role while back ‘home’ in Canada. The second theme explores the uncomfortable dilemma of engaging with the ‘Rush to Theory’ from the global south. I will examine how the theories are sophisticated and provocative, yet prove unsatisfactory in terms of having practical applications. I conclude the article by positing that, despite the challenges of doing transnational work, transnational subjects invariably contribute to the creation of a new politics of knowledge production and to the attainment of social justice.

Feminism and the Physical Cultural Studies Assemblage: Revisiting Debates and Imagining New Directions

The relationship between feminism and PCS is complex and an exemplar of the politics of knowledge production. We begin this paper by detailing the evolving relationship between feminism and PCS, and identify two key ways that feminist sport scholars have responded to PCS. Whereas one group has rejected PCS outright, another is reappropriating PCS for their own purposes. Aligning with the latter, in the remainder of the paper we offer one of many possible imaginings of a feminist interpretation of the PCS assemblage. More specifically, we briefly outline how a feminist engagement with some of the key tenets of PCS facilitated new understandings of New Zealand women’s embodied experiences of netball, includingMāori women.In so doing, we reveal what a FPCS approach might look like in practice and highlight ways that feminist scholars have, and can continue to, contribute to the PCS agenda through embodied, theoretical, reflexive, political, contextual and culturally-specific research.

Labour geography II: Being, knowledge and agency

This report builds on an examination of different approaches to labour precarity and precarious employment to argue for the need for labour geographers to examine the foundations of our approaches to agency. The debate about agency has become the terrain on which many labour geographers meet, but the dominant epistemology of agency has an (implicit or explicit) grounding in debates about labour’s spatial fix. This grounding rests on assumptions about the activities and sites that ‘count’ in analyses of labour, with implications for theory-building and the politics of knowledge production in labour geography.

Learning from patients: constructions of knowledge and legitimacy in hospital-based quality improvement programmes

ABSTRACTHealth services organisations are increasingly incorporating patient engagement strategies as a form of quality improvement. Such strategies take form in programmes where organisations partner with patients in order to learn from their experiences and thereby change how services are designed, delivered, and implemented. In this study, we examined the enactment of patient engagement programmes within an academic health science organisation in Canada. This was accomplished through an exploration of the various constructions of patient participants’ legitimacy, credibility, and expertise as manifesting through participation in the various practices associated with the programmes. Analysis was based on a selection of international, national, and organisational texts, as well as interviews with patient participants (n = 20) and hospital staff members (n = 6). Through this analysis, we argue that organisations are not learning from patients per se, but are learning from particular constructions of patient subjectivities in the form of patient advisers. We argue that if patient engagement programmes are premised upon opportunities to learn from patients, these programmes require a coherent theory of workplace learning. We suggest attention to the politics of knowledge production as a fruitful way to conceptualise how clinicians and administrators might learn from patients at the organisational level.

Toward A Rupture in the Sensus Communis: On Sound Studies and the Politics of Knowledge Production

Toward A Rupture in the Sensus Communis: On Sound Studies and the Politics of Knowledge Production

“We Know Nothing About Yemen!” Ottoman Imperial Governance in Southwest Arabia and the Politics of Knowledge Production, 1871–1914

This article analyzes changing concepts and practices of knowledge production and governance in the Ottoman Province of Yemen from the re-conquest of the Yemeni highlands in 1871–3 to the beginning of the First World War. It argues that, while Ottoman bureaucrats embraced modern governmentality by emphasizing the connection between local knowledge and effective governmental control, the production of knowledge about the political, social, cultural, and economic realities of southwest Arabia during this period cannot be reduced to acts of writing and the creation of government archives. While historians of the late Ottoman Empire have often suggested that knowledge production –– like other elements of imperial governance during the period under study –– became increasingly systematic and informed by bureaucratic rationality, I argue that in fact personal relations and oral communications remained the hallmarks of Ottoman knowledge production in Yemen until the early twentieth century. This began to change when the near collapse of Ottoman rule in Yemen in 1905, the end of the Hamidian regime in 1908–09, and new notions of professionalism prompted officials to view existing practices of knowledge production and transmission as partly responsible for the government’s failure to control this province. Now, they increasingly associated authoritative knowledge with published, scholarly accounts, while considering unrecorded knowledge unreliable.

A Note from the Editors: Ghana Studies @20

A Note from the EditorsGhana Studies @20 Carina Ray and Kofi Baku This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Ghana Studies, the official journal of the Ghana Studies Association. The year 2018 also marks the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Ghana Studies Association, which was known at its inception in 1988 as the Akan Studies Council. These two important anniversaries merit reflection on the state of Ghana Studies as a field of study, as an organization, and as a publication. This issue delivers just that and more with an anniversary forum preceded by three stand-alone articles. Isidore Lobnibe's lively interview with Jack Goody turns the ethnographic gaze back onto the renowned Cambridge anthropologist to reflect on his early work in Northern Ghana. In their coauthored article, Raibu Asante and Dan-Bright Dzorgbo probe the ways that trust underpins the role mobile phones play in facilitating market relations among produce traders in Ghana. Rebecca Shumway's article turns to slavery, racism, and political organizing to knit together a picture of the shared legacies bequeathed by the transatlantic slave trade to the Gold Coast and the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. From anthropology and sociology to history, these three articles demonstrate the vitality of Ghana Studies as an interdisciplinary publication. Jean Allman and Ato Quayson, preeminent scholars who have both given incredible visibility to Ghana Studies scholarship as a result of their own intellectual and institutional leadership, open our special anniversary forum with their own broad reflections on the politics of knowledge production that have shaped the associational and scholarly trajectories of Ghana Studies. In a lively conversation between Akosua Adomako Ampofo and Stephan Miescher, the pair reflect on Ghana Studies @20 by discussing some of the achievements and challenges of their tenure as editors of the journal between 2008 and 2013. In what is sure to become a go-to reference piece, Kate Skinner offers a stellar retrospective analysis of scholarship on women and gender in Ghana and the ways that it has intersected with and diverged from broader trends in African Studies and Gender and Women's [End Page 1] Studies. While work on gender has also been prominent in Ghana Studies, "specifically historical" research on gender, as Skinner shows, has not been as well represented in our pages. Her essay is surely a call to historians of women, gender, and sexuality in Ghana to think of Ghana Studies as a home for their research. Our special forum then turns to the thirtieth anniversary of the Ghana Studies Association. Elisa Prosperetti offers a fascinating analysis of the "Ivorian origins" of our predecessor, the Akan Studies Council, and in the process reminds us that our intellectual commitments as an organization were from the very beginning transnational in scope. Past GSA presidents Dennis Laumann and Ben Talton, and current GSA president, Nana Akua Anyidoho, round out our forum with their reflections on the work they have done to grow the GSA's membership, to cultivate a dynamic intellectual community, and to foster enduring interpersonal and institutional relationships among Ghana Studies scholars across the globe. Volume 21's "From the GS Vaults" features Edmund Abaka's pioneering article "'Eating Kola': The Pharmacological and Therapeutic Significance of Kola Nuts" from the journal's 1998 inaugural volume. We thought it especially fitting for this anniversary issue to invite Abaka to reflect on his article twenty years later. His comments are accompanied by those of Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, who thoughtfully reflects on the significance of "Eating Kola" for her own award-winning research. Moving forward, we would like to see these comment pieces become a permanent feature of "From the GS Vaults." Sandra Greene's review of Karen Lauterbach's Christianity, Wealth, and Spiritual Power in Ghana, and Sean Reid's review of Kwame Essien's Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghana: The Tabom, Slavery, Dissonance of Memory, Identity, and Locating Home bring the volume to a close. Help us to ensure that the next twenty years of Ghana Studies are as intellectually rich and diverse as the first twenty by submitting your work to us. [End Page 2] Carina Ray Associate Professor, Brandeis University Kofi...

Outing the Politics of Knowledge Production: A Review of LGBTQ Issues in Education: Advancing a Research Agenda

Outing the Politics of Knowledge Production: A Review of <i>LGBTQ Issues in Education: Advancing a Research Agenda</i>

Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour and Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, eds.Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production: Diaspora and Black Transnational Scholarship in the United States and Brazil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. x + 226 pp. Notes. Works Cited. Contributors. Index.

<b>Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour and Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, eds</b>.<i>Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production: Diaspora and Black Transnational Scholarship in the United States and Brazil</i>. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. x + 226 pp. Notes. Works Cited. Contributors. Index.

Assessing Critique, Scholarly ‘Habits’, Queer Method and ‘Turns’: An Interview with Heather Love

The interview considers the role of critique and epistemic habits within the fields of feminist, gender and queer studies. It addresses the collective, scholarly, activist and personal stakes in doing critical academic work as well as the politics of knowledge production. Assessing the role that the institutions have in producing critical knowledge it also discusses questions of method, description and ‘turns’ as well as material and social conditions of academic work.

Introduction: critical development studies—critique and radical praxis

Introduction: critical development studies—critique and radical praxis

The politics of knowledge as a tourist attraction

The past ten years have seen an increasing interest in the politics of knowledge production in tourism studies. However, tourists’ hosts’ politics of knowledge, the ways in which tourists’ hosts can use local knowledge as both a tourist attraction and a way to negotiate power relationships, are yet to be explored. This article identifies the need for more analysis of the political uses of cultural knowledge as a tourist attraction, reporting on an ethnographic study of the politics of knowledge unfolded by an Aboriginal group of Western Australia in the context of their tour guiding activities. It will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of the political conditions, and potentials for, local cultural knowledge (re)production and utilization in tourism.

Toward A Rupture in the Sensus Communis: On Sound Studies and the Politics of Knowledge Production

Toward A Rupture in the Sensus Communis: On Sound Studies and the Politics of Knowledge Production

Introduction the Wherewithal of Feminist Methods

Concepts, devices and practices have proliferated considerably since the signifier ‘feminist’ was first attached to ‘method’ and ‘methodology’, most prominently in the 1980s. Early discussions suggested that feminist research and knowledge-making demanded a distinct approach to empirical inquiry: one that recognised and overturned systemic gender disparities, validated women’s ‘experience’, rejected hierarchies between the researcher and research participant, and had emancipation and social change as its purpose. Some of these early defining aspirations have been used to experiment with method and continue to incite lively debate about the politics of knowledge production and even what might be the best feminist method (Wilkinson, 1999). Others have been recast by new technologies and the greater attention given to non-human modes of relating in areas such as science and technology studies, epigenomics and climatology. Yet, a commitment to make feminism mean something in the doing of research, cultural analysis, teaching, artistic practice and in activism, has continued to complicate and supplement the idea of a distinct feminist methodological imperative. It was from this point of enduring attachment, ‘returns’ as ‘products of repetition, of coming back to persistent troublings’ (Hughes and Lury, 2013, p.787), and curiosity that our call for papers for this themed issue asked: ‘Where are we with feminist methods?’