Disciplinary Knowledge Production Research Articles

Assimilation/Appropriation: What Jewish Discourses in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies Tell Us about the Limitations of Inclusion

Drawing upon original post-structural phenomenological research, this article explores how Jewish discourses are pathologized and marginalized in rhet/comp spaces in ways that impact theorizing, pedagogy, professional interaction, and disciplinary knowledge production and how the academy’s white Christian hegemony reifies itself through these processes. As the limited assimilative success of Jewish people demonstrates, inclusion is not inherently equitable, nor does it necessarily change the structures of white supremacy. Ultimately, I suggest that cultural rhetorics contributes a more critical conceptualization of “inclusion” for the academy that acknowledges the limitations and dangers of assimilation into whiteness.

Cultural transformation of university social work curricula: Black Lives Matter and the Spanish colonial past

The Spanish colonial past permeates the institutions of higher education, configuring the contents and forms of disciplinary knowledge production that constitute it, as is the case of social work. In this article, we visit different scenarios where colonial memories are disputed in the context of the commemorations of 12 October (also called ‘Hispanic Day’ or ‘Race Day’) in Barcelona. Although multiple articulations of anti-racist movements, such as those related to Black Lives Matter, question the material and semiotics that sustain structural racism, colonial cultural layers are still predominant in the Spanish state. Analysis shows how colonial logics nest in social work practice by: first, contributing to the definition of subject positions – such as ‘migrant’ – as problematic and needy of integration policies and intervention; and, second, making structural racism invisible through the avoidance of radical analysis and action regarding the cultural layers that sustain and perpetuate institutional racism.

Relational Sociology and Comparative Law

Abstract Relational sociology, or the idea that relationships are the starting point for empirical research, offers comparative law distinctive analytical frameworks, heuristics, and methods. This Article proposes that these could advance traditional goals of comparative law by reconceiving fundamental categories of law, state, and society in relational terms while broadening the scope of useful comparison, and adopting a processual view of legal communities, legal knowledge, and culture rooted in practical action. It also highlights how comparative law offers sociology opportunities for deeper engagement with law, culture, transnationalism, and the dynamics of different normative orders. A relational analysis of disciplinary knowledge production suggests that deeper cross-disciplinary engagement has been limited less by shared interests than by the structures of academic knowledge production.

Spationomy Simulation Game—Playful Learning in Spatial Economy Higher Education

Simulation games, as a method of playful learning, have been used for more than 70 years in various disciplines with the economy as a leading application field. Their development has been tied with advances in computer science, and nowadays, hundreds of simulation games exist. However, simulation games are not just useful for encouraging disciplinary knowledge production; they also promise to be effective tools for interdisciplinary collaboration. To further explore these promises, we report on the design and playing of a simulation game on the boundary of geoinformatics and business and economics; an interdisciplinary field we have termed Spationomy. Within this game, students from different disciplinary (and cultural) backgrounds applied their knowledge and skills to tackle interdisciplinary problems. In this paper, we also analyze students’ feedback on the game to complement this aspect. The main goal is to discuss the design process that went into creating the game as well as experiences from play sessions in relation to this increase of interdisciplinary knowledge among students. In the end, we present a new gaming concept based on real-world data that can be played in other interdisciplinary situations. Here, students´ feedback on individual features of the game helped to identify future directions in the development of our simulation game.

Dismantling Common Perceptions of Research Proposals Through South African Doctoral Students’ and Supervisors’ Experiences

Aim/Purpose: There is a significant amount of research on supervision, assessment, and socio-economic benefits in South Africa. However, there have been relatively few attempts to analyse the research proposal phase, which remains a critical part of doctoral education in South African. Background: As part of the broader transformation agenda in South Africa, universities are under pressure to produce vastly more high-level doctoral graduates. The aim is to allow South Africa to build its knowledge base so it can address the socio-economic problems inherited from the apartheid regime. In South Africa, quality in doctoral education is mainly understood and measured in terms of throughput rate. The danger is that greatly increasing the number of doctoral graduates will have a deleterious effect on the quality of the studies done. At present, the general view is that the research proposal phase is an administrative requirement or merely a planning phase in doctoral education. However, the research proposal phase is when doctoral students have their first opportunity to show their capacity for high-level intellectual engagement. This article explores what doctoral students and supervisors regard as necessary for a quality research proposal and how they view this phase of the doctoral journey. Methodology: This qualitative research used phenomenology to capture the lived experiences of participants. There were nineteen (19) participants from three South African universities. Eleven (11) of them were supervisors and eight (8) were doctoral students. Semi-structured interviews generated the data that were used to explore how participants experience and construct their understanding of quality at the research proposal phase. Contribution: The study makes three contributions: (i) it increases our understanding of the research proposal phase of doctoral education, (ii) it provides an alternative understanding of quality attributes: those centred on research learning. At present planning to meet administrative requirements dominates notions of quality; and (iii) it positions the doctoral research proposal at an intersection of different views of knowledge production: mode 1 that favours disciplinary knowledge production, mode 2 that favours cross disciplinary knowledge production and mode 3 that favours quadruple helix innovation systems of knowledge production. Findings: The findings indicate that participants understand quality in terms of planning for research, compliance with administrative requirements, confinement of research ideas within disciplinarity boundaries and the calibre of academic support. These understandings inform the common perceptions of the research proposal phase and its quality attributes. Participants’ narrow understanding of the research proposal phase and its quality attributes have, in turn, supported the view that writing of research proposals is a matter of technical compliance. This has deprived the research proposal phase from harnessing the full potential of research learning. It has also restricted the epistemological imagination of students, as econometrics parameters are being used to measure the production of knowledge. Recommendations for Practitioners: The possibility of enhancing the quality of the doctoral research proposal phase could be increased if those directing doctoral education were more aware (i) that the support programmes should encourage significant doctoral research; (ii) of the importance of having courses that are an integral part of the research proposal phase, which enable candidates to develop the ability to sustain a cohesive, coherent, critical and logical academic argument, and (iii) of the necessity for interdisciplinary research at the level of doctoral education. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers from diverse social and cultural contexts need to improve the quality of their research proposals through engaging in research learning. This would require deeper understandings of social and cultural diversity of the context from which the research proposal phase is being experienced. This requires further research on understanding how students negotiate the transition from different social learning contexts into doctoral education. Impact on Society: Implementation of the recommendations would help to establish a robust standard of doctoral education, which could enhance the personal, professional, social, and economic growth of South African society. Future Research: Future research should explore different approaches to support services to identify the kind of support services that would enable doctoral students to engage in quality interdisciplinary research.

We Don’t Need Another Hero

Ethnographic work occupies an uneasy spectrum of experiences, and in this timely discussion where ethnographic challenges are being given their rightful place – my arguments join the discussion by urging a slowing down, a stopping and taking stock about what counts as good work in our current professional environment. I attempt a reflection on immersed anthropologists, and in some ways, on those amongst whom we immerse. The base queries that animate these reflections are – who, what, where and how will ‘good’ anthropological work be decided. The curious fascination with heroic, ideologically driven, ‘difficult’ ethnography is a point of departure here. Once again, they lead to questions about the allocations of labor and power in ethnographic work and in disciplinary knowledge production practices.

The epistemic politics of ‘academography’: navigating competing representations of Africa’s university futures

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the epistemic politics at work in radically contrasting academic representations of African university futures. Euro-American policy entrepreneurs and research funders call for major investments in Africa’s scientific research training capacity to strengthen the continent’s integration into a global knowledge system. Meanwhile, African social scientists and humanities scholars critique the epistemological hegemony of ‘Western’ models of the academy, and call for the decolonisation of African universities. This paper sets out a three-step approach to dealing with the politicisation of ‘academography’ (Thorkelson 2016) in this decolonial moment. The first step is to acknowledge how epistemic power relations shape all analytical moves. The second is to recognise that ‘generative antagonisms’ (Burawoy 2004) are inherent to disciplinary knowledge production. The third is to develop an ethnographic sensitivity to everyday academic practice within these institutional worlds and epistemic cultures. Together these moves offer space for dialogue between different visions of African higher education.

Field Philosophy East and West: An Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACT Field philosophy is both a collaborative practice of engaged scholarship and a theory of knowledge that contrasts with the model of disciplinary knowledge production. I briefly describe the origins of this special issue and situate it at the intersection of several avenues of discourse. I then offer an account of field philosophy that focuses on its relationships to social epistemology. Finally, I discuss how the history of China and Chinese philosophy might inform field philosophy both in theory and practice.

Architecture as Exchange

The editorial introduction to this issue of Footprint follows a double trajectory. On the one hand, it describes an ambition for architecture historiography. The social sciences have long recognised the need for more comprehensive and inclusive methods for writing history. Among them, comparative literature scholar Mary Louise Pratt’s ‘contact zone’ appears as a useful framework for writing new histories of architecture that recognise the many interrelations that characterise the discipline of architecture. On the other hand the introduction explains why, among many possible contact zones, focus has been set on the architecture competition. A short description of key aspects from the different contributions shows how, seen as a contact zone, the architecture competition emerges as fertile ground for the production of disciplinary knowledge, resulting from exchanges between different cultures. Acknowledging the diverse nature of these cultures, together with the recognition of institutions, legislation and other conceptual frameworks as key elements of architecture as contact zone offers fresh theoretical insight, but also poses unexpected communicative challenges.

Emerging Geographies: Academic Communities, Research Agendas, and International Conferences in Ecuador and Bolivia

Emerging Geographies:Academic Communities, Research Agendas, and International Conferences in Ecuador and Bolivia Andrea Carrión and María F. López Sandoval introduction Geographical knowledge relies on area or regional studies and the production of disciplinary knowledge (Jazeel, 2015). Latin Americanist geographers around the world are mainly concerned with the first form of knowledge; however, given the politics of area studies (Powell et al., 2016), we acknowledge that the context and location of Latin Americanists affects the shape of knowledge produced about Latin America. Understanding the foregoing, this paper has two main aims. First, we approach the trajectories of geography (e.g. the evolution of their academic communities and disciplinary contributions) in two countries, Ecuador and Bolivia, over the past two decades. We emphasize these countries because most geographical studies published about and generalized for Latin America have focused on Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and somewhat more recently Colombia. Second, we review the linkages of these emerging geographies with two regional events and networks: the Encuentro de Geógrafos de América Latina (EGAL) and the Conference of Latin American Geography (CLAG). We base our analysis on a literature review, journal bibliometrics, two discussion sessions conducted with EGAL participants in 2019, and expert interviews. In the first section, below, we present how geographical academic communities emerged in the two countries. We then turn our attention to how national research agendas have been molded by the influence of international research agendas and local demands. The following two sections review the connections of these emerging geographical communities with the above-mentioned international conferences and the Journal of Latin American Geography (JLAG). We conclude by discussing the constraints that challenge knowledge production in the context of North-South dialogues between Latin American and Latin Americanist geographers. geographical academic communities in ecuador and bolivia In Ecuador and Bolivia, geography has long [End Page 61] been more of an applied science than an epistemic approach to concerns of space, place, or territories. Hence, eclecticism and diversity characterize most interactions among entities and groups doing geography and producing disciplinary knowledge. In both countries, geographic thought incorporates elements of French, American/English, and Brazilian paradigms. However, in contrast to Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, and Colombia, where geography has an older and stronger background both as a discipline and a career, in Bolivia and Ecuador it has remained negligible in national academic and political debates and is regarded as a somewhat marginal profession. As in several other countries in Latin America, geography in Ecuador and Bolivia has been commonly associated with the production of national and official cartographic material. For instance, through the mid-1990s, the Military Geographic Institute (IGM) of Ecuador was the official geographic and cartographic agency, and also employed the few professional geographers who were educated as engineers in the University of the Armed Forces (ESPE). However, IGM has hosted international organizations such as the Pan-American Institute of Geography and History (PAIGH) and the Pan-American Center for Geographical Studies and Research (CEPEIGE). The interaction of these centers with international research and development agencies, such as the French Research Institute for Development (ORSTOM/IRD), resulted in a series of thematic maps and publications such as Geografía Básica del Ecuador (Gómez, 2018). In the mid-1990s, two events largely influenced the expansion of geographical production. First, an undergraduate degree in human geography was created at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE); and second, technology-based innovation was introduced via geographic information systems (GIS), which reinforced the curricula of the existing geographical engineering programs in Bolivia and Ecuador. Both the professionalization of geographers and the popularization of digital spatial data enabled a more open and critical approach to mapmaking than in the past, achieving a certain independence from state-produced analog cartography. Even so, there is still no graduate degree program in geography in any university in Ecuador or Bolivia. By the turn of the twenty-first century, geography as a discipline and as a profession had become more popular in Ecuadorian higher education. Both ESPE and PUCE strengthened and updated their bachelor's degrees on geodesy, geographical science, spatial planning, and environmental science. At the same time, universities in Cuenca, Guayaquil...

La subjetividad femenina en cuestión. Psicología y estudios de la mujer en la Argentina

Este trabajo aborda la recepción de los estudios de la mujer en la psicología argentina, fundamentalmente durante la década de 1980. Desde la perspectiva de la historia intelectual, se hace hincapié en cómo la producción de saberes disciplinares se produce en una trama socio-histórica particular. Desde este enfoque, se da cuenta de la reflexión crítica sobre la subjetividad femenina que tuvo lugar desde una psicología local de clara orientación psicoanalítica, en su entrecruzamiento con un campo de estudios de filiación feminista. Se analizan los temas y categorías trabajados, así como los dispositivos de intervención implementados.

In Lak’ ech: you are my other me

Abstract This article aims to explore the potential of transgender studies to offer new trans* and interdisciplinary perspectives that simultaneously question dominant power structures and engage with multiple and unexpected becomings. We believe that the disruptive force of trans-disciplinarity lies in its capacity to open up space for marginalised populations and knowledges by creating a co-emergence of theories and methodologies that, rather than gathering different disciplines around the same topic, becomes, in Roland Barthes’s words, ‘a new object that belongs to no one’. The article attempts to re-imagine interdisciplinarity as a decolonial trans- practice that questions broader processes of exclusion occurring in academia. Such envisioning will unfold around the concept of intersectionality, which we consider necessary to challenge and transform the exclusions reproduced through disciplinary knowledge production. In this respect, we maintain that interdisciplinarity must be constituted so as to trans-cend and queer not only disciplinary boundaries, but also the processes of normalisation that create them. We combine this theorisation with the Mayan principle of In Lak’ ech, which unveils the interdependence of animate and inanimate beings on Earth and thereby has the potential to disrupt not only the notion of ‘proper object’ that belongs to specific disciplines but also the ‘proper subject’, namely disciplinary hierarchies per se. The principle of In Lak’ Ech allows us to envision trans-disciplinary becoming as a practice of intersectional resistance that opens space for radical, trans-, queer, and decolonial social critiques.

Discipline and power: knowledge of China in political science

ABSTRACTMainstream political science treats China as an anomaly that has not followed the “right” path of development, that is, a path that confirms the worldview, normative values, knowledge, and expectations of a Euromodern origin. This essay identifies inherent biases in the discipline and shows how the dominant disciplinary approach to Chinese politics has largely remained focused on validating questionable political-scientific tenets. A tentative proposal is offered for intellectual steps toward more openness and efficacy in disciplinary knowledge production and consumption. The argument is not about overcoming Eurocentrism by promoting Chinese exceptionalism. On the contrary, it is political, and challenges the power of current organizing principles of knowledge in search of a more accurate and cogent understanding of Chinese and global politics.

The challenges of developing disciplinary knowledge and making links across the disciplines in early years and primary humanities

ABSTRACTThis article argues that an understanding of disciplinary knowledge production helps to underpin a conceptual structure for the humanities curriculum. This is important as a conceptual curriculum more overtly supports knowledge production for both pupils and teachers than one that is solely focused on propositional knowledge. It can mean the difference between learning isolated bits of information for recall that hold little significance to the learner and engaging with new information for a purpose. A concept orientated curriculum places an emphasis on understanding transferable ideas and principles, one in which deeper understanding or improved capability is the focus.

Striving beyond Epistemic Authority: Results Dissemination in Smallholder Irrigation Farming Research

Epistemic authority is the institutional measure of trustworthiness and reliability of our work. Can we really claim, though, that our research is reliable if we do not create spaces for sharing potential societal benefits with the communities we investigate and with which we work? Against this backdrop, I aim to examine the practice of results dissemination and its potential benefits for researched communities. This reflection is produced through the analysis of a ten-day itinerant dissemination workshop that took place in January 2015 between Kenya and Tanzania. Results were presented to local participants through booklets in English, Swahili, and Marakwet. Although societal impact is a long-term process, I discuss some benefits that emerged during the ten-day workshop: seeds exchange, learning of agricultural practices, debating women's exclusion from irrigation, the use of the booklet with results in school, and the transliteration of the spoken language of Marakwet. By giving researchers and participants an occasion for reciprocal learning, dissemination is a cornerstone of responsible geography. Responsible and truly participatory geographers ought to give equal weight to societal and scientific impacts. If we want to be serious about the rising call for geographies of responsibility, I argue, we have to further challenge our disciplinary knowledge production norms and self-bestowed epistemic authority by renewing our engagement with participatory research practices throughout their investigations, until the final stage of results dissemination.

Grammaticality and educational research

ABSTRACTThis paper uses Bernstein’s concept of grammar to illuminate aspects of educational research. The relationship between internal and external languages of description in the production of disciplinary knowledge is examined. This leads to a reflection on the various factors both internal and external to the discipline of educational studies that foster and undermine forms of research knowledge.

Traces of Past Subjects

For the last six years I engaged in a series of activities with the Wajãpi, a Tupian people living in the extreme North of Brazil, in the Amazon forest. As soon as we started field work, many archaeological sites were registered. It didn´t take me long, though, to realize that there was much more to know about material remains of the past, as seen from a Wajãpi point of view. Following the Wajãpi mode of knowledge regarding the past and its traces, I aimed to unveil processes of engagement and meaning with material past, which are analogous to archaeology. I argue that we should experiment more with the idea that “we are all archaeologist”, both as means of critique towards disciplinary knowledge production, and as means to perceive other modes of knowledge.

Disciplinary knowledge production and diffusion in science

This study examines patterns of dynamic disciplinary knowledge production and diffusion. It uses a citation data set of Scopus‐indexed journals and proceedings. The journal‐level citation data set is aggregated into 27 subject areas and these subjects are selected as the unit of analysis. A 3‐step approach is employed: the first step examines disciplines' citation characteristics through scientific trading dimensions; the second step analyzes citation flows between pairs of disciplines; and the third step uses egocentric citation networks to assess individual disciplines' citation flow diversity throughShannon entropy. The results show that measured by scientific impact, the subjects ofChemicalEngineering,Energy, andEnvironmentalScience have the fastest growth. Furthermore, most subjects are carrying out more diversified knowledge trading practices by importing higher volumes of knowledge from a greater number of subjects. The study also finds that the growth rates of disciplinary citations align with the growth rates of global research and development (R&D) expenditures, thus providing evidence to support the impact ofR&Dexpenditures on knowledge production.

Outside the ‘comfort zone’: impacts of interdisciplinary research collaboration on research, pedagogy, and disciplinary knowledge production

We present a case study centered on an engineering design initiative in which engineers invite scientists to participate in an interdisciplinary collaboration aimed at designing an unmanned, underwater robot. Our interviews of faculty and student project participants were the central focus of our analysis, while the knowledge products produced by the participants in the form of journal articles played a role in our formulation of an open-ended interview question set. Boundary objects in the form of fish and their bio-robotic replications emerged as having played a central role in facilitating the negotiation of epistemological challenges, which were instantiated as differing experimental practices, theories, and concepts. Our analysis of the interview data pays particular attention to the role of boundary objects and epistemological challenges in shaping research and pedagogical practices and in bringing about disciplinary knowledge gains. We propose that interdisciplinary research processes operate via boundary objects to facilitate epistemic negotiations that are leading to disciplinary transformations. The researchers’ reflections indicate that many of their approaches to research and education were fundamentally impacted through this collaboration and that their respective disciplines experienced knowledge gains that may not have been possible within a single-disciplinary framework.

Constructing a discipline: pedagogically focused knowledge production in open and distance education

This paper explores the ways in which module and curriculum development in the context of a distance education (DE) programme play an important role in ‘constructing’ a discipline’s object of study, thus contributing to the ways in which knowledge is understood in society. The paper examines how the process of module production both reflects and shapes the discipline within which the module is positioned, and looks at the ways in which the collaborative approach of module design used in DE contexts facilitates a sustained engagement with the issues that constitute disciplinarity. The context for this examination is an undergraduate module introducing distance-learning students to the subject of English language, its state and status around the world. This module constitutes the equivalent of one semester of student work and integrates various pedagogical resources to provide a comprehensive introduction to the subject. The production process, with input from academics across the globe and the use of specially commissioned audio-visual materials examining the existence of English worldwide, represents an attempt to incorporate disciplinary expertise from a broad range of sources. In reflecting upon the processes of module creation and dissemination in a DE context, the paper offers insights into the practicalities of pedagogically focused disciplinary knowledge production.