Knowledge Production Research Articles

Current challenges for plant biology research in the Global South.

In an attempt to address the large inequities faced by the plant biology communities from the Global South (i.e. countries located around the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere) at international conferences, this Viewpoint is the reflexive thinking arising from the concurrent session titled 'Arabidopsis and its translational research in the Global South' organized at the International Conference of Arabidopsis Research 2023 (ICAR 2023) in Chiba, Japan in June 2023. Here, we highlight the main obstacles plant biology communities in the Global South face in terms of knowledge production, as measured by the unequal production and citation of publications, investigating and advancing local plant genomics and biodiversity, combating disparities in gender and diversity, and current initiatives to break isolation of scientists.

The first recorded outbreak of epidemic dropsy, 1877-80: Climate, empire, and colonial medical science between India, Bengal, and Mauritius.

This article reconstructs the first outbreak of epidemic dropsy recorded in documentary evidence, which occurred in Calcutta, Mauritius, and northeastern India and Bengal in 1877-80. It uses current medical knowledge and investigations into the wider historical contexts in which the epidemic occurred to re-read the colonial medical literature of the period. It shows that colonial policies and structures in the context of variable enviro-climatic conditions increased the likelihood that an epidemic would break out, while also increasing the vulnerability of certain populations to infection and mortality. Additionally, it shows how the trans-regional nature of the epidemic contributed to varying understandings of the disease between two colonial medical establishments, which influenced each other in contradictory ways. The article's core contributions are to recent trans-regional perspectives on disease transmission and colonial medical knowledge production in the Indian Ocean World.

Hitchhiking and the Production of Haptic Knowledge

Hitchhiking and the Production of Haptic Knowledge

Descendants of the dragon: racialized mixed Chineseness in immigrant China

ABSTRACT Following China’s rise as an economic powerhouse, the country’s immigrant population has quickly increased and diversified, leading to an increase in romantic relationships between foreign and Chinese citizens. This article analyzes the racialization of belonging and citizenship of Chinese nationals born into Chinese-foreign families living in China. Drawing on data gathered through analyzing online debates and media reports, supplemented by interviews and fieldwork observations, the article investigates how discussions about the identity of vloggers, pop stars, and athletes of mixed Chinese-foreign descent shed light on rising Chinese racial nationalism at a time when China has become a destination for international migration and a new frontier for racial knowledge production. We argue that this process is characterized by a tension between China’s emergence as an immigrant society and the hardening boundaries of its national identity.

Geopolitics and industrial relations theory: intellectual history and future reconfigurations

ABSTRACT This article examines the geopolitical dimensions of the academic study of industrial relations and sketches a conceptual framework based on an analysis of this intellectual history. After a discussion of the social relations of knowledge production and geopolitics, a broad historical study is made of Anglo-American IR theory in the twentieth century within a geopolitical realist lens. Historical periods are identified and within these periods the geopolitical dimensions of industrial relations theories are examined. The article then discusses future reconfigurations of labour relations theory with a geopolitical analysis that better responds to contemporary crises, neo-imperialisms, and cascading socio-ecologic uncertainties.

Towards a "Biography" of Population Health Data about Substance Use Disorders: Qualitative Approaches to Communicating Context

BackgroundUnderstanding contexts of data production is necessary for using data accurately and ethically. “Biographies of data"" have developed as a complement to existing metadata as a way to critically examine and communicate social structures and power dynamics encoded in data. This project is focused on developing a “biography” of diagnostic codes, used to identify substance use disorders (SUD) in population health datasets. People with SUD regularly experience stigma and exclusion, particularly from healthcare settings. MethodsQualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2024 with ""producers"" and “managers” of administrative data, including physicians and health information professionals, in British Columbia, Canada. The interviews explored processes involved with coding and billing, and the meaning of diagnostic codes from the perspective of those involved. This includes considerations of the population, social, and geographic factors, and implications of coding as inputs to decision-making. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify broad themes and report findings. ResultsAlthough data collection and analysis is ongoing, emerging findings have revealed structural, institutional, and social-level processes that influence coding decisions, as well as potential implications on research, policy making, and knowledge production about SUD. ConclusionAddressing the complexities of SUD and the overdose crisis will require a variety of data sources and approaches, and linked population health and administrative data will continue to be one important resource. Through better understanding the contexts and processes that inform the production and management of SUD-related population data, we will shed light on the ethical and social implications of their use.

Science literacy in the twenty-first century: informed trust and the competent outsider

ABSTRACT A primary justification of teaching science to all young people is to develop students to become “critical consumers” of science. This worthy goal, however, is hampered by a flawed premise that school science is sufficient to develop intellectual independence. In contrast, we start from the premise that we are all epistemically dependent on the expertise of others. Hence, any science education for all must develop the capabilities to become a “competent outsider” capable of making judgements not of the science itself, but whether the source is credible. Essential to developing such informed epistemic trust are: (1) a basic understanding of the social practices that enable the production of reliable knowledge; and (2) a familiarity with the major explanatory theories and styles of reasoning that guide the work of scientists. These elements provide a framework for the non-expert necessary to interpret and understand the work of scientists and the claims they make. We show how such an education would address three of the four primary aims of science education outlined by Rudolph (2022). To achieve this goal a substantial reduction of existing standards to an essential, but fundamentally different, core is required, while returning significant autonomy to classroom professionals.

“It seemed like she just wanted me to suffer”: Acts of obstetric racism and birthing rights violations against Black women

IntroductionStudies that examine obstetric violence and mistreatment during perinatal care demonstrate that Black women experience higher levels of harm and abuse than other racialized groups. Yet these gender-based concepts do not fully recognize the intersectional gender-and race-based harms that Black women experience within the context of quality, safety, and human rights violations in the U.S. healthcare system. MethodsWe performed qualitative secondary analysis from Black women participants in the Giving Voice to Mothers (GVtM) study (n = 304). Primary data collection for the GVtM survey spanned from 2016 to 2017, and our analysis occurred in 2023, focusing on the interpretation of open-ended responses to three categories of inquiry: worst experiences with perinatal care, experiences of being pressured to undergo medical interventions, and desired revisions to birthing experiences. We employed a deductive approach and applied two analytic frameworks – obstetric racism and the Black Birthing Bill of Rights (BBBR)– to categorize Black women's narratives of harm during perinatal care as quality, safety, and human rights violations. ResultsBlack women described perinatal care experiences with considerable violations of the BBBR, including disrupted time with babies, racially discordant care, and unaffordable care. These experiences illustrated all six domains of obstetric racism. ConclusionThis study contributes to an emerging body of Black feminist approaches to knowledge production in obstetric patient safety, emphasizing the critical intersection of gender and race. Furthermore, this study underscores the value of using Black-women-defined frameworks with typologies to interpret the distinct experiences of Black women instead of the more limited gender-based concepts of obstetric violence, mistreatment, and respectful maternity care that lack historical context and contemporary implications of anti-Black racism and misogynoir.

The Solution to the Conflict Between the Tutor and the Graduate Student, from A New Perspective to Examine the Problem and Countermeasures

At present, the thought of conflict management between tutors and students is mainly limited to how to eliminate conflicts, ignoring the positive functions contained in conflicts. Conflict is the norm of the mentoring relationship. Because of the heterogeneous group between tutors and students, and the unique "skewed structure" of graduate education field, the implicit conflict has become the main form of conflict between tutors and students. The conflict between tutors and students can promote the integration of the mentoring community, which is an indicator of the closeness of the mentoring relationship and plays the "safety valve" function of the mentoring community. At the same time, conflict is also an important way to achieve high-quality knowledge production and moral education. Conflict management between tutors and students should not unilaterally emphasize the elimination of conflicts, but should achieve accurate governance based on the form and function of conflicts between tutors and students. On the basis of eliminating the stereotype of conflicts between mentors and students, explicit positive conflicts should be promoted, explicit negative conflicts should be prevented, and implicit negative conflicts should be monitored.

Instrumentalising race: why critical terrorism studies continues to have a race problem

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates how the racial logic of instrumentalisation – the intended exploitation of racialised peoples for intellectual capital – shapes the field of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS). I argue that the problem of instrumentalisation highlights CTS’s limitations to advance anti-racism because of how it standardises non-racist (rather than anti-racist) logic and practices in academia. Adopting a postcolonial perspective inspired by Frantz Fanon and Robbie Shilliam, this paper discusses the problem of CTS furthering the structural issue that is counterterrorism policymaking spaces privileging “white faces” rather than engaging knowledge production practices that are more cognisant of the relational attributes of ontology. This distinction of “rather than” is argued to be an important emphasis in how this distinction challenges the quality of criticality within CTS if CTS cannot meet its core commitments in the context of anti-racism. The aim of pursuing this evaluation is not to replace white faces with non-white representations by way of calling for diversity in the CTS professoriate. The focus of this critique of CTS is instead to explain why CTS scholars should re-examine their philosophical commitments and knowledge relations to evaluate how they can better demonstrate intellectual generosity and allyship in service to anti-racist intellectual traditions.

The rights of undergraduate queer and trans* students of color as STEM majors

ABSTRACT STEM is an exclusionary space for queer and trans* students of color (QTSOCs). A critical site of justice-oriented transformation to enhance support for QTSOCs is mathematics education, which has significant impacts on access to STEM majors and positive identities in the sciences. This article proposes a set of rights for QTSOCs as STEM learners to guide pedagogy that affirms intersectionality of their experiences in and beyond mathematics classrooms. QTSOCs in STEM have the rights to: (i) feel confused and receive support; (ii) take risks in participation and identity expression; and (iii) have affirming representation of identity in knowledge production. To illustrate how these rights are denied and embraced through STEM pedagogy, I present 2 narrative cases from my research study about QTSOCs’ intersectionality of STEM experiences where mathematics played a central role. I conclude with implications for practice to cultivate rehumanizing STEM educational opportunities that QTSOCs deserve.

‘Racialised nudity’ in social work education: critical reflections on cross-cultural pedagogies

ABSTRACT Fostering cross-cultural learning is an important component in social work education in Australia. However, cross-cultural learning competencies are often criticized for lacking meaningful engagement with effective decolonial processes. Drawing on a postcolonial perspective, this paper offers a theoretical critique of pedagogical practices that create, sustain, and reinforce racial hierarchy in cross-cultural learning. These practices are discussed within the notions of tokenistic inclusion and racialized nudity that illustrate deficit models of cultural engagement. The paper is underpinned by the argument that a broadly defined and uncritically designed cross-cultural teaching and learning experience runs the risk of perpetuating white supremacy and dominance in social work education. By critiquing tokenistic cross-cultural pedagogical practices, this paper advocates for a re-orientation of social work education where a decolonial approach to knowledge production is embraced within curriculum design with a prioritized focus on the intersection of whiteness and racism.

Enacting the border multiple in the post-welfare state: Registration of foreign-born persons in Finland

This article analyses border practices that are enacted through an array of migrants’ residence registration procedures in Finland. These practices extend to the country of departure and also take place upon arrival and settlement within a municipality, and they are intimately tied with the person’s access to social rights in the country. Building on critical border studies and Annemarie Mol’s idea of multiple ontologies we examine migrant stories, collected via multi-sited ethnography, that simultaneously testify to being targeted by diverse border practices and of being compelled to take part in doing the border. We address regulatory practices that modify and, indeed, reinforce inequalities between migrants. We argue that residence registration as a scattered border practice not only enacts different statuses for migrants but orders them hierarchically depending, for example, on the person’s migration status and nationality (EU/TCN). Furthermore, multiple regimes of knowledge production such as statistics on migrant population draw on the data recorded in the population register during the municipal registration process, which further extends the impact of this data. We show how the welfare state system, claimed to be universal, is highly conjunctural depending on the information the person receives from different interlocutors, and on the presumably apolitical “policy on the fly” enacted at the registration desk.

Knowledge and power: Changing the education of the next generation of development practitioners

AbstractThis research explores barriers to the academic space in which development knowledge is codified, legitimised and taught. It also speaks to these questions more broadly. Focus group discussions with representatives of 32 civil society organisations in Sierra Leone, 2 follow‐up workshops in Sierra Leone and 24 semi‐structured interviews with senior academics in the UK and North America were conducted to explore: who determines what knowledge is deemed important for students and future development practitioners to know; and how to identify barriers that limit the contribution of a wider range of stakeholders.Racism is identified as a key factor in how knowledge is valued. Additional factors in terms of time, logistics and the structuring of academic space are also significant. Drawing on the work of power analysis scholars, we propose a three‐step framework for curriculum analysis, which identifies (1) key stakeholders in knowledge production and curriculum design; (2) spaces of power (open/invited/claimed/created/closed) within the academy and (3) the interplay of forms of power (visible/hidden/invisible) that facilitate or limit access to these spaces.

Knowledge equity as social justice in academic publishing and why it matters for accounting research

PurposeThe current academic publishing model, in which researchers rely significantly on multinational publishing companies to disseminate their work, has implications for knowledge enterprise both in terms of knowledge production and distribution. This study aims to provide a critical reflection on the academic publishing model and how it works, particularly in light of the rise of open access publishing and the growing analytics focus of publishing companies and discusses the impact on knowledge equity.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory essay offers a critical analysis of the impact of the current academic publishing model on research practices. The discussion provides a foundation for the argument that knowledge equity is essential to social justice.FindingsTo effectively fulfil the transformative aims of the interdisciplinary research community within social and environmental accounting, it is imperative to establish equitable access to published research.Originality/valueThis essay opens space for discussion of the current publishing model, given its dominance of the knowledge enterprise. It outlines some of the implications of this model for knowledge equity and suggests strategies for fostering a more inclusive and accessible dissemination of scholarly work.

COMPARISON OF THE PROFESSIONAL PROFILE OF MEN AND WOMEN DEANS OF BRAZILIAN UNIVERSITIES

Women are underrepresented in positions of power and leadership in higher education and the challenges faced by women in order to reach these senior positions in academia are complex and have received considerable attention in recent years. In this work, we quantify gender diversity in Brazilian academia using three types of indicators: production of knowledge, temporal evolution in the career, and training of human resources to study in detail the profile of the Deans of Research and Graduate Studies in 215 Higher Education Institutions in the year of 2019. Our analysis shows that around only 36% of positions were occupied by women, a percentage that is not consistent with the number of women professors in Brazilian higher education. Using the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) Lattes’ Platform databank, we show that men and women in dean positions publish roughly the same number of paper/scientific articles per year and present almost the same time elapsed in the career path, while women produce more human resources. The fact that women occupy only 1/3 of the positions of dean of research and graduation reveals that for women to reach the top, it is necessary that they adapt to the same metric intended for men while facing additional challenges indicating a persistent glass ceiling.

Advancing Sociology in Portuguese-Speaking African Countries (PALOPs): Perspectives and Challenges

This paper highlights some of the challenges faced by the Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOPs) to consolidate Sociology as a relevant area of knowledge, both at university and school level. For this purpose, we will rely on part of the scarce existing bibliography on the subject, as well as on interviews with African teachers and students. Decolonial thinking inspires the elaboration of this article, as it criticizes the perspective of the modernity of knowledge solely linked to Eurocentric or American thinking. In these young countries, the university and this field of knowledge are new and lack institutionalization. The lack of investment by the State, the precarious structure, the difficulty of academic cooperation, the persistence of a strong coloniality in the production of knowledge and linguistic obstacles further complicate the process. It is important to seek synergy between countries, with exchanges of experiences and international cooperation - including Brazil - and also between professors and students in the struggle for the consolidation of the discipline.

The emergence of epistemic agency in researching multilingually: An autoethnography of a Chinese researcher's academic publishing practices

AbstractGlobal knowledge production and dissemination through academic publishing plays a critical role in achieving epistemic inclusion for peripheral scholars. This paper reports on an autoethnographic study of the 15 years of academic publishing efforts by the first author, Jiaqi Liu (JL). We used the theoretical lens of epistemic agency to explore how JL navigates the challenges posed by the structural constraints of academic publishing. We adopted the framework of “researching multilingually” (RM‐ly) as an analytical framework to examine the specifics of how JL exercises her epistemic agency. The findings indicate that linguistic injustice was associated with epistemic exclusion, but JL developed her epistemic agency by drawing on the intentionality, spatiality, and relationality dimensions of RM‐ly practices. She took responsibility for the advancement of her own knowledge, and generated new insights and practices in order to enhance her epistemic participation between English‐, Japanese‐, and Chinese‐mediated research worlds. The paper suggests that instead of perceiving epistemic exclusion as an insurmountable difficulty, peripheral multilingual scholars can foster epistemic agency through the alternative approach of RM‐ly and engage in multi‐directional knowledge production and dissemination.

Revisiting directionality in China's “outward translation”

AbstractDirectionality in translation traditionally refers to whether translation occurs from the translator's second language into their first or vice versa. This paper seeks to broaden the concept of directionality in translation by examining China's “outward translation” (i.e., the translation of works for readers outside of China), and goes beyond linguistic inquiries to encompass multifaceted dimensions related to global cultural exchange. By exploring outward translation within the Chinese context, this study contends that research on directionality should transcend mere linguistic considerations and embrace a more comprehensive analysis. Drawing insights from the Chinese perspective and employing a spatial conceptualization, this paper posits that outward translation operates within a dialogical space characterized by mutual exchange and engagement between the source culture and the target culture. Within this dynamic space, translation agents (including translators, publishers, patrons, and so on) from both source and target cultures interact, fostering reciprocal relationships and facilitating cultural dialogue. In conclusion, the paper argues that outward translation should be better defined and understood as an area of research with the potential to address the imbalanced global translation flows from English to other less‐translated languages, thereby facilitating more diverse and inclusive global knowledge production and dissemination.

Reinventing the Wheel? On the Production and Acquisition of Knowledge in Politics

Reinventing the Wheel? On the Production and Acquisition of Knowledge in Politics The US Declaration of Independence’s opening claim – «We hold these truths to be self-evident» – is unjustified. Historical events and present circumstances internationally do not bear it out either. Why has the ‹sustainability› of knowledge about democracy, rule of law, and human rights proven so difficult to ensure, including in world’s oldest liberal democracies? Answering this question requires us to examine how knowledge is produced and acquired in the political context today. More specifically, we must study the widespread phenomena of populism and truthiness and their effects on the respective epistemic processes. Finally, it is imperative to consider what remains, what should remain, and how that might remain in the (re-)formation of political systems over space and time. The societal significance of this investigation should at least be ‹self-evident› in this the biggest election year in history.