Scientific Habitus Research Articles

Boundary-work and social closure in academic recruitment: Insights from the transdisciplinary subject area Swedish as a Second Language

Abstract This article explores practices of evaluation in academic recruitment in Swedish as a Second Language (SSL), an expanding and transdisciplinary subject area. As is common elsewhere, Swedish academia relies on a tradition of external expert review intended to ensure a meritocratic process. Here, we present an analysis of 109 written expert reports concerning recruitment to 57 positions in SSL during 2000–20. Because SSL lacks institutional autonomy, and is spread across several sub-disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the material encompasses experts with diverse academic backgrounds. The SSL reports are broadly characterized by qualitative assessment. In contrast to other fields, the SSL experts seldom use quantitative proxy measures. Instead, they mainly rely on received conceptions of the boundaries of SSL as a means of justifying their inclusion and exclusion of candidates. This dominant regularity consists of attempts to define and delimit SSL and its core research areas, to locate the candidates in a core-to-periphery scheme with respect to these boundaries, and to rank them accordingly. This mechanism of social closure serves to restrict access to SSL to candidates with qualifications that conform to the experts’ own conceptions of SSL. As we show, the experts’ internally ambiguous conceptions of SSL tend to be constructed in relation to their own scientific habitus and investments. Beyond evaluating applicants’ possession of scientific capital, their distinctive style of reasoning around research qualifications and skills thus involves power-laden boundary-work, which leaves ample room for individual, yet habitus-specific arbitrariness.

What you don’t know won’t hurt you – Agnotology in anti-doping

When studying the production of knowledge for policy, focus is typically on science that is being done and taken up. This paper looks at the other side of the coin: science that remains undone or unseen. We analyse sports policies through the prism of ‘agnotology’, using the case of anti-doping as a ‘regulatory science’ (Jasanoff, 2011). Theoretical framework Agnotology refers to social production of ignorance (Proctor, 2008). Science may be suppressed, or otherwise not undertaken, or remain invisible (Boudia & Henry, 2022). Ignorance can range from deliberate hindrance to structural impediments (power to put issues onto the research agenda; resource allocation). Framing matters in policy, since any problem representation manages complexity by simplifying, and leaving gaps (Bacchi, 2009). Undone science may reproduce social inequality structures (Boudia & Henry, 2022). Connections can be made with sociology frameworks, such as Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field theory (Bourdieu, 1976). Scientific habitus is an incarnated form of being a scientist, which shapes issue selection and treatment (Jeon, 2019). Scientists self-censor for their career; certain research areas, or methods, are frowned upon. Ignorance is intrinsic to the construction of science: some statements may never be fortified into facts, e.g. if no scientist takes them up or challenges them (Latour & Woolgar, 1976). Various typologies exist of how organisations react to ignorance (Boswell & Badenhoop, 2019: elucidation, denial, resignation), or keep uncomfortable knowledge at bay (Rayner, 2012: denial, dismissal, diversion and displacement). Research questions How is ignorance created or maintained in anti-doping science? Research emphasis and gaps: what is (not) researched? What issues/methods are favoured/considered invalid? Policy uptake: what research is made visible or kept invisible? What actors are influential in the process? Influence of structures and power: who is authorised to do science? What is the role of the the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and its regulatory framework? What strategies are developed in the face of ignorance? Methods i.) Analysis of the regulatory framework and other documents (Minutes of WADA Committees 2000-2022); ii.) semi-structured interviews with scientists (researchers with a record in publishing on doping related science) & decision-makers (officials at WADA & anti-doping organisations). We perform a content and discourse analysis, combining an inductive approach based on our experience in the field and the above frameworks. Preliminary Results The document analysis shows that scientists congregate into a community in which WADA authorizes who provide valid science. The most obvious aspect is accreditation by WADA of laboratories to perform doping analyses. Science predominantly involves these laboratories, based on their specialised expertise, but also privileged access to samples. WADA issues yearly research grants, selected through its expert committees. What science is then brought to the decision-making table also depends on WADA’s expert groups and science department. Through control of access to resources (samples, funding), coupled with regulation, WADA has a strong hold on the science produced. Next we identify, through interviews, specific areas of science that were/are unexplored or invisible, and can be furthered as case studies.

GRUPOS DE PESQUISA EM EDUCAÇÃO MATEMÁTICA COMO OBJETO DE ESTUDO: UMA VISÃO DO ESTADO DA ARTE

Abstract This article presents a state of the art about research groups in mathematics education as an object of study. We analyzed a set of 25 papers validated in a survey at the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations and Google Scholar, elucidating their authors, titles, themes, areas of investigation and methodological approaches. The main results evidenced the presence of articles published in periodicals, by the Oral History and Mathematics Education Research Group, and works that analyze/describe aspects of trajectory, constitution, identity, scientific habitus, functioning, collaboration and/or scientific production of the research groups. We argue that future research may privilege the magnitude of research groups in mathematics education in Brazil.

WHITHER ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION?

Traditionally dated from the 8th to the 14th century, historians generally agree on the period of the golden age of Islamic civilization. They count that the keys to this civilizational achievement laid on the flourishing educational institutions, scientific findings, and the births of influential Muslim scholars. This article tries to reframe the significance of education in the creation of Islamic golden age and offer a brief reminder to the importance of education for contemporary Muslim societies. It is a bibliographical study for the materials for the discussion are taken from books, journal articles, and other written sources related to the topic. The collected data were then analyzed by content analysis. This article argues that the state policies on education is the key for the past Muslim golden age. Scientific culture ranging from namely research tradition, translation tradition, reading tradition to scientific habitus are essential in the making of Muslim golden age. This historical records reserves as a reminder for contemporary Muslim to reestablish the past golden age that lies on the reformation of educational system.

Social Science editors in Public Health: practices and limits in the creation of a scientific habitus

Scientific publishing is a socially valued practice, modulating academic trajectories. Scientific journals operate between two distinct social fields, the editorial and the scientific, having as axis the objective and intersubjective relationships of the scientific field. This article analyzes the performance of Social Science editors in the field of Public Health, as well as their conceptions about the process of evaluating scientific articles, their perspective and relationship with other agents of editorial practice, and their role in shaping a scientific habitus. The methodological option was the thematic analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews with editors-in-chief and associates of the Social Science area of prominent journals in Public Health. Editors are agents who operate with the contradictions and pressures derived from productivism in a relative autonomy of the editorial practice. They gradually create an editorial habitus coined by empirical practice, self-taught training, and voluntary dedication. They also establish a dialogue between authors and the peer-competitor community in the field. They delimit objects and themes of interest in the area from the legitimacy based on the "disinterested" action demanded by the scientific field. They will impose barriers to articles considered of low quality, defined especially by theoretical-methodological gaps and lack of originality. However, their didactic work of inculcation in a way considered appropriate in the management of theories and methodologies of Social Science is limited to the refusal of texts, which suggests the importance of greater articulation between editors, editors' forums, graduate programs, and other agents of training of researchers in the field.

The Post-Academic Trend in the Evolution of Methodological Consciousness

The development of science at all stages of its penetration into a technogenic society is accompanied by changes in methodological consciousness in its various incarnations. However, preferring to analyze the metamorphoses of science as special knowledge about the world, to examine the evolution of its methodological tools, forms of structural and functional organization of scientific and cognitive activity, at the same time, modern research practices leave aside the evolution of methodological consciousness as such. Although, according to the author, analysis of this phenomenon makes possible to define, if not a paradigmatic, then at least a syntagmatic approach to the study of modern post-academic science. The representation of methodological consciousness can be carried out in different versions. The article considers its evolution at various levels of functioning – individual and supra-individual, embodied in the methodological innovations of science itself as well as in the philosophical and methodological discourse interconnected with it. The assertion of unique forms of methodological consciousness at the supraindividual level, in particular, characterizes the development of modern social physics, which combines syntagmatics, inter- and transdisciplinarity as strategies of scientific search. The evolution of methodological consciousness at the individual level is inextricably linked with the renewal of the scientific habitus of individual scientists. In the context of the commercialization of post-academic science, destructive changes in the qualities of scientific creativity and scientific ethos undoubtedly affect the mental and cognitive components of the scientific habits of researchers. For the majority of the scientific community, the transformation of the scientific habitus proceeds spontaneously. Awareness of the uniqueness of post-academic science today occurs mainly within the framework of philosophical and methodological discourse. The result of this process is problematized by the author as a phenomenon of “post-academic philosophy of science,” characterized by a number of features of a substantive, methodological, and institutional nature. The question of its correlation with the traditional philosophy of science, on the one hand, and with disciplinary strategies in the study of science, on the other, opens up prospects for the emergence of new paradigms of modern philosophical and methodological discourse.

Decolonizing forestry: overcoming the symbolic violence of forestry education in Tanzania

Colonialism is in the past, yet its legacy lingers on. The widespread reliance across many post-colonial nations on scientific forestry principles that originate in 18th century Central Europe is an example of this. In this paper, we examine why these scientific forestry principles from a colonial past have persisted until the present, despite their demonstrated failures and contradictions when applied in contexts of complex socio-ecologies comprised by species-diverse multiple-use forests. We argue that the persistence is explained partly by how forestry curriculum and pedagogy tend to preserve, rather than disrupt, the core tenets of scientific forestry. We base this argument on a study of the forestry education at the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania. Through curriculum review, observations, interviews, and personal experiences, we examine the forestry education curriculum and pedagogy. We find that the curriculum is characterized by an overwhelming flow of readings and an absence of contrasting ideas to the scientific forestry paradigm, and teaching and exam forms emphasise rote learning over reflection. These features of the education impart on students a scientific forestry habitus by, among other things, suppressing other forms of knowledge and limiting the scope for curiosity and critical questioning of the curriculum. In sum, the forestry education amounts to symbolic violence by imposing on foresters one particular way of thinking and doing forestry and enabling misrecognition of the violence wrought by the practices based on this imposed way of doing forestry. We end by outlining some central tenets of an alternative to scientific forestry and call for an urgently needed process of decolonizing the forestry academy in Tanzania and beyond.

Ephemeral Spaces and Pneumatic Architecture: The Films of Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Abstract The Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s films consistently thematize linear perspective as a mode of thought. His documentaries use one-point perspective to draw attention to a scientific habitus, with its studied neutrality and foregrounded objectivity. His “partitive images” home in on the fleeting relation of part to whole, revealing the difficulty of understanding large concepts such as the West or the human species through such supposedly objective images. This article also discusses the connection between Geyrhalter’s photographic mode and sophisticated technological processes. It looks at architecture as an organizing element in relation to Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher’s nomadic typologies and the pneumatic architecture of the 1960s and 1970s, with special attention to the films Unser täglich Brot (Our Daily Bread, 2005), Abendland (Occident, 2011), and Homo Sapiens (2016).

A produção acadêmico-científica sobre jogos eletrônicos em periódicos da área de Educação Física no Brasil

Dada a recente notoriedade que os estudos dos jogos eletrônicos vêm adquirindo no campo acadêmico, a presente investigação teve como objetivo mapear a produção científica sobre a temática em tela na área da Educação Física. Para atender a tal premissa, localizamos em revistas científicas da área 41 textos que versavam sobre o tema. Por meio de análise descritiva, em consonância com a mobilização do referencial sociológico de Pierre Bourdieu, verificamos que as Revistas Licere e Motrivivência são os principais veículos de divulgação da temática investigada. Face a essa conformação, constatamos também a centralidade da Universidade Federal do Paraná e da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina como alguns dos principais polos de produção de estudos associados aos jogos eletrônicos no campo da Educação Física no Brasil. Mediante esses dados, concluímos que as redes de relações acadêmicas constituem posições sociais de um campo de investigação, movido e influenciado por um habitus científico.

Rethinking Scientific Habitus: Toward a Theory of Embodiment, Institutions, and Stratification of Science

Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus has been largely absent in Science and Technology Studies (STS) despite its potential usefulness. In this essay, I develop the concept of scientific habitus as a useful way to think about scientific practices. I argue that scientific habitus may offer three contributions that illuminate scientists’ own micro-practices in relation to meso- and macro-level dynamics in the scientific field. First, the concept enables us to think of scientists’ worldviews and bodily techniques as objects of STS analysis. While the majority of STS scholars have focused on the construction of knowledge, scientific habitus allows us to study the construction of the scientists’ body and mind. Secondly, scientific habitus links individual practices with institutional contexts; it highlights how the micro-practices of individuals in scientific laboratories reflect and reproduce macro-social structural power dynamics. Third, scientific habitus reveals mechanisms of stratification within the scientific field. It helps unpack scientists’ practical decisions surrounding research topics, ideas, and data. It also helps explain why and how certain scientific projects are preferred and others left undone. Scientific habitus, therefore, has the potential to contribute to a more encompassing explanation of the relationship between societal structures and the internal logic of the scientific field.

(Trans)formación del habitus y revolución científica : una superación del paradigma prohibicionista en el campo de las drogas.

El presente artículo estudia la génesis del prohibicionismo de drogas y su efecto epistemológico-político en el campo científico siguiendo la propuesta analítica de Pierre Bourdieu. A través de una revisión teórica y documental crítica se problematiza, mediante la reflexividad del campo científico de las drogas, la formación del campo y el habitus científico que ha estado fuertemente condicionado por el proceso de demonización de las drogas y usuarios, a partir de un determinismo farmacológico que asocia los comportamientos individuales y sociales con las sustancias. Se recomienda avanzar hacia una revolución científica que contenga un cambio de paradigma y una transformación del habitus científico-profesional en el campo interdisciplinario, atendiendo a la complejidad social, cultural y política que influyen en las maneras de conocer e intervenir la realidad.

Disciplinarity and sport science in Europe: A statistical and sociological study of ECSS conference abstracts

s of European College of Sports Science conferences (1995–2014) are studied. The number of abstracts has been increasing regularly (+90 per year). This rise is in recent years largely due to extra-European countries. The magnitude and accumulation of the different topics of discussion are examined. An operational criterion determines four stages of evolution of a topic: social network, cluster, specialty, and discipline. The scientific production can, therefore, be classified as disciplinary or non-disciplinary. The disciplinary part is more important but has been less dynamic recently. The cognitive content of sport science is then explored through a multidimensional scaling of the topics based on the keywords used in the abstracts. Three areas are visible: social sciences and humanities, sports medicine and physiology, and biomechanics and neurophysiology. According to the field theory of Bourdieu (1975), three scientific habitus are distinguished. The logic of academic disciplinary excellence is the consequence of the autonomy of this scientific field, its closure, peer-review process, and barriers to entry. The distribution of scientific capital and professional capital is unequal across the three areas. Basically, conservation strategies of academic disciplinary excellence are predicted in biomechanics and neurophysiology, subversion strategies of interdisciplinarity based on professional concerns can appear in the sports medicine and physiology area, and critical strategies of interdisciplinarity based on social utility in social sciences and humanities. Moreover, additional tensions within these areas are depicted. Lastly methods based on co-citations of disciplines and boundary objects are proposed to find tangible patterns of multidisciplinarity confirming these strategies.

Undergraduate students’ development of social, cultural, and human capital in a networked research experience

Recent calls for reform in undergraduate biology education have emphasized integrating research experiences into the learning experiences of all undergraduates. Contemporary science research increasingly demands collaboration across disciplines and institutions to investigate complex research questions, providing new contexts and models for involving undergraduates in research. In this study, we examined the experiences of undergraduates participating in a multi-institution and interdisciplinary biology research network. Unlike the traditional apprenticeship model of research, in which a student participates in research under the guidance of a single faculty member, students participating in networked research have the opportunity to develop relationships with additional faculty and students working in other areas of the project, at their own and at other institutions. We examined how students in this network develop social ties and to what extent a networked research experience affords opportunities for students to develop social, cultural, and human capital. Most studies of undergraduate involvement in science research have focused on documenting student outcomes rather than elucidating how students gain access to research experiences or how elements of research participation lead to desired student outcomes. By taking a qualitative approach framed by capital theories, we have identified ways that undergraduates utilize and further develop various forms of capital important for success in science research. In our study of the first 16 months of a biology research network, we found that undergraduates drew upon a combination of human, cultural, and social capital to gain access to the network. Within their immediate research groups, students built multidimensional social ties with faculty, peers, and others, yielding social capital that can be drawn upon for information, resources, and support. They reported developing cultural capital in the form of learning to think and work like a scientist—a scientific habitus. They reported developing human capital in the forms of technical, analytical, and communication skills in scientific research. Most of the students had little, direct interaction with network members in other research groups and thus developed little cross-institutional capital. The exception to this trend was at one institution that housed three research groups. Because proximity facilitated shared activities, students across research groups at this institution developed cross-lab ties with faculty and peers through which they developed social, cultural, and human capital. An important long-term concern is whether the capital students have developed will help them access opportunities in science beyond the network. At this point, many undergraduates have had limited opportunities to actually draw on capital beyond the network. Nevertheless, a number of students demonstrated awareness that they had developed resources that they could use in other scientific contexts.

Welcome to school—The empire-building business—an affirmation of Bourdieu’s concept of field

Globalisation has transformed and changed people’s lives around the world, with education’s role having undergone a similar metamorphosis. In many countries, educational institutions have transmuted into new types of institutions, with schooling emerging as a competitive product of this globalised economy. The result: a higher education arms race pitting country against country, school against school, and pupil against pupil. The rationale: the nation with the best schooling producing the most successful pupils has the highest chance of securing future growth and progress for its respective society. In order to gauge and compare schools, we now are equipped with globalised measuring tools that calculate school quality within each nation-state. How is the process manifested within schools, and how do we trace the practices, rationalities and other entanglements from separate interests/fields in contemporary schooling? This article offers an expanded notion of Bourdieu’s concept of field that can assist educational researchers in focusing on a particular educational field using a conceptual tool to trace such practices, rationalities, and entanglements across different fields. Bourdieu’s ideas are interwoven with Foucault’s and his historical gaze, through Foucault’s methodology of archaeology. When examining an institution, practice or any other phenomenon in the educational field, we must ask, “Which will wills it?” and which historical conditions allow a particular phenomenon to exhibit contemporary manifestations. This article proposes a framework using the image of quasi-self-similar fractals to highlight entanglements between multiple semi-autonomous fields. This image of thought is constructed to capture the specific role the economic field plays in relation to all other fields and to consider how every field is thus a power field. To exemplify this argument, empirical data from a Danish regional project will be used to show how the above-mentioned methodological encounter between Bourdieu and Foucault and the concept of field can be applied. Equipped with this framework, the example explores and illuminates 1) a specific scientific habitus fostered within the educational field Homo empiricus; 2) the rationality or discursive formation supporting ‘the Man of Science’; and 3) how the two are related to the ‘empire-building business’ or, in other words, how to market and sell certain aspects of schooling.

A situated analysis of global knowledge networks: capital accumulation strategies of transnationally mobile scientists in Singapore

This paper investigates the geographic and professional mobility of scientists employed in Singapore’s publicly funded research institutes in various techno-and lifescience specialisations. Using Bourdieu’s conceptual framework, we analyse the capital portfolios of individual scientists against the structures of power which have informed Singapore’s developmental history, the culture of its westernised political elite and its present day aspirations to become a knowledge-based economy. Using survey and interview data, we examine how individual scientists mobilize their portfolios of social and cultural capital in order to extract maximum value from the transnational field of research and development. These processes of mobilization require individuals to negotiate alignments between their habitus and the political-cultural field in Singapore. This empirical grounding enables us to offer some preliminary ideas about transformations to the scientific habitus.

A formação pedagógica no ensino superior e o papel da pós-graduação stricto sensu

Desenvolvemos este trabalho com base na ideia de que ser docente no ensino superior não é apenas uma questão de domínio de conteúdo, de expertise em determinado campo. A prática pedagógica em tal nível de ensino é complexa, contextualizada, muitas vezes imprevisível e se configura por escolhas éticas e políticas. Nesse sentido, entendemos que a docência demanda um processo formativo que pode ter como fase inicial a pós-graduação stricto sensu. A partir de tal discussão, estabelecemos como objetivo estudar o modo como a formação pedagógica é tratada no âmbito das políticas públicas para o ensino superior, mais especificamente no que tange à pós-graduação stricto sensu. Para tanto, valemo-nos de dois referenciais metodológicos: a teoria dos campos de Pierre Bourdieu e a análise crítica do discurso de Norman Fairclough. A compreensão da pós-graduação como um campo científico e a análise do Plano Nacional de Pós-Graduação indicaram que esse nível de formação superior está basicamente voltado para a acumulação de capital científico e para a formação de habitus científico, tudo isso em meio a um silêncio sobre a dimensão do ensino no fazer e ser docente. Concluímos que há a necessidade de desenvolver uma cultura de valorização do ensino na universidade, processo este que pode ter na valorização de um capital pedagógico e na formação de um habitus pedagógico na pós-graduação stricto sensu uma fase de grande relevância.

Habitus and Utopia in Science: Bourdieu, Mannheim, and the Role of Specialties in the Scientific Field

Abstract: Pierre Bourdieu has claimed that his concept of the habitus resolves the objectivism/constructivism debate in the sociology of science. While institutional norms require that scientists maintain a disinterested attitude, studies have revealed that scientists often fail to live up to the normative standard of disinterestedness, sometimes becoming highly tendentious to promote their own work. Bourdieu resolves the interested/disinterested paradox by claiming that scientists promote their own personal interests through objective science. This is supposed to be the consequence of the scientific habitus, which ensures that the biases of the scientific field remain invisible to scientists who operate within it. The concept of the habitus is central to Bourdieu’s theory of science. However, it has suffered from two major shortcomings: 1) the scientific field is made up of clusters of specializations which are shaped by interactions with each other, and the habitus does not account for these mesolevel interactions; 2) it can only account for reproduction of the scientific field and therefore ignores the mechanisms which produce change. I argue that Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge may be employed to better understand how the properties of scientific specialties both reproduce interested and disinterested behavior among scientists and facilitate change in particular specialty areas. Key words: Pierre Bourdieu; Karl Mannheim; Habitus; Utopia; Field Theory; Specialization; Constructivism; Objectivism; Scientific Change

Elacom: Referente Histórico y Conquista de la Hegemonía en el Pensamiento Latinoamericano de la Comunicación

De una década a esta parte, una de las iniciativas institucionales que quizás mejor simbolice la búsqueda de identidad en el Pensamiento Latinoamericano de la Comunicación (PLC) es el programa de trabajo que encarna la llamada Escuela Latinoamericana de la Comunicación (Elacom). La voluntad de saber se centra en tratar de identificar una parte del tejido histórico referencial que le es propio a la construcción de la idea que representa la llamada Elacom.

Scientific Habitus

According to Bourdieu, the `collective intellectual' resembles the sports team in terms of the spirit which drives it (in this case the `scientific spirit', in the sense that Bachelard used the term), the collectivist attitudes implied by its activity, and the form of apprenticeship involved - constant, intensive and regular training. The combination of these elements gives rise to gestures and syntheses which are constantly, incessantly repeated to the point where they become a habitus (what Bourdieu called the scientific habitus); it also creates the mutually supportive force, mobilized in its practical, articulate and coherent mode, which Bourdieu believed a research centre - a specific form taken by the collective intellectual in the scientific sphere - should constitute. His prime concern, a principle evident from the start both in his experience of teaching and in the first research projects he led in Algeria, was in fact to establish and institutionalize a collective sociological practice based on a habitus shared by all those involved in the activities he instigated.

Passion and pain in academia

In discussions about the relatively slow inclusion of women into higher academic positions, questions have been raised whether the academic culture represents a barrier. In this article, Bourdieu's concepts of field and habitus are applied in an analysis of whether academia may still be perceived as male-dominated. The focus is on the scientific habitus as conceived by professors and female and male Ph.D. candidates in the social sciences in Norway. Three components of the scientific habitus: professional abilities, professional attitudes and personality are discussed as gender neutral and in relation to classifications of female and male doctoral candidates.