Knowledge Production System Research Articles

‘I’ve left enough data’: Relations between people and data and the production of surveillance

Exploring emergent relations between data-producing individuals and their data products, this study aims to contribute to the ongoing scholarly discussion on agencies in data practices. It focuses on shifts in surveillance structure in the era of Big Data, in which the individual becomes both a subject and an object in the production of data surveillance. Drawing on the concept of the ‘dividual’, the study analyses data practices for a tracing system invented by the South Korean government during the COVID-19 pandemic, with findings from field research conducted with 11 research participants in various urban sites in Seoul. Highlighting how the tracing system positioned surveillance ‘in the hands of citizens’, the study exposes the complexities of the relations that the participants formed with the data they produced, and how they reflexively reappropriated their practices through alterations and deflections on the basis of their tacit knowledge and imaginaries concerning digital data and their constituent positions in the knowledge production system. The resultant expression of surveillance was directly shaped by the evolving relationship between the producers (participants) and products (digital data). The study proposes that an intersectional focus on surveillance and critical data studies, with close attention to ordinary people's relations with data, has the capacity to inquire into the politics of data more fully.

Postcolonial Epistemology: African “Registers”

With global digitalization and the resulting intensification of communication processes, the accumulation and retransmission of ideas and their connotations have accelerated. The academic environment has changed in the course of updating the research field and building up a new picture of the world, complex and diversified. The accumulation of “critical mass” of talented intellectual scholars based both in Africa and within the African Diaspora, focused on “breakthrough” in philosophy and epistemology, was reflected in an attack on the theoretical principles of postmodernism and Postcolonialism and a dynamic transformation of the conceptual principles and content of African studies. Contrary to Eurocentrism, Africa has become an epistemological laboratory, where the developing theories claiming to become metanarratives, within which new metalexemes and metagenres are emerging. Postcolonial discourse contains elements of metascience, a universal system of knowledge production. The interrelation of facts and methodology in their framework fully corresponds to the trends of the time in the era of algorithms, and their choice both forms the mechanisms of scientific knowledge, but also ensures success in the fight against stereotypes, not only racial and ethnic. The theoretical and methodological significance of postcolonial studies refers to the actualization of the “crossroad” problems in the history of Africa and the Diaspora, such as colonialism and decolonization, ethnicity and identity, hybridity and otherness, essentialism and transcendence, exodus and exile. In the present article the authors focus on the results of the interaction of researchers of African descent with postcolonial theory, as well as on the ideas of postcoloniality and decoloniality, which to a certain extent oppose each other. Particular attention is paid to the development of an updated epistemology of knowledge in the process of the formation of the “postcolonial library,” which includes the works of many scholars from Franz Fanon and Leopold Senghor to Kwame Anthony Appiah and Achille Mbembe.

TRANSDISCIPLINARY AND TRANSNATIONAL MANIFESTATIONS IN OJĀRS FELDBERGS’ ART: THE CONCEPT OF BORDERS

In this article the author examines the concepts of transdisciplinarity and transnationalism as methodological tools in art analysis. By applying these tools to the case study of Latvian artist Ojārs Feldbergs and addressing the concept of borders in his art, the author questions knowledge production systems, especially in terms of Western art discourse. The author doubts that in our hybrid globalised world it is still possible to look at artists and their oeuvre through a monoethnic perspective. It is important to be aware of parallel processes, intercultural encounters and sources of inspiration beyond the borders of one country or discipline. Yet, in doing so, the centre-periphery relationship should be addressed critically and the dictate of cultural metropolises as centres should be avoided. Given that Feldbergs’ art cannot be seen as a constituent of isolated elements – object (sculpture), space (environment), time, spectatorship – but, indeed, as a complex whole, which is hybrid and synthesised, it is crucial to define Feldbergs’ artistic strategies addressing the concept of borders – both physical and symbolic.

Knowledge, Expertise and Science Advice During COVID-19: In Search of Epistemic Justice for the ‘Wicked’ Problems of Post-Normal Times

ABSTRACT A consistent claim from governments around the world during the Coronavirus pandemic has been that they were following the science. This raises the question, central to this paper, of what and whose knowledge is or should be sought, which is being side-lined through the choice of particular framings and discourses, and with what consequences for the creation and implementation of evidence-based policy to tackle wicked problems. Through the lens of Fricker’s epistemic injustice, I problematise the expertise that has guided the COVID-19 response as epistemically narrow and argue that counteracting a monolithic culture of expertise requires tackling the structural inequalities in the systems of knowledge production to diversify the social and epistemological foundations of science. Drawing on Post-normal Science (PNS) theory, I suggest that the expertise needed to respond to the challenges of a post-COVID world is one that embraces greater pluralism, avoids groupthink, challenges the accepted orthodoxy and helps us revert old models and rigid path dependencies that so often neglect the lived realities and demands of those left behind. This can only be realised by overcoming epistemic injustice and embracing epistemic democracy in the practice of evidence-based policy.

Natural Science under Partus Sequitur Ventrem

Abstract: This article considers entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian's 1705 Suriname illustrated naturalist study, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium , as a text about the brutality of reproductive politics under colonialism and slavery. In the eighteenth-century, the Caribbean was foundational within a global commercial system of knowledge production, in which the exchange of specimens, agricultural commodities, and curiosity collections produced capital, status, and prestige. European conceptions of the natural world were fundamentally shaped by capitalist models in which flora and fauna in the colonies were divested from the conditions of their classification and ordering. Across the sixty engraved plates printed in Metamorphosis , insect husbandry and breeding, the lifecycles of fauna, and ecological relations of heredity serve as a façade for the social and material conditions of slavery. Through close readings of Merian's engraved plates and transcribed narratives of free and enslaved African and Indigenous women, this article argues that the beauty of Merian's Suriname book, as well as its intricate production history, both obscures and furthers the text's underlying violence. Though it has been three hundred years since Merian's Metamorphosis was first published, the obscuring beauty of her illustrated work continues to haunt popular narratives of the history of science.

University industry collaboration process: a systematic review of literature

PurposeThe innovation process demands an interaction between environment agents, knowledge generators and policies of incentive for innovation and not only development by companies. Universities have gradually become the core of the knowledge production system and, therefore, their role regarding innovation has become more important and diversified. This study is aimed at identifying the mechanisms of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, as well as the operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process.Design/methodology/approachThis study is aimed at identifying, based on a systematic literature review, the mechanisms of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, as well as the operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process.FindingsThe analysis of the 72 selected articles enabled identifying 15 mechanisms of U–I collaboration, proposing a new classification for such mechanisms and developing a framework presenting the operationalization steps of the interaction process.Originality/valueIn this paper, the authors screened nearly 1,500 papers and analyzed in detail 86 papers addressing U–I collaboration, mechanisms of U–I collaboration and operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process. This paper provides a new classification for such mechanisms and developing a framework presenting the operationalization steps of the interaction process. This research contributes to both theory and practice by highlighting managerial aspects and stimulating academic research on such timely topic.

An Inside Sun: Lickanantay Volcanology in the Salar de Atacama

The need of establishing more substantive dialogs between the mainstream and Indigenous knowledge on volcanoes has been increasingly recognized. To contribute to this endeavor, in this article we present the basic volcanological understandings of the Lickanantay people in the Salar de Atacama Basin. The Salar de Atacama Basin is an active volcanic territory within the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes (CVZA). From the El Tatio geothermal field to Socompa volcano, more than 19 active volcanoes surround the territory that the Lickanantay (Atacameño) people have inhabited for more than 11,000 years. Living around and with the geological dynamism of the CVZA for millennia, the Lickanantay communities have accumulated rich observational and ceremonial data on volcanoes and volcanism. Paradoxically, however, while the Atacameño people have thoroughly characterized the CVZA, the volcanology community has not been properly introduced to the ancestral knowledge articulated in the territory. In order to make traditional Atacameño perspectives on volcanoes, volcanic risk, and geo-cosmic interdependence more amply available to the volcanology community, in this article, we present a basic description of what we call Atacameño volcanology. By Atacameño volcanology, we understand the ancestral principles by which volcanoes are known and understood as partaking in larger processes of a cosmo-ecological formation. Specifically, we describe the basic volcanological notions arising from the Lickanantay ancestral knowledge—volcanic formation, functions, and behavior. Second, we focus on the El Tatio geothermal field to offer a situated example. Finally, we delineate some relevant elements of human–volcano interactions and volcanic risk management from an Atacameño perspective. In our conclusions we suggest that volcanology, particularly in the context of the Andes, needs to engage more substantially with the Atacameño or other ancestral systems of knowledge production to expand volcanological insights and respond to the call for decolonizing science.

The quadruple/quintuple helix model in entrepreneurial ecosystems: an institutional perspective on the space case study

Although entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) have attracted increasing conceptual interest in the academic literature, little research has been conducted on their dynamics regarding the sociotechnological transformations that they undergo. To gain a bigger picture of this process, the theoretical underpinning is lacking. This research aims to address this theoretical gap by relying on the quadruple/quintuple (Q/Q) helix model to contextualize the dynamics fueling the development of EEs. We supplement this model with the institutional perspective to gain a better understanding of the dynamic interplay of EE institutions within their broader socioenvironmental context. Through an exploratory qualitative study based on secondary data from 1985 to 2021, we focus on the space EE as an illustrative case that has experienced major sociotechnological changes since the mid‐2000s. Likewise, we find that sociotechnological transformations lead to a change of focus in the knowledge production system, which is fostered by internal constraints and external opportunities. Indeed, informal institutions have a major influence on entrepreneurial dynamics by supporting an entrepreneurial culture within the Q/Q helix spheres, as they enable the inclusion of external actors in the innovation process. Ultimately, we point out the role of entrepreneurial support organizations in the inclusion of civil society and the environment in society and democracy‐based knowledge production systems to enhance the development of EEs.

African Culture and the Quest for Sustainable and Improved Indigenous Knowledge Production: Nigeria and South Africa in Perspective

Culture is the way of life of a people. But Western culture has deprived Africa of most of its cultural practices and values. The jettisoning of the African way of life for a Western one has affected indigenous knowledge production. Beaming the light on South Africa and Nigeria, this article interrogates the impact of culture/African ways of knowing on indigenous knowledge production in Africa, and unravels how much Africa has been able to incorporate its culture in knowledge production systems amid the penetration and preponderance of alien culture. It relies on historical perspective and document analysis. The article finds that African ways of knowing have been largely eroded in Nigeria, and that South Africa fares better but still faces some challenges. This has negatively affected the quest for sustained and improved indigenous knowledge production, vis-à-vis finding lasting solutions to the peculiar political, economic and social problems in these countries. It concludes that if Nigeria and South Africa, and indeed the African continent, are to attain sustainable and improved indigenous knowledge production, they must preserve African ways of knowing, without which indigenous knowledge production will remain in the abyss.

Equity in Global North–South research partnerships: interrogating UK funding models

This article considers the degree to which achieving equity in Global North–South research partnerships is possible under current UK funding models. While there has been significant discussion with respect to the decolonisation of research, it will be argued that there is some distance between the language of equity articulated currently by UK funding bodies, and the realities of working as a project partner in the Global South. The article draws on the prior and ongoing experiences of a multidisciplinary team of researchers brought together by a UK-funded research project. In the interests of moving towards more equitable systems of knowledge production and dissemination, it explores the power asymmetries that can be inherent in Global North–South research partnerships, and the extent to which issues of coloniality continue to shape aspects of research agenda setting, project framing, impact, academic publishing and the division of labour within partnerships.

Foreign Fictions: ‘Research’ about Ethiopian Legal Reform in a Top-Tier Academic Journal

Top tier academic journals claim to publish the most rigorous, peer reviewed research. This evidence based found therein is utilized to support decision making for sustainable development. In parallel, many journals that are published in the Global South are accused of being lower quality or disregarded as ‘predatory’. This article explores an example of a ‘foreign fiction’ written about Ethiopia and published in a top tier academic journal. The narratives and evidence from that top tier journal are contrasted with research published in Ethiopian journals. This case study shows that Ethiopian scholars have produced important research and contributed evidence, but have largely been ignored, or silenced, perpetuating foreign fictions. This is important because policy and law seeking to enable development are informed and influenced by the research produced in top tier journals. Based upon this, this article critiques assumptions about “top tier” journals as well as those about Ethiopian journals, and further about the continued colonial power imbalances that exist within knowledge production systems. This has implications for universities and scholars, which continue to privilege a particular set of journals that are largely based in the Global North and wherein contributing authors are also largely based in the Global North. The reproduction of colonial relationships within global knowledge production systems calls for much broader critical reflection about whose voices are privileged as authentic conveyors of knowledge and how these privileges are institutionalized.
 Keywords: Ethiopia; Foreign Fictions; Knowledge Production; Power; Narrative; Sustainable Development; SDGs

Unsettling knowledge boundaries: the Indigenous pitiki space for Basotho women’s sexual empowerment and reproductive well-being

ABSTRACT Indigenous knowledge systems embody a holistic, inclusive view of the world and foreground interconnectedness for the promotion of life. Through reflective engagement with the author’s positioning as an Indigenous researcher, this article explores Indigenous knowledges of sexual, reproductive health and motherhood shared by Basotho women. It draws on the life stories of twenty never-married women and uses decolonial African feminist approaches to challenge the assumed universality of conceptions of sexual and reproductive health that are both deeply embedded and produced within specific relations of power. It illuminates the Indigenous pitiki space as an Indigenous knowledge hub purposed to empower Basotho women’s sexual and reproductive health. Within this space, Indigenous knowledges and skills are shared amongst women, with the elderly imparting knowledges to the young women. In the context of unsurmountable health disparities, the article shows how Indigenous knowledge-sharing outside the exclusive ‘westernised’ health systems enables communal support for the well-being of women and children in African contexts. It emphasises the need for inclusive and expansive knowledge production systems not only to better inform equitable health solutions for Indigenous communities but also for epistemic redress in the discipline of Sociology.

Following the path of otherwise: subalternized subjects, academic writing and the political power of discomfort

ABSTRACT This article draws on discomfort as an epistemological tool to rethink about how subalternized subjects have been positioned and can position themselves in relation to academic writing practices and academic spaces. The discussion is organized in four sections: in the first one, drawing on Black feminist thought, it is discussed how language has a role in experiences of being marginalized and feeling uncomfortable in these spaces and the ways in which these feelings have been theorized. In the second section, based on a personal account, I narrate my own journey of discomfort in the process of learning how to become a researcher in the field of applied linguistics, considering the practices of academic writing. In the third section, I review a few contemporary trends in Humanities, to evaluate their potential as alternatives to change the metapragmatics and the pragmatics of knowledge production systems and avoid their misrecognition effects on subaltern subjects. Finally, I consider how subalternized subjects can position themselves in relation to these systems, proposing a transhistoric and transtopical way of positioning that could be a path to avoid assimilation and opening up possibilities for new modes of producing knowledge.

Decolonizing Qurʾanic Studies

The legacy of colonialism continues to influence the analysis of the Qurʾan in the Euro-American academy. While Muslim lands are no longer directly colonized, intellectual colonialism continues to prevail in the privileging of Eurocentric systems of knowledge production to the detriment and even exclusion of modes of analysis that developed in the Islamic world for over a thousand years. This form of intellectual hegemony often results in a multifaceted epistemological reductionism that denies efficacy to the analytical tools developed by the classical Islamic tradition. The presumed intellectual superiority of Euro-American analytical modes has become a constitutive and persistent feature of Qurʾanic Studies, influencing all aspects of the field. Its persistence prevents some scholars from encountering, let alone employing, the analytical tools of the classical Islamic tradition and presents obstacles to a broader discourse in the international community of Qurʾanic Studies scholars. Acknowledging the obstacles to which the coloniality of knowledge has given rise in Qurʾanic Studies can help us to develop more inclusive approaches in which multiple modes of analysis are incorporated and scholars from variegated intellectual backgrounds can engage in a more effective dialogue.

3 - Sustainable Rural Learning Ecologies: A Pathway to Acknowledging African Knowledge Systems in the Arena of Mainstream of Knowledge Production?

This article proposes an idea which to most might seem misplaced and unrealistic. Its aim is to demystify myths around African scholarship and rural learning ecologies that are misrepresented in discourses dominant in the global North. Sustainable rural learning ecologies located within African-centred philosophy should be understood in this context as a transformational agenda and a vehicle for knowledge construction. The concept of sustainable rural learning ecologies is simply about acknowl- edging knowledge constructions within the rural contexts as knowledge embedded in African value systems. Knowledge construction in a rural learning context should be celebrated for its strengths and opportunities, as having its own comparative and competitive advantage in the global discourse arena. Sustainable rural learning ecologies (SuRLEc) should be understood as an epistemological discourse that makes meaning and critiques the dominant body of knowledge by affirming rural context and cultural constructs. The paper examines hegemonic dominant discourses that try to monopolize knowledge production systems and domesticate other parameters for the interpretation of realities as historically obsolete, irrational and pre-modern. It argues that SuRLEc is a platform that holds people’s experiences as sources for the construction of forms of knowl- edge. I therefore argue for learning ecologies that acknowledge different formations and foundations for the construction of pyramids of knowledge. I conclude by dismissing views that hold that any one pyramid of knowledge is by its nature eminently superior to all others.

Drone-Cinema, Data Practices, and the Narrative of IHL

This article explores how advanced military technologies and data practices reshape and reassert a particular, Western-centric, narrative of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Analysing the dissemination of this narrative through popular culture, with a focus on he 2015 British thriller Eye in the Sky, I explore how the representation of IHL data practices reaffirms a humanitarian narrative of IHL. As a popular culture product – and one that is embraced by senior IHL experts and professionals – Eye in the Sky reflects and participates in the ethical, legal, and political debates about advanced military technologies, and presents mundane data practices as a system of knowledge production through which IHL exercises its jurisdiction over facts, people, time, and space. In particular, the article analyses how Eye in the Sky’s representations of IHL’s data practices strengthen and reinforce a particular IHL narrative, which is consistent with Western countries’ narrative about their existing bureaucracies of killing. Based on Interdisciplinary analysis of socio-legal studies (SLS), Science and Technology Studies (STS), and culture and media literature, this article answers the following three questions: (i) who is given the power to speak IHL (and who is not)? (ii) to whom is IHL speaking? and (iii) how do data practices shape IHL’s jurisdiction? The article concludes that Eye in the Sky speaks international law through the voices of drone-owning nations, and is directed to their mass publics, legitimising data-centred violence. At the same time, it disguises normative choices as inevitable, and erases African decision-makers, communities, and perspectives.

Pedagogy of Performative Silence

Usually, during any form of communication in an institutional classroom and beyond, the phenomenon of “silence” is regarded as a form of epistemological and ontological absence. To elaborate further, the act of remaining silent is usually equated with incapability and nothingness. The authenticity and relevance of building and sharing knowledge with one another are mostly judged on the basis of one’s capability to verbally express. But silence as a form of communication and knowledge dissemination has been an integral part of several native indigenous communities across the planet. It was with the emergence of European colonization, that such silent systems of knowledge production were disbanded as mysterious and invalid. The exercise of disbanding the phenomenon of silence continues to take place through the colonial/modern vocal-centric pedagogical practices in the contemporary era. With respect to these arguments, this essay attempts to explore the possible ways through which silence, along with vocal pedagogical practices, can be performed in an intersectional manner as a habitual pedagogical practice in educational institutions today. To justify the possibilities contextually, the author shares pedagogical instances mostly from India. This essay is the third part of the three-part pedagogy series. The other two essays are “Pedagogy of the Stupid” and “Pedagogy of Common Sense.”

Epistemological freedom: activating co-learning and co-production to decolonise knowledge production

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to challenge and address the limitations of the traditional system of knowledge production that is embedded in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It argues that knowledge production in research processes conforms to colonialist thinking or west-inspired approaches. Such a system often results in the omission of crucial information due to a lack of participation, inclusion and diversity in knowledge production.Design/methodology/approachThe paper proposes practices and recommendations to decolonise knowledge production in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It provides a brief literature review on the concepts of decolonisation of knowledge and epistemological freedom, and its origins; assesses the need for knowledge decolonisation, emphasising on the integration of local knowledge from grassroots women-led initiatives in instances where disasters and crises are being investigated in vulnerable communities, especially in the Global South; and finally the paper proposes to decolonise knowledge production through activating co-learning and co-production. The practices have been developed from the work of relevant authors in the field and case studies.FindingsThrough a brief literature review on previous discourses on the topic of knowledge decolonisation and analysis of recent case studies on disaster and crisis management and community resilience, the paper finds that there exists a lack of pluralism and inclusion in epistemology which limits the pursuit to obtain the whole truth in the production of knowledge in research studies.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the discussion of decolonisation of knowledge in the field of disaster and climate change research studies, and research processes in general. It provides in-depth analyses of recent case studies of emerging community resilience and local practices that were crucial in the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

“Some uninteresting data from a faraway country”: Inequity and coloniality in international social psychological publications

AbstractModern systems of knowledge production reinforce inequalities and coloniality, especially in the Global South. We investigated whether this was the case in contemporary social psychology. We examined manifestations of coloniality of knowledge (in the form of internalized Global North standards and practices) and critical awareness and reflection (historic and systemic attributions for collective disadvantages) in a survey of social psychologists in 64 countries (N = 232). Although colleagues in the Global South and Southern and Eastern Europe adopted Global Northern publication standards and tendencies, their compliance seemed motivated by institutional demands and pragmatic concerns rather than internalized inferiority or principled conviction. Regarding international mainstream publication practices, participants from all regions (most prominently outside the Global North) reported biases, under‐representation, lack of relevance, and structural disadvantages. Participants offered mainly systemic attributions for these and other disadvantages. These findings suggest that social psychologists engaged with the international publication system are caught in a double‐bind between collective systemic disadvantages and coerced compliance, especially outside the Global North. Discussion focuses on the mixed‐motive tensions these social psychologists experience in publishing internationally under these conditions, and the implications of this status quo for knowledge production in the discipline.

Redefining the Soviet krayevedeniye: The role of spatial science in the Soviet system of knowledge production

The paper proposes a new approach towards the Soviet specific knowledge production system – krayevedeniye – as a fluid field of various concepts and intellectual practices from the perspective of the history of spatial sciences. It shows the connection of krayevedeniye with Soviet science, introduces the people involved in krayevedeniye, reveals their contribution to the Soviet planned economy, and aims to embed ‘kray’ as a separate spatial concept. Moreover, it discusses whether krayevedeniye might be seen as a separate spatial science, rather than in the tradition of regional/local history research. By addressing these topics, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of Soviet spatial sciences, Soviet regionalism, centre-periphery relationships, and Soviet spatial history.