Knowledge Production System Research Articles

The Impact of Pressures to Produce on Knowledge Production and Evaluation in the Modern Academy

Combining work from the related but distinct fields of sociology of knowledge and sociology of education, we explore the effects of the changing landscape of higher education on the academic knowledge production system. Drawing on 100 interviews with faculty members from 34 disciplines at an elite private research university, we show that faculty members perceive exponentially increasing pressures to produce, and identify the ways that those pressures can negatively impact the knowledge creation process. We then examine the ways those pressures to produce influence how faculty evaluate their colleagues’ work, leading faculty to extend the benefit of the doubt, rely on reputation, and emphasize the peer review process, even as they simultaneously critique its weaknesses. Finally, we show that faculty members ultimately reconcile their perceptions of weaknesses in the current knowledge production system with their belief in that system by emphasizing their own and their colleagues’ commitment to resisting structural pressures to produce. While much of the existing body of scholarship on the changing higher education landscape has focused on teaching and learning outcomes, this study contributes to our understanding of how those changes impact the research process, underscoring the relationship between institutional structures and evaluative processes.

Writing knowledge: Wikipedia, public review, and peer review

ABSTRACTTwo systems of knowledge production are identified and addressed by this study: peer review and public review. The peer-review system is defined, its goals are stated, its participants and their roles are identified, and its affordances are summarized. The double-blind journal submission system is examined as an example of peer review. Three enduring challenges for peer review are identified: lack of reproducibility, costs of publication, and undue influence of sponsorship. This study also identifies and defines a new concept: public review. Similarly, the goals of public review are stated, its participants and their roles are identified, and its affordances are summarized. Wikipedia is examined as a primary example of public review. The challenges of public review reaching its goals are enumerated, with uneven development, participation, and representation identified as enduring problems. Lastly, examples of the differing features and affordances of each system recombining to achieve new results are envisioned by identifying examples projects. In conclusion, the study argues that peer review and public review should be understood and contextually applied for their relative strengths rather than criticized for failing to deliver the goals of the other.

Programming the USSR: Leonid V. Kantorovich in context.

In the wake of Stalin's death, many Soviet scientists saw the opportunity to promote their methods as tools for the engineering of economic prosperity in the socialist state. The mathematician Leonid Kantorovich (1912-1986) was a key activist in academic politics that led to the increasing acceptance of what emerged as a new scientific persona in the Soviet Union. Rather than thinking of his work in terms of success or failure, we propose to see his career as exemplifying a distinct form of scholarship, as a partisan technocrat, characteristic of the Soviet system of knowledge production. Confronting the class of orthodox economists, many factors were at work, including Kantorovich's cautious character and his allies in the Academy of Sciences. Drawing on archival and oral sources, we demonstrate how Kantorovich, throughout his career, negotiated the relations between mathematics and economics, reinterpreted political and ideological frames, and reshaped the balance of power in the Soviet academic landscape.

Problematizing “epistemicide” in transnational curriculum knowledge production: China’s suyang curriculum reform as an example

Epistemicide happens when globalizing West-centric discourses and practices dominate non-Western societies, suppressing and killing the latter’s cultural systems of knowledge production. Though scholars worldwide are starting to recognize this fact, China is still forcefully transplanting Western policies and practices in the name of “going global,” and of catching up with, and even surpassing, the West. One example is China’s ongoing suyang curriculum reform. This reform is largely modelled upon the OECD’s and USA’s competencies-skills frameworks, but the Chinese state claims that the suyang curriculum reform is more than a replica of the latter. Using the suyang example, this paper dissects epistemicide in China’s curriculum knowledge production. Specifically, it analyses the inclusion of some spectres of the modernity-coloniality episteme in the suyang curriculum, including the signifier-signified meaning-making logic, the treatment of language as a representational system, the instrumentalization of language and culture as objects of knowledge, and a mind-body epistemological division. These epistemic spectres, I argue, have thwarted Chinese academics’ and policymakers’ efforts to re-invoke the cultural suyang discourses as anything but a linguistic trope. Recognizing this as a trope, however, helps to re-articulate the eclipsed suyang episteme which is related to holistic Chinese “body-thinking”. This is a first step in countering the so-called darker side of the modernity-coloniality infused in Western knowledge, power, and being (mode of existence). As a decolonial gesture towards “cognitive justice,” this case study aligns itself with Paraskeva’s Itinerary Curriculum Theory (ICT). In addition, it provides an ontological language lens for China and other countries to (re)produce transnational curriculum knowledge beyond the enslavement of both relativist nationalism and Western modernity-coloniality.

Mapping Academic Literature on Governing Inclusive Green Growth in Africa: Geographical Biases and Topical Gaps

A strong indigenous capacity for credible, salient and legitimate knowledge production is crucial to support African countries in developing their economies and societies inclusively and sustainably. In this article, we aim to quantify the current and historic capacity for African knowledge production to support the green economy in Africa, and identify important topical gaps. With a focus on topics relating to Governing Inclusive Green Growth in Africa (GIGGA), our research mapped how much Africa-focused research is being produced, from where and which African countries have higher or lower supply; and the topical focus of the research, mapping it against the African GIGGA policy discourses visible in government strategies. To do this we undertook a systematic review using a two-stage process, mapping the literature for GIGGA. This resulted in 960 verified citations. Content analysis of core metadata and article abstracts enabled mapping of the research focus. The analysis revealed a significant role for South Africa as both the pre-eminent producer of GIGGA literature as well as the geographic focus of GIGGA research, with Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya representing emerging loci of credible, African-relevant knowledge production. Topically, there was a strong emphasis on development, policy and environment while topics important for growth that is inclusive in character were infrequent or absent. Overall the results reinforced the view that investment is needed in research on inclusive green growth, linked to capacity building for knowledge production systems in Africa. Furthermore, from a policy perspective, policy makers and academics need to actively explore best to collaborate to ensure that academic research informs government policy.

Di-bayn-di-zi-win (To Own Ourselves): Embodying Ojibway-Anishinabe Ways by Jerry Fontaine and Don McCaskill

Reviewed by: Di-bayn-di-zi-win (To Own Ourselves): Embodying Ojibway-Anishinabe Ways by Jerry Fontaine and Don McCaskill Sasha Maria Suarez (bio) Di-bayn-di-zi-win (To Own Ourselves): Embodying Ojibway-Anishinabe Ways by Jerry Fontaine and Don McCaskill Dundurn Press, 2022 In a world where the place of Indigenous studies has been, to some extent, accepted within colleges and universities, can we confidently say that this acceptance—or incorporation—is occurring in a meaningful and lasting way? What does it even mean to "incorporate" a field that relies in large part on the use of Indigenous pedagogies, methodologies, ontologies, and epistemologies? Is it a matter of fitting such a field into preexisting colonial institutional structures or must there be a more rigorous process of coming to terms with what it truly means to support Indigenous studies? Can you "indigenize the academy"? Jerry Fontaine (Sagkeeng First Nations) and Don McCaskill take up the above questions in Di-bayn-di-zi-win (To Own Ourselves): Embodying Ojibway-Anishinabe Ways and challenge the possibility of incorporating Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies into reconciliation-based efforts promoted by Western institutions of higher learning in Canada. Di-bayn-di-zi-win is primarily an Anishinabe studies text, one that prioritizes Anishinabe-specific world views and "i-nah-di-zi-win" and "nah-nahn-gah-dah-wayn-ji-gay-win"—Anishinabe ways of knowing and being that are loosely compatible with the concepts of ontology and epistemology (p. 15). Though this monograph does speak broadly to Indigenous studies as a whole and to other Indigenous nations' own [End Page 128] ways of knowing or being, it is best approached understanding that not all concepts, pedagogies, or practices described within are translatable with other Indigenous cultures. This is particularly important to note given the extensive use of Anishinabemowin (Anishinabe language) and Anishinabe ceremonies, stories, and practices. Anishinabe is loosely translatable as "human being" and may fit within contemporary concepts such as Indigenous or "Indian," but Anishinabe also contains specific cultural, legal, and political meanings that are not inherently transferable to all Indigenous peoples in North America or elsewhere. Similarly, the importance of Anishinabemowin, which both Fontaine and McCaskill highlight, requires the reader to consider how the inclusion of language is designed to unsettle expectations of discourse around Indigenization of the academy. However, one should be cautioned against using the language and concepts as broadly applicable in every Indigenous studies case. Although both authors demonstrate the importance of using Indigenous protocols and practices, which include language, Di-bayn-di-zi-win is specific to "Anishinabe-Ojibway" practices and attention should be paid to how language is being used both in relation to translatable (and the untranslatable nature of) Anishinabemowin and the use of phonetic orthography in the dialect of Anishinabemowin that Fontaine speaks (which is used extensively throughout this review, though it is not the orthography I am most familiar with). As is the case with Indigenous studies more broadly, Anishinabe studies is precariously positioned within institutions of higher learning that favor Western systems of knowledge production. Fontaine and McCaskill demonstrate what this precarity has and continues to mean by sharing their own personal experiences with Canadian colleges, universities, governments, and the reconciliation process. Structured within Anishinabe storytelling practices, Di-bayn-di-zi-win provides Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives on the history of Indigenous studies and the questionable nature of incorporating Anishinabe pedagogies, methodologies, and praxis without truly knowing what they mean and how they are utilized within Anishinabe societies. A common thread throughout the book is the importance of using Anishinabe "bish-kayn-di-ji-gay-win" (pedagogy) and "i-zhi-chi-gay-win" (methodology) inside and outside of academic spaces to truly grasp what practicing Anishinabe studies means. In the first half of the book, McCaskill utilizes crucial Anishinabe "protocols, principles, and practices" to demonstrate how they "can be the basis of genuine reconciliation and indigenization of the academy" (p. 19). McCaskill, a non-Native person who has decades of experience teaching Indigenous studies and learning Anishinabe worldviews, uses his experiences [End Page 129] with Anishinabe pedagogy to articulate how the Canadian state has failed to reconcile Anishinabe practices and pedagogies in...

Publishables

This article discusses academic (Open Access) publishing as a tool. On the one hand, with regards to a commercial publishing industry that ties in its inequalities in the institutional legitimation of knowledges with a neoliberal, competitive, and individualizing world view; as well as with regards to current models of policy and funding driven initiatives considering Open Access (OA) publishing as a business capitalizing on inequalities based on gender, class, and race embedded in systems of scholarly knowledge production. On the other hand, this article reviews current strands of scholar-led OA publishing initiatives that use publishing as a base for an interventionist practice geared at unsettling institutional and neoliberal frameworks of scholarly knowledge production and communication — conceptionally, formally, and organizationally. These initiatives are discussed within more speculative text sections unfolding around feminist and intersectional epistemologies, highlighting the performative, material, and relational character of publishing and publications. Thereby, this text aims to performatively point out possible different publishing formats, activities, and institutions, as well as different perspectives for and on publishing that might be instrumental for instantiating more horizontal and inclusive scholarly forms of knowledge production.

Lições da ‘Periferia’: Contrariando a Hegemonia Anglo­Geográfica sobre as Geografias de Sexualidade e Gênero

This article has three aims. First, I discuss the existing inequalities within the systems ofknowledge production dominated by “Anglo­American” academia and critically examine the“East­West” binary to show that sexuality and gender/feminist scholars in geography shouldlearn from their deconstructive skills to overcome hegemonies erected by these binaries bothin academia and the related geopolitical landscapes. Second, I critically discuss the concept of“Central and Eastern Europe” (CEE) which I do not intend to stabilize, and hold up a mirror tothe various hegemonic misunderstandings that take the form of “homogenization”,“dehistoricization”, “isolation” or by ascribing “backwardness”, by which they effectivelyerase or overlook knowledges and contributions of “non­AngloAmerican” scholars often left“beyond translation.” Last, I concentrate on the discussion of the development of geographiesof sexualities and gender/feminist thought in CEE geography and illustrate the challenges thatscholars from different institutional and national contexts must still face. By this article, Iattempt to stand for our/their recognition.

What’s News?


 This review of Will Slauter’s Who Owns the News? (2019) highlights three ways in which its history of copyright in news tracks and illustrates key themes in the history of cultural policy. One is how copyright law and journalistic style co-evolved, confirming the attributes of modern journalism itself and deploying style as a device for defining the scope of news producers’ legitimate copyright claims. In the news, as elsewhere in copyright, exclusivity and genre largely co-created each other. Two is how the labor and skill of individual human producers of knowledge are often hidden amid prominent debates about relationships between the circulation of knowledge and financial investments in systems of knowledge production. Reporters and photographers, as modern human creators of the news, are often missing from this history. Three is how the history of copyright in news is told largely with reference to organization of producers, distributors, readers, and users in collective settings. Copyright and cultural policy often develop and are best understood in terms of the roles of formal and informal groups.

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Global Childhoods: Transdisciplinary Reflections from Nepal

Globally, humans face innumerable socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental problems while being threatened by ever more interconnected and complex geopolitical concerns. In this planetary context, unidisciplinary research and related teaching approaches often work to constrain our ability to move beyond institutional and bureaucratic mind-sets to become agents of social change within local systems impacting children. During its 40-year evolution from a sub-discipline of psychology, the international field of child and youth studies has sought common ground for interpreting these pedagogical and professional issues. Many authors now argue for transdisciplinary approaches to address and overcome these tensions in the effort to re-integrate epistemologies of the global South within more dominant global North knowledge production systems. Such approaches have been posited to add new analytical and methodological tools to achieve praxis—the Greek word for translating theory into practice. Transdisciplinary research transcends the usual gap between academia and the broader public by acknowledging the value of knowledge obtained from diverse, nonacademic stakeholders in the community, government, and business. In addition, these approaches in child and youth studies offer us new possibilities for translating and understanding the local and global implications of implementing the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child, and the vast differences in the experiences of childhood amongst and between various socioeconomic, cultural, and political contexts in recognizing their own rights in situ. Moving beyond adult-focused and Eurocentric understanding of the childhood literature (and of children’s human rights), this paper reflects our experiences working with young people affiliated with the Lalitpur Metropolitan City Child Clubs in Nepal, and observing their participatory planning processes for annual budgets. In response to increasing complexity throughout all regions of the world, we consider historical, political, and cultural experiences in Nepal through this transdisciplinary approach to child-centered research and activism. Our paper details key learning and transitions from being “academic researchers” and “observers” of a participatory, child- and youth-focused budgeting process to “collaborators” and “co-constructors of knowledge” with key stakeholders—the young people of Lalitpur, Nepal.

Increasingly Complex Techno-Digital Realities in the Dynamics of Scientific Discourse

The article analyzes how factors of accelerating and complicating development of science and technology lead to changes in people's living conditions and, consequently, scientific discourse. The stage of industrial modernization was dominated by monodisciplinary knowledge with pronounced boundaries, which was rather functional for analyzing the realities of specific spheres of human life under the conditions of relatively slow development of the social and natural worlds. Scientists sought to identify solid technological, social, and economic correlations, to substantiate universal laws of socium and nature in the context of the mechanical picture of the world. However, the acceleration and increasing complexity of the development of science and technology have contributed to start the transition from monodisciplinary to interdisciplinary knowledge. The state of affairs changed significantly in the period of 'reflexive modernization' (Beck, Giddens, Lash), which was expressed in scientific 'turns' – qualitative changes in the production of knowledge in the form of permanently complicating scientific discourse. The ‘turns’ implied a different methodology of cognition, the rejection of solid correlations and universal laws, the transition to the interpretation of liquid realities (Bauman), the reflexion concerning the runaway world (Giddens). The post-modernization, the becoming of 'digital society' mark a radically different trend in the systems of knowledge production and the transition to a post-disciplinary scientific discourse.

Authenticating El Dorado: Frustrated Knowledge Production in Walter Ralegh'sDiscoverie of Guiana

AbstractThis article takes a fresh approach to Walter Ralegh's published account of his voyage to Guiana,The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana(1596), using it as a case study through which to explore the fragility of sixteenth-century processes of knowledge production about new lands. The article revisits this famous account in order to scrutinise in more detail the types of evidence Ralegh used to support his claims that a rich and powerful empire lay ready to be conquered by the English in the Amazon. This new analysis of Ralegh's narrative highlights the continued centrality of reputational models of authority in early modern travel literature and examines the types of evidence that could be employed by writers to support their suppositions when witness testimony was lacking. Ralegh's narrative illustrates that systems of knowledge production centred on the New World were, at the end of the sixteenth century, still in a state of flux. New ideas about what constituted credible knowledge, from firsthand experience to the collection of material artefacts, competed with older frameworks of authentication and authority. By examining knowledge production in frustration, and by dissecting Ralegh's failure to present a believable vision of El Dorado, this article throws into starker relief the many pitfalls and difficulties that beset those who attempted to present new and credible knowledge about the New World.

Measuring dissatisfaction with coauthorship: An empirical approach based on the researchers’ perception

• We have found that the figures regarding co-authorship problems are lower than those given by most previous studies. • Co-authorship dissatisfaction is higher in both Health and Social Sciences. • Researchers in lower academic rank are more dissatisfied with co-authorship publications. • Women scientists are more dissatisfied with co-authorship than their male colleagues. Increasing levels of collaboration constitute one of the characteristics of science. However, the knowledge production system is based on a fundamental discordance: on the one hand, it is cooperative in nature, with links articulated through coauthorships, and on the other, the systems for assigning merit and distributing rewards function on an individual scale. This contradiction can give rise to dysfunction and inappropriate practices. This study analyses researchers’ perceptions about the problems associated with authorship in scientific publications. We make use of a coauthorship dissatisfaction index that measures the degree of dissatisfaction with the author order on the byline, ghost authors, and unjustified authorship. There are differences in this regard according to the branch of knowledge, status in the academic hierarchy, and sex. Using a sample of 2344 university researchers, we observed an overall dissatisfaction rate of 12.4%. The highest rates were in the areas of Health Sciences and Social Sciences, in early-stage career academics, and in women. The cognizant authorities should take steps to regulate authorship, tailoring rules to each area of knowledge, with an eye toward reducing discrimination, gender bias, and abuse of authority.

Knowledge Production Systems in Tourism in Higher Education Institutions: Proposing A Performance Assessment Protocol Based on A Brazilian Experience

Considering the gap between production of knowledge in tourism and its transference (mainly by the socialization educational process, but also via tacit apprenticeship in workplace and also in general terms, e.g. university – society diffusion of knowledge), this paper presents a protocol developed by the authors driven to manage human resources (a critical factor of success) in the Knowledge Production Systems in Tourism (KPST). For that, we have made a literature review, giving relevance to the problem of the absence of knowledge production in tourism and its consequences. Methodologically, the paper focuses on the micro-level of the systems’ components (human resources), aiming to identify the main regular characteristics and making a correlation of them with the other members of the system. These profiles, relationally combined, can offer an analytical structure of the team, and doing so, we can observe their most prominent and distinctive factors in a KPST, as well their fragilities. Specifically, it is presented here the assessment of the professors-researchers’ team performance aiming to achieve an academic management tool. Our results show: (1) the collective productivity and their related profile, as well (2) the degree of expertise and asymmetry in individual productivity of professors-researchers, and (3) the possible inconsistencies between the expertise of these professionals versus their performanced areas. In conclusion, two main contributions are advocated: (1) the preparation of a research protocol itself, which has been translated into software, and (2) the derived indicators used for the survey of diagnosis, for monitoring and evaluating the performance academic management.

Mission to Civilize:The French West African Federation

Imperial powers like the Roman, Persian, Japanese, and Chinese, have always justified their conquests as a benefit to those that were conquered by virtue of bringing a superior civilization to their world. Among imperial powers one of the most strident were the Second and Third French Republics. The civilizing mission or what Girardet Raoul refers to as “colonial humanism” came to define French colonial statecraft in the early part of the nineteenth century crusade to improve the lives of people that France saw as backward in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. For intellectuals like Leroy-Beaulieu, civilization was to be spread through commerce, trade and exchanges between peoples instead of through conquest. By the early 1800s, the republican ideals that inspired the French Revolution had been slowly abandoned for a more forceful assimilationist policy exemplified by colonial expansionist policies. In the words of Governor Jules Brevie, the most important task for the French was to bring about “cultural renaissance” to the indigenous people. Brevie – the governor-general of French West Africa from 1930–1936, and of French Indochina from 1936–1939 – called for a redefined mission with a focus on teaching colonized subjects to live according to “authentic African traditions.” As with the British before them, French policy was adapting to local context and shifting towards a more “indirect mode of rule,” casting the foreign rule as the protectors of indigenous cultures. In this article, I set out to analyze the French imperial project in Africa with a focus on the Federation of French West Africa (consisting of today’s Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal). I outline the contour of the colonial project, discussing the differences and similarities between the French mode of direct rule with the British preferred mode of indirect rule, arguing that in order to understand the methodology of rule, one must first understand the system of knowledge production that informed, shaped, and guided the colonial project. I will further show that a policy change occurred after the French experienced a crisis of empire. The new policy shifted focus from antagonism towards Islam to collaboration with Islamic representatives, from civilization to conservation, from a focus on progress to law and order, and a preoccupation with local custom while managing social and cultural differences (pluralism). I will attempt to make an important contribution to the political and intellectual history of the largest colonial state in Africa, the French West African Federation.

Lessons from the “Periphery”: Countering Anglo-Geographic Hegemony over geographies of sexuality and gender

Aquest article té tres objectius. En primer lloc, es discuteixen les desigualtats existents en els sistemes de producció del coneixement dominats per l’acadèmia «angloamericana» i s’examina críticament el binarisme Est-Oest per mostrar que la sexualitat i els/les acadèmics/ ques en geografia i gènere/feminista haurien d’aprendre de les seves habilitats desconstructives per superar les hegemonies que sorgeixen d’aquestes concepcions binàries, tant en l’acadèmia com en espais geopolítics relacionats. En segon lloc, es discuteix críticament el concepte d’Europa Central i Oriental (CEE) —que no intento estabilitzar— i s’examinen els diferents tipus de malentesos hegemònics, tals com «homogeneïtzació», «deshistorització », «aïllament» o «endarreriment», pels quals s’eliminen o es passen per alt coneixements i contribucions d’acadèmics/ques «no angloamericans/es», de manera que queden «fora de traducció». Finalment, l’article se centra en el debat sobre el desenvolupament de les geografies de les sexualitats i de gènere/feministes en la geografia dels països de la CEE i s’il·lustren els reptes que encara tenen els/les acadèmics/ques de diferents contextos institucionals i nacionals. Aquest article pretén mostrar el nostre/el seu reconeixement.

Mesmer, the placebo effect, and the efficacy paradox: lessons for evidence based medicine and complementary and alternative medicine

ABSTRACTDrawing on Isabelle Stengers’ discussion of the investigation of Mesmer and the starring role that experimentation plays in the rationality of modern medicine, this paper examines longstanding tensions between the realms of evidence based medicine and complementary and alternative medicine. While evidence based medicine often claims the ability to demarcate between pseudoscience and science, and complementary and alternative medicine often claims that evidence based medicine involves a kind of pseudo-logic that is unable to capture all forms of efficacy, I argue that both of these claims are unfounded. Unpacking the similarities between the commission that evaluated Mesmer’s magnetism and the structure of evidence based medicine, a significant gap is revealed in today’s system of knowledge production within medicine. In order to demonstrate the efficacy of a novel treatment within a randomized controlled trial, the treatment must be shown to improve clinical outcomes significantly more than a placebo control. However, some treatments improve clinical outcomes, but operate primarily through placebo responses, leading to effective medicines being labelled ‘ineffective’ within randomized controlled trials. This phenomenon is known as the efficacy paradox and appears most frequently in chronic conditions and in relation to complementary and alternative medicine, in which placebo responses are common. It is argued that the realms of evidence based medicine and complementary and alternative medicine have much to learn from each other, in that one has neglected the vast potential of producing clinical benefit through placebo responses, while the other has neglected the understanding that can be gained through experimentation.

A Importância da Gestão do Conhecimento para o Funcionamento dos Ecossistemas de Inovação

Innovation ecosystems can be understood as complex networks of interaction, where different agents organize to cooperate and compete in search of innovation. These arrangements can contribute significantly to the socio-economic and technological development of its members and the region in which they are inserted. Knowledge management, in turn, seeks to harness the resources generated by knowledge. The integration between research centers, universities, entrepreneurs and companies and other agents of an ecosystem of innovation ends up creating a flow of knowledge in these environments, and knowledge management is an indispensable strategy for these spaces. With the objective of the study of the art of the ecosystems of innovation, a search of scientific works with this subject was carried out and afterwards the categorization of the articles found. During the categorization, it was identified that a group of works dealt with the relationship between knowledge management and these environments. When analyzing and discussing these works, it was identified that knowledge management is essential for the maintenance of these spaces; in order to reduce the complexity of these environments; to the search of problems that generate inputs for the creation of innovation. Uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity are the main problems identified for the management of knowledge in these spaces. In knowledge management, one must seek the acquisition of information to reduce uncertainty, increase the capacity of knowledge absorption and the decomposition of knowledge to minimize complexity and, finally, to structure circulating knowledge to reduce ambiguity. In addition, the creation of a knowledge production system that contributes to the governance and the increase of the intellectual capital that supports the development of the ecosystems is emphasized. Finally, it was concluded that knowledge management is a fundamental strategy for the functioning of innovation ecosystems and the socio-economic and technological development of its members.

‘You can’t really control life’: dis/assembling self-knowledge with self-tracking technologies

ABSTRACTThis article investigates everyday self-tracking as a practice of self-related knowledge production. Self-tracking activities are commonly narrated and imagined as productive of self-related knowledge and insight into one’s life and bodily functions. However, by drawing from qualitative interviews with Finnish self-trackers, the article argues that in practice self-tracking also appears as prescriptive of uncertainty. The article shows how everyday self-tracking systems actively produce their functionality as systems of knowledge production in practice, as selves are extended in time and potentialized via the measurement-related affordances of self-tracking technologies. Thus, self-tracking often prescribes and animates repetitive behaviour of keeping track; of attaining experiences of self-knowledge and control which nevertheless remain elusive and flow away. The paper engages with Bernard Stiegler’s discussions on temporal flux and cinematic time in order to theorize self-tracking as a practice in and through which the self is produced and lived as perpetually ‘unfolding’.

State Socialist Experts in Transnational Perspective. East European Circulation of Knowledge during the Cold War (1950s–1980s): Introduction to the Thematic Issue

State socialist experts were at the center of Eastern Europe’s internationalization from the mid-1950s until 1989. They acted as intermediaries between their states and other national, regional, and international environments. The contributions integrate national milieus within broader frameworks mostly circumscribed by inter- and nongovernmental specialized organizations (the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; International Theater Institute, or the un Commission on Population and Development). The issue is an innovative initiative to identify within four fields (economy, demography, theatre, and historical studies) state socialist experts’ contributions to international debates and institution building. We argue that these groups were fundamentally characterized by their transnational dynamism. The resultant forms of mobility and transfer resituate specific systems of knowledge production from Eastern Europe within the larger story of postwar globalization. The collection also includes an anthropological study about the internationalization trajectories of lower-ranked professionals and the resilience of their expertise ethics after 1989. Socialist experts’ mobilities can be circumscribed at the intersection of multiple phenomena that defined the postwar: national settings’ impact on inter- and supra-state interactions; Cold War politics; the tribulations of international organizations; and global trends determined by the accelerating interconnectedness of the world and decolonization. Our findings de-center established narratives about the Cold War and they show how representatives from the East participated in and sometimes determined the conditions of Europeanizing and globalizing trends in their respective fields within particular organizations.