It is no longer easy to adopt deterministic explanations of scholarly communication, technology or the information chain. Complex and reflexive relations have built up between the substantive and methodological literatures relevant to these topics. This thesis aims to explore these relations with reference to two sets of interviews, one with academic researchers and the other with information professionals. These interviews were conducted in 1998-9 during the FIDDO Project, a part of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee ‘Electronic Libraries Programme’.
Two major theoretical perspectives are employed to support two analytic methodologies. The first is social constructivism, which is represented methodologically in the thesis by discourse analysis. The second is actor-network theory, which is represented methodologically by co-word analysis. Both of these approaches are engaged in questions of relativism and realism in social explanation.
The implementation of each of the methodologies involves innovative moves. The discourse analysis is focused on personal deixis (self-reference) located by pronoun-use, and on interest management. The co-word analysis is adapted from a scientometric technique and supplemented by the use of categorical definitions of the three topics. Each methodology is employed to analyse both sets of interviews. The four resulting sets of findings are presented in terms of the boundaries apparent between the three topical concepts.
The boundaries between scholarly communication, technology and the information chain are found to vary, for example according to the identities of the interviewees responsible for the data. They also vary according to the methodology employed. Discourse analysis of interviews with information professionals suggests that the idea of technology is deployed as a dual repertoire, consisting of empowerment and automation, and that the pattern of this deployment is one constituent of the contested boundaries between the three topics. Co-word analysis of the same interviews suggests that an important focus of the boundaries is around the idea of electronic journals. Discourse analysis of interviews with academic researchers also reveals use of the dual technology repertoire, but in addition suggests that the category of formal scholarly communication acts to legitimate the interests of researchers. Co-word analysis of the same interviews suggests that a number of models of document access were in play, including those based on the library, on paper and on documents. The implications of these substantive analyses include that studies based on ‘user needs’ or the ‘impact of technology’ could benefit from an analysis of how such topics are constructed in particular accounts.
Finally, the question is addressed as to the extent that the results of the discourse and the co-word analyses (of the same data) are compatible so that they can be meaningfully synthesised. That is, do the two approaches give rise to outcomes that have similar epistemological status? The question is answered ‘empirically’ with reference to the issue of reflexivity as it is configured in the two approaches, and it is confirmed that the two types of outcome are not compatible due to profound differences in the positions adopted by their respective informing theories. The methodological implications of this include that those engaged in relativist research practice need to be aware the ways in which epistemological and reflexive issues are relevant to their actions.

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Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

Scholarly communication the information chain and technology: analyses and reflexions

Abstract This article addresses the relationship between experience and belief, focusing on the role of science in the debate between secular Humanism and Christianity. It suggests that the possibility of appropriating experience to belief – taking action to bring experience into line with belief – distinguishes spiritual belief from systematic belief (in which the object is independent of beliefs about it); but that the boundary between these two forms of belief is itself a matter of (metaphysical) belief. Understanding science and religion, Humanism and Christianity in relationship to systematic and spiritual belief-structures helps to bring clarity to the debate.

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Assimilation, Accommodation and Appropriation: Three attitudes to truth in science and religion

This essay examines the 'war' of science and culture in the twentieth century – its terms in part fixed by C. P. Snow's influential polemic on 'The two cultures' in the 1950s – which continued into the 1990s with a series of intellectual skirmishes sometimes referred to as the 'science wars'. Military metaphors can quickly become apocalyptic on both sides. Rather than contributing to this overheated rhetoric, I suggest instead that we need to acknowledge the interdependencies of scientific and cultural discourse. To that end, a reading of science fiction and fictions in science is sketched out using models of networks and hybrid assemblages developed by French science theorist Bruno Latour.

The two cultures, or the end of the world as we know it

Contributors Foreword, AC Grayling. Acknowledgements Introduction, Robin Headlam-Wells and Johnjoe McFadden Part I: Is human nature written in our genes or in our books? 1. The biology of fiction, Steven Pinker 2. Literature, science and human nature, Ian McEwan Part II: Can science and literature collaborate to define human nature? 3. Literature and evolution, Joseph Carroll 4. Human nature: one for all and all for one?, Gabriel Dover Part III: What has biology got to do with the imagination? 5. The biology of the imagination: how the brain can both play with truth and survive a predator, Simon Baron Cohen 6. Biology and imagination: The role of culture, Catherine Belsey 7. The limits of imagination, Rita Carter Part IV: Do we need a theory of human nature to tell us how to act? 8. Human nature or human difference?, Ania Loomba 9. What science can and cannot tell us about human nature, Kenan Malik 10. The cat, the chisel, and the grave, Philip Pullman.

Human nature : fact and fiction

W polskiej socjologii panuje szereg nieporozumień wokół teorii aktora-sieci (ANT). Świetnie obrazuje to tekst An Invasion of Tricksters. Niniejszy artykuł jest odpowiedzią na jego zarzuty. Ambicje naszego tekstu wykraczają poza ukazanie błędów interpretacyjnych i innych niedostatków tego artykułu. Przede wszystkim konfrontujemy tu rożne strategie korzystania przez socjologów z ustaleń filozoficznych i omawiamy ich przydatność naukową. Dodatkowo oferujemy własną, wewnętrzną krytykę ANT. Słowa kluczowe: teoria aktora-sieci; konstruktywizm; wojny o naukę; filozofia nauki

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Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

Citations

Scholarly communication the information chain and technology: analyses and reflexions

Assimilation, Accommodation and Appropriation: Three attitudes to truth in science and religion

The two cultures, or the end of the world as we know it

Human nature : fact and fiction

Chocholi taniec. O krytyce teorii aktora-sieci w An Invasion of Tricksters Michała Kaczmarczyka

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