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Science of Science and Reflexivity

01 Jan 2004-
TL;DR: Bourdieu's "Science of Science and Reflexivity" as mentioned in this paper argues that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit.
Abstract: Over the last four decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died in 2002, he was considered to be a thinker on a par with Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan a public intellectual as influential to his generation as Sartre was to his. "Science of Science and Reflexivity" will be welcomed as a companion volume to Bourdieu's now seminal "An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology." In this posthumous work, Bourdieu declares that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit. Science thus endangered can become detrimental to mankind. The line between pure and applied science, therefore, must be subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny. Bourdieu's goals in "Science of Science and Reflexivity" are to identify the social conditions in which science develops in order to reclaim its objectivity and to rescue it from relativism and the forces that might exploit it. In the grand tradition of scientific reflections on science, Bourdieu provides a sociological analysis of the discipline as something capable of producing transhistorical truths; he presents an incisive critique of the main currents in the study of science throughout the past half century; and he offers a spirited defense of science against encroaching political and economic forces. A masterful summation of the principles underlying Bourdieu's oeuvre and a memoir of his own scientific journey, "Science of Science and Reflexivity" is a capstone to one of the most important and prodigious careers in the field of sociology."
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: The authors examines the contemporary debate between supporters of culture-based education and the social realist argument for a curriculum that takes children away from the immediate world of experience, that is, "culture" and argues that a child's experience may be an important pedagogical resource for entry into the world of disciplinary-based curricular knowledge.
Abstract: This chapter examines the contemporary debate between supporters of culture-based education and the social realist argument for a curriculum that takes children away from the immediate world of experience, that is, “culture”. Arguing that the dilemma for a culture-based curriculum—and the multicultural politics of which it is a part—is that it excludes children of minority groups from the disciplinary knowledge which would afford them entry into the world of abstract, objective thought containing the potential for criticism of the very world from which the child comes. The argument also recognises, however, that a child’s experience may be an important pedagogical resource for entry into the world of disciplinary-based curricular knowledge.

1 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the scope for New Public Services rather than New Public Management (NPM) to reinforce social rights and the degree to which replacing a command-and-control model of hospital management with health professionals as "hybrid" managers may enable both social efficiency in service delivery and enhance the wellbeing and fulfilment at work of health service employees.
Abstract: New Public Management (NPM) in health services has proved increasingly controversial. It has been criticised as Weberian in terms of authoritarian hierarchy, Fordist in its obsession with gaining economies of scale and Taylorist in its surveillance of performance criteria. It has assumed a production and output logic derived from manufacturing, whereas both private and public services differ from this. Nonetheless there recently has been a resurgence of interest in what can be learned in terms of lean management in manufacturing, both in terms of economies of scope rather than scale and of multi-tasked and multi-skilled hybrid management at operational levels. This chapter seeks to inform this by distinguishing operational and organisational logics within institutions and by evaluating alternative models of governance of health, including the scope for New Public Services rather than NPM to reinforce social rights and the degree to which replacing a command-and-control model of hospital management with health professionals as ‘hybrid’ managers may enable both social efficiency in service delivery and enhance the wellbeing and fulfilment at work of health service employees .

1 citations

Posted Content
30 Nov 2009
TL;DR: Recombining Kuhmann’s social systems theory and Giddens’ structuration theory of action, simulations of interaction, organization, and self-organization of intentional communication can be distinguished by using algorithms from the computation of anticipatory systems.
Abstract: Luhmann’s social systems theory and Giddens’ structuration theory of action share an emphasis on reflexivity, but focus on meaning along a divide between inter-human communication and intentful action as two different systems of reference. Recombining these two theories, simulations of interaction, organization, and self-organization of intentional communication can be distinguished by using algorithms from the computation of anticipatory systems. The self-organizing and organizing layers remain rooted in the double contingency of the human encounter which provides the variation. Organization and self-organization of communication are reflexive upon and therefore reconstructive of each other. Using mutual information in three dimensions, the imprint of meaning processing in the modeling system on the historical organization of uncertainty in the modeled system can be measured. This is shown empirically in the case of intellectual organization as “structurating” structure in the textual domain of scientific articles.

1 citations


Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

  • ...Observable behavior and facts in the social domain cannot be studied only as data input for analysis, but also as events which could have been shaped differently (Bourdieu, 2004)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue against the analisisis instrumental of remesas, arguing that transacciones are manifestaciones of relationships that exist between the actores of transaccions and not reducidas by a modelo that trata a los actores as aislados.
Abstract: El articulo describe como las remesas han sido presentadas en textos de ciencias sociales. Los cientistas sociales, de forma reiterada, han vinculado las discusiones sobre remesas con discusiones sobre desarrollo. Muchas observaciones sobre las remesas se han planteado en el marco de modelos teoricos cuyo proposito principal ha sido verificar esos mismos modelos de pensamiento. Las remesas se han presentado como algo significativo por sus efectos instrumentales en la economia, la sociedad y/o el sistema politico. De esta manera, los discursos sobre remesas pueden revelar tanto la percepcion que se tiene sobre las remesas como los puntos de vista intrinsecos sobre como deberia de ser el mundo. Las remesas han sido consideradas a la luz de modelos macro y la teoria de sistemas. De esta manera, han sido desvinculadas de las personas que son, de hecho, quienes envian y reciben este dinero. En este articulo se argumenta contra el analisis instrumental de las remesas. El ”flujo” de las remesas es regulado y aprobado de manera significativa por representaciones morales vinculadas a estructuras como el hogar, la familia y el genero. Las transacciones son manifestaciones de las relaciones personales que existen entre los actores de la transaccion y no pueden ser reducidas a un modelo que trata a los actores como individuos aislados

1 citations


Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

  • ...…use its own weapons and techniques to understand and check itself to increase its chances of attaining truth by increasing the cross-controls and provide the principles of a technical critique, which make it possible to keep closer watch of the factors capable of biasing research (Bourdieu, 2004)....

    [...]

  • ...…of the “zeitgeist”, they carry ways of thinking and prejudices that they owe to their social origin, the social position they have acquired, and their specific roles as intellectuals, but also to the social order within their own scientific community and their positions within it (Bourdieu, 2004)....

    [...]

  • ...The sociologists are subjects to the ebbs and flows of the “zeitgeist”, they carry ways of thinking and prejudices that they owe to their social origin, the social position they have acquired, and their specific roles as intellectuals, but also to the social order within their own scientific community and their positions within it (Bourdieu, 2004)....

    [...]

  • ...To use its own weapons and techniques to understand and check itself to increase its chances of attaining truth by increasing the cross-controls and provide the principles of a technical critique, which make it possible to keep closer watch of the factors capable of biasing research (Bourdieu, 2004)....

    [...]