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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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Dissertation
01 Jan 2020
TL;DR: Thesis (Combined MPsych (Clin) & PhD) as mentioned in this paper, University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2020, Section 7.1.2.1,
Abstract: Thesis (Combined MPsych (Clin) & PhD) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2020
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article , the state exercises symbolic violence by transforming one arbitrary cultural standpoint in social space into a universal standard, or a taken-for-granted "doxa," against which other cultural positions can only come off as deficient.
Abstract: While cultural sociology has recently made a comeback in research on social inequality both in the context of poverty studies and studies of immigrant integration, it has rarely investigated how particular constructions of the problem of socioeconomic mobility are themselves culturally situated. The article addresses this neglect by investigating the problematization of disadvantaged lives within the relational framework of Bourdieu's cultural theory of the state. Here, the state exercises symbolic violence by transforming one arbitrary cultural standpoint in social space into a universal standard, or a taken-for-granted "doxa," against which other cultural positions can only come off as deficient. The article extends this perspective by addressing the role of official statistics in this process. Taking Germany's official monitoring of the socioeconomic integration of immigrants as its case and drawing from document analysis, interviews, ethnographic observation, and data from the German General Social Survey, the article shows how such statistical instruments of the welfare state in fact tacitly universalize a model of the good life particular to civil servants, the very constructors of the monitors, as a benchmark for immigrant integration.
Posted ContentDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the gap between strategy research and management practice cannot be resolved just by paying more attention to what strategists really do, and they argue that practice-based scholars who put forward such a view might lack an awareness for their necessarily "scholastic view" and that such research is in danger of producing knowledge that might neither be practically relevant nor even contribute to the advancement of management science.
Abstract: It has variously been argued that by focussing on ‘what people do in relation to strategy’ strategy research would become relevant to practitioners. This paper puts forth the argument that the gap between strategy research and management practice cannot be resolved just by paying more attention to what strategists really do. Drawing on a Bourdieusian perspective we argue that practice-based scholars who put forward such a view might lack an awareness for their necessarily ‘scholastic view’. This leads to two related fallacies: the fallacy of epistemic doxa (i.e. the unawareness of the scholastic logic) and the fallacy of scholastic ethnocentrism (i.e. the projection of the scholastic logic into the object of research). As a consequence, such research is in danger of producing knowledge that might neither be practically relevant nor even contribute to the advancement of management science. In order to avoid these fallacies researchers need to develop a particular kind of reflexivity by engaging in so-called ‘participant objectivation’. Research based on this reflexivity also has greater chances of having an impact on management praxis as it is likely to resonate with the practical logic of the practitioners. Yet, the actual transformation of academic knowledge into practical knowledge has to be treated as the accomplishment of the practitioner, which is beyond the reach and control of the academic field.
Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors have argued for re-thinking the research object of educational administration as the organizing of schooling in a particular space and time, and they have interrogated "leadership" as a label in the scientific enterprise.
Abstract: In the previous chapters I have interrogated ‘leadership’ as a label in the scientific enterprise and argued for re-thinking the research object of educational administration as the organising of schooling in a particular space and time.
TL;DR: This article analyzed all papers presented at the ANPEC Brazilian Economics National Meetings from 2013 to 2019 using topic modeling and Kullback-Leibler divergence to measure novelty and resonance.
Abstract: How do new ideas emerge in academic contexts and what forces determine which ideas get selected and which are forgotten? We analyze all papers presented at the ANPEC Brazilian Economics National Meetings from 2013 to 2019 using topic modeling and Kullback-Leibler divergence to measure novelty and resonance. In contrast to simply counting citations or reference combinations, these methods explore the Shannon information in the actual texts to detect the rise of new patterns and whether these patterns persist once they have been established. We find that novelty is highly correlated with transience so that most new ideas are quickly forgotten. However, of the ideas that persist, those that are more novel have higher impact. We show that our text-based measure of impact is correlated with subsequent citations.