Science of Science and Reflexivity

Book•

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.

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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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Journal Article•DOI•

Emergence a la Systems Theory: Epistemological Totalausschluss or Ontological Novelty?

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Poe Yu-ze Wan¹•Institutions (1)

National Sun Yat-sen University¹

01 Jun 2011-Philosophy of the Social Sciences

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine Luhmann's, Bunge's and others' views on emergence and argue that their epistemological construal of emergence in terms of Totalausschluss (total exclusion) is both o...

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Abstract: In this article, I examine Luhmann’s, Bunge’s and others’ views on emergence, and argue that Luhmann’s epistemological construal of emergence in terms of Totalausschluss (total exclusion) is both o...

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40 citations

Book Chapter•DOI•

Academic capitalism and the geopolitics of knowledge

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Anssi Paasi¹•Institutions (1)

University of Oulu¹

14 Aug 2015

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the debates on the Anglo-American/Anglophone hegemony in human and political geography and on the dominance of English language that arose some 15 years ago and evaluate the roles of broader material/ideological/political processes, geopolitics of knowledge, and the forms of symbolic capital in shaping such politics.

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Abstract: This chapter problematizes the globalization of academia, research cultures and the related existing forms of hegemony. The key focus is on the debates on the Anglo-American/Anglophone hegemony in human and political geography and on the dominance of English language that arose some 15 years ago. This debate is evaluated to shape both the roles of broader material/ideological/political processes, geopolitics of knowledge, and the forms of symbolic capital in shaping such politics. Special emphasis is on the making and internationalization of political geographic knowledge.

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39 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Fiction and reality of mobility in Africa

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Francis B. Nyamnjoh¹•Institutions (1)

University of Cape Town¹

09 Nov 2013-Citizenship Studies

TL;DR: The authors argue that mobility is more appropriately studied as an emotional, relational and social phenomenon as reflected in the complexities, contradictions and messiness of the everyday realities of encounters informed by physical and social mobility.

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Abstract: This article draws on rich ethnographies and ethnographic fiction depicting mobile Africans and their relationships to the places and people they encounter to argue that mobility is more appropriately studied as an emotional, relational and social phenomenon as reflected in the complexities, contradictions and messiness of the everyday realities of encounters informed by physical and social mobility. The current dominant approach to studying and relating to mobile Africans is problematic. Nationals, citizens and locals in communities targeted by African mobility are instinctively expected to close ranks and fight off the influx of barbarians who do not quite belong and must be ‘exorcised’ so that ‘insiders’ do not lose out to this particular breed of ‘strangers’, ‘outsiders’ or ‘demons’, perceived to bode little but inconvenience and savagery. If and when allowed in, emphasis is on the needs, priorities and convenience of their reluctant hosts, who tend to go for the wealthy, the highly professionally ski...

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39 citations

Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

...Hierarchies in Immaculate’s world are not that dissimilar to hierarchies in the world of knowledge (Bourdieu 2004, pp. 18–24, Connell 2007), a situation which calls for greater accommodation and conviviality among competing perspectives andwaysof knowing....
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...Representations end up engendering their own habitus, and as homo academicus, we often are far more powerful than we imagine, in the production and reproduction of social reality in our quest for cultural capital and prestige (Bourdieu 1996, 2004)....
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Journal Article•

Internationalization Through Americanization: The Expansion of the International Communication Association's Leadership to the World

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Thomas Wiedemann¹, Michael Meyen¹•Institutions (1)

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich¹

29 Feb 2016-International Journal of Communication

TL;DR: Based on Bourdieu's concepts of sociology, the authors explores the International Communication Association's internationalization effort involving recruiting non-U.S. scholars into top positions and shows that despite the expansion of ICA's leadership, the field's power pole is still a U.S.-centered enterprise.

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Abstract: Based on Bourdieu’s concepts of sociology, this article explores the International Communication Association’s internationalization effort involving recruiting non-U.S. scholars into top positions. Therefore, it examines both the habitus and the capital of the 26 communication researchers from outside the United States who have been distinguished as ICA presidents and fellows. The study contributes to the discipline’s reflexivity and shows that despite the expansion of ICA’s leadership, the field’s power pole is still a U.S.-centered enterprise. Today, ICA’s international leadership is located in world regions closely linked to the United States and educated at U.S. universities or heavily influenced by North American research traditions, even if it includes a numerous contributions from other associations and alternative approaches. Consequently, this internationalization hardly changed ICA but instead changed the world’s communication field. At least up to a certain extent, new perspectives are perceived at the discipline’s power pole. However, in return, national academic environments in U.S.-affiliated countries became Americanized, especially via ICA fellows serving as role models to get scientific capital. Thus, ICA’s efforts to expand its leadership are assumed to have an unintended effect of conserving the power structures in the field.

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38 citations

Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

...More concretely, it defines which questions, theories, and methods are regarded as legitimate (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), or which research area, which network, and which journal articles prove useful for those wishing to advance professionally (Bourdieu, 2004)....
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...…doubts remain whether these measures can overcome the “principal opposition” between dominant and dominated agents given the logic of reputation resulting from academic competitors’ recognition and the dynamics of power relations mixing with capital seeking by individual scholars (Bourdieu, 2004)....
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...According to Bourdieu (2004), an academic field is a social microcosm with hierarchies and constraints, “organized around the principal opposition” (p. 35) between dominant and dominated agents....
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...The French sociologist himself worked on the rules of academia, focusing particularly on its reflexivity (Bourdieu, 1975, 1988, 2004; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Park, 2014)....
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...…the field’s power pole are bounded to conserve the structures of the field; this is because they determine the conditions to participate in the game according to the field logic (Bourdieu, 2004), which has become part of their habitus and guides their evaluation of criteria for academic practice....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Virtual and Face-To-Face Academic Conferences: Comparison and Potentials

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Maria José Sá, Carlos Miguel Ferreira, Sandro Serpa

01 May 2019-Journal of Educational and Social Research

TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse several models of academic conferences, putting forth their advantages, limitations and potentials, and reasonably envision the importance and challenges to be faced in the near future, concluding that virtual conferences tend to take on an increasingly central role in this type of scientific dissemination, but without totally relegating the conference mode with face-to-face interaction.

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Abstract: Academic conferences have always been privileged spaces and moments for the dissemination of new scientific knowledge, as well as for social interaction and for the establishment and development of social networks among scientists. However, the virtual dimension of conferences, in which individuals are not physically present in the same place, begins to emerge as an increasingly used possibility, which implies a different framing of these scientific events. This paper seeks to comparatively analyse several models of academic conferences, putting forth their advantages, limitations and potentials. Furthermore, it also seeks to reasonably envision the importance and challenges to be faced in the near future. The analysis allows concluding that virtual conferences tend to take on an increasingly central role in this type of scientific dissemination, but without totally relegating the conference mode with face-to-face interaction. Moreover, there may be conferences that emerge as a hybrid between these two types of conferences, in an attempt to provide their main benefits to the various participants. However, the insufficient literature on this topic calls for the need to develop and deepen studies in this area that allow understanding this academic and social, but also economic phenomenon, in its broader implications.

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38 citations

Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

...Scientific communication, as a process of information production and transference, has a prominent social function of canonisation and categorisation (Bourdieu, 1997, 2001), with the emergence of policies of cognition developed by the agents with higher scientific capital....
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Science of Science and Reflexivity

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Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

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