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.
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 2006
TL;DR: The relationship between knowledge and management is yet shrouded in a fog of prophetic optimism, scepticism, or misunderstanding as mentioned in this paper, and the belief that knowledge is amenable to management revolves around the highly ideational concept of knowledge management.
Abstract: The belief that knowledge is amenable to management revolves around the highly ideational concept of Knowledge Management. The relationship between knowledge and management is yet shrouded in a fog of prophetic optimism, scepticism, or misunderstanding. The awareness that knowledge is indispensable and valuable to organizations has developed alongside the recognition that it escapes full understanding and control. What is more, management initiatives aimed at enhancing the value of knowledge may well be at odds with the social production mechanisms through which knowledge is constituted, and thus with knowledge quality itself. Drawing on growing scientific and societal appeals to develop a better understanding of how organizational mechanisms may enhance the economic status of knowledge, this dissertation explores the possible sphere of managerial influence with respect to knowledge. In view of the adoption of organizational mechanisms aimed at distinguishing and rewarding warranted from unwarranted knowledge, this exploration sheds light on the tensions, connections, prospects, and limitations that define this controversial relationship.
12 citations
TL;DR: In this article, actor-network theory is used to unravel the strands in a recent dispute about access to skeletons from a burial ground in Cape Town, and the authors show how circulating systems of references connect institutions, historical trajectories and differing sets of interests to form competing knowledge systems.
Abstract: What forms of knowledge have legitimacy in the contemporary university? By using Actor-Network Theory to unravel the strands in a recent dispute about access to skeletons from a burial ground in Cape Town. This paper shows how circulating systems of references connect institutions, historical trajectories and differing sets of interests to form competing knowledge systems. Rather than falling back on a defence of established disciplines and academic authority, it is argued that there are considerable benefits in recognising the importance and validity of knowledge generated 'in community', and in the course of political discourse. Rather than undermining truth, such an approach will result in both better science and more in formed community action.
12 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a theoretical reflection on the interplay among three concepts: organization, revolution, and diavolution is conducted, with the idea that the relationship can be framed as follows: organization is the katechon of revolution, whereas revolution is the eschaton of organization.
Abstract: Whereas revolution has often been viewed as contrary to organization, it in fact requires the overcoming of a present organization in the promise of achieving another superior organization. The article conducts a theoretical, rather than historical, reflection on the interplay among three concepts: organization, revolution, and diavolution. By exploring the modernist conception of revolution, the idea is advanced that the relationship can be framed as follows: organization is the katechon of revolution, whereas revolution is the eschaton of organization. The last part of the article introduces and discusses the concept of diavolution as an attempt to overcome the dichotomy between the subjectivist and the structuralist view both at the theoretical and the practical level. Diavolution is a style of inhabiting organizations that differs from the revolutionary one; a style of resistance that, although much more elusive and difficult to capture, may prove to be at the same time more human.
12 citations
Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"
...…are changed by revolution as the principles of coordination of facts themselves: ‘Revolutionaries, rather than simply playing within the limits of the game as it is, with its objective principles of price formation, transform the game and the principles of price formation’ (Bourdieu, 2004: 63)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze why physics teachers in upper secondary school choose to teach energy as they do, based on indicators of the teachers' cultural and economic assets, or capital, according to the work of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology.
Abstract: With environmental awareness in the societies of today, political steering documents emphasize that all education should include sustainable development. But it seems to be others competing ideals for teaching physics, or why do the physics teachers teach as they do? Physics teachers in secondary school in Sweden have generally, been focused on facts and a strong link with scientific theories and concepts. In general, the curriculum sway the teaching, a standard text book in physics is used, the teaching is organized according to the book and the teacher deals with and demonstrates typical tasks on the whiteboard and group work is common for special issues related to tasks from the textbook or elaborating. The aim with this study is to analyze why physics teachers in upper secondary school choose to teach energy as they do. Data emerging from a questionnaire focused on indicators of the teachers’ cultural and economic assets, or capital, according to the work of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology. Especially his concept on life styles and habitus provide a tool for analysis. We focus on physics teachers’ positions in the social space, dispositions and standpoints towards the ideal way to teach physics in upper secondary school (n = 268). Our response rate is 29 % and due to the low response rate a non response bias analysis was made. In our analysis we primarily sought for groups, with a cluster analysis based on the teaching practice, revealed common features for both what and how they teach and three different teaching types emerged. Then we reconstructed the group habitus of the teachers by analyzing dispositions and standpoints and related those to the specific polarization of sacred values, that is struggles about the natural order (doxa) in the social space of science education, which is a part of and has boundaries to dominating fields like the natural sciences and the political fields (curriculum etc.). Three teacher-groups’ habituses are described and analyzed; (1) The Manager of the Traditional, (2) The Challenger for Technology and (3) The Challenger for Citizenship. By constructing the habitus of the teachers in the different groups we can explain why teachers teach as they do and thereby make a contribution to both science education research and to teaching training, whereas reflective approach which also includes the individual dispositions and representations are paramount. In our paper we elaborate the grounds and implications of these findings further.
12 citations
Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"
...The social world is largely structured with social spaces inside fields, placed inside larger fields like a Russian doll (Bourdieu 2004)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the European Research Council (ERC) is described as an innerakademische Strategien der Legitimierung von Exzellenz durch wissenschaftliche Autonomie anknupft.
Abstract: Im Spannungsfeld zwischen vielfaltigen nationalen akademischen Traditionen und der globalen Hegemonie der USA in Wissenschaft und Forschung bemuht sich die Europaische Union um die Etablierung einer integrierten und eigendynamischen „European Research Area“. Die von politischer Seite geforderte „Europaisierung des Hochschulraums“ erscheint zunachst als eine vertikale Setzung der Rahmenprogramme der EU. Mit der Genese des „European Research Council“ (ERC) kommt es jedoch zur Etablierung einer europaischen akademischen Eigenlogik, die an innerakademische Strategien der Legitimierung von Exzellenz durch wissenschaftliche Autonomie anknupft. Der vom ERC adressierte Wettbewerb schliest an die meritokratischen Begrundungen wissenschaftlichen Erfolgs sowohl der Governance-nahen als auch der idealistisch-kritischen Elite an, die den ERC legitimierend aufgreifen und sich damit an der Konstruktion einer europaischen Konsekrationsinstanz beteiligen. So tragt das akademische Feld aktiv zu einer europaischen Ordnung bei, deren symbolische und materielle Integration uber Elitenwettbewerb, das Offnen nationaler Standortlogiken und durch den Primat des Okonomischen gekennzeichnet ist.
12 citations