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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 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used Bourdieusian social theory and Tomlinson's graduate capital model to better understand the meaning and development of employability, finding that students understood employability goes beyond simple transferable skills.
Abstract: Employability is a set of skills needed to get a job. There is an expectation that students will exit education having developed employability skills in order to be successful in their chosen occupation. It remains therefore an important topic for research and it covers many areas from policies in Higher Education (HE) through to ideologies, practices and models to embed employability within the curriculum. The aim of this study was to discover the undergraduate student voice with respect to employability. It used Bourdieusian social theory and Tomlinson’s graduate capital model to better understand the meaning and development of employability. Higher Education, government and employers are all grappling with the problems of employability for graduates and this study provided practical and academic contributions in this area. The thesis presents a literature review, drawing upon government policy, empirical and theoretical academic studies to contribute to the research of employability. The study took place within the business school of the University of Salford, located within the North West of England. Questions were posed in focus groups and interviews to undergraduate students undertaking a core professional development module. Responses to the student views were then collected via interviews with HE staff and employer stakeholders. A constructivist grounded theory method was applied across this study capturing various dimensions of opinion regarding employability. The student view of employability was grounded in the data and the method allowed the researcher to construct the reality as seen from the perspective of the students. The findings of this thesis are that students had a deep understanding of the meaning of employability though its development was considered to be challenging. In contrast to some of the literature, students understood employability goes beyond simple listing of ‘transferable’ skills. This thesis uncovered a ‘placement dilemma’ whereby students understood the value of work experience for developing employability but due to various factors, uncertainty prevented some students from pursuing this avenue. Furthermore confidence, a form of psychological capital was found to underpin the meaning of employability for students (Rattray, 2016; Tomlinson, 2017a). Within the theoretical framing for this thesis it has therefore been concluded that psychological capital is found to be a key enabler for the development of employability. Responses to students’ views by employers and staff suggested that continuous development is also a key element of employability. Hence this thesis advocates that HE and stakeholders should use continuous development and psychological capital to form a revised definition of employability contributing to an improved understanding.

11 citations


Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

  • ...The role of capital is also expressed in the work of Bourdieu (2004), in his research-based tools for socio-analysis....

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01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the experiences of international PhD students and their supervisors in the Swedish university were examined, and what it means to be neither an immigrant nor tourist in a foreign country.
Abstract: Analysing what it means being neither immigrant nor tourist in a foreign country, this thesis looks at the experiences of international PhD students and their supervisors in the Swedish university ...

11 citations


Cites background or methods from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

  • ...The ‘main’ field is the field of forces which is conserved and transformed by the field of struggles 4 (Bourdieu, 2004:33)....

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  • ...Throughout my fieldwork, I encountered multiple fields within which international PhD students navigate: the social fields of Uppsala in general, the international field of science (Bourdieu, 2004), and the field of higher education in Sweden (Bourdieu, 1988)....

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  • ...Both authors aim to explain what science is and how it is produced (Latour, 1987; Bourdieu, 2004)....

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  • ...However if a person is able to navigate two or more fields with different doxa, he or she can be considered having a cleft habitus (Bourdieu, 2004:111)....

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  • ...Additionally Bourdieu claimed that if any habitus is conscious, it is the scientific habitus, which uses methods and other tools consciously to do research (Bourdieu, 2004:40), which is also touched upon in this thesis....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors make an attempt to develop a Bourdieusian approach to Social Network Analysis (SNA) and regression analysis, despite Bourdieu's explicit rebuttal to these methodological schools.
Abstract: Bourdieu carved out a distinctive analytical niche for his reflexive sociology. His epistemological tool of field analysis, sometimes coupled with statistical correspondence analysis, is particularly powerful when deciphering the matrix of objective structures and subjective structures within social spaces (field) where agents vie for positions (capital), strategise dispositions (habitus), and negotiate practices. When grappling with the inner workings of the social world and the logic of practice within the social world, Bourdieu favours his field theory over network theory and considers correspondence analysis to be superior to regression analysis. In this paper, I argue that Bourdieu’s canonical theory-laden analytical framework does not exclude other methodological approaches. Indeed, Bourdieu himself argues against ‘methodological monotheism’. I therefore make an attempt to develop a Bourdieusian approach to Social Network Analysis (SNA) and regression analysis, despite Bourdieu’s explicit rebuttal to these methodological schools. To this end, I first review Bourdieu’s rebuttal to network analysis and regression analysis. I then tentatively incorporate SNA and regression into Bourdieu’s analytical framework. This is followed by an example of using SNA and regression in Bourdieusian research conducted in a Chinese educational context. In this vein, I engage with a Bourdieusian rebuttal to Bourdieu’s rebuttal.

10 citations


Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

  • ...Following Bourdieu’s ‘methodological polytheism’ (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 101), in this paper, I argue that Bourdieu’s canonical theory-laden analytical framework does not exclude other methodological approaches....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors traces Charles Taylor's "secularity three" outside the West, finding that it was present among poets but not among novelists in twentieth-century Turkey, and explains this contrast between these two very similar groups by using network analysis, highlighting the greater availability, in poetry networks, of nonpious gatekeepers to aspiring pious actors.
Abstract: This article traces Charles Taylor’s “secularity three” outside the West, finding that it was present among poets but not among novelists in twentieth-century Turkey. It explains this contrast between these two very similar groups by using network analysis, highlighting the greater availability, in poetry networks, of nonpious gatekeepers to aspiring pious actors, following an initial long period of religious conflict. In order to benefit from association with these gatekeepers, pious actors learned to split their selves into two, committing themselves simultaneously to their absolutist faith and to its practical impossibility in a secular age. If and when the prospect of cross-fertilization waned, however, they would effortlessly switch back to their earlier subjectivity. Pious novelists, by contrast, underwent no such learning process. Based on these findings, I argue, first, that the study of the secular must pay greater attention to religious conflict and the ways in which it is resolved, and second, that it must consider balancing its longue-duree approach with an eventful focus.

10 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the main currents and contribu- tions of constructivist approach in science and technology studies are summarized, and the authors consider that epistemological agnos- ticism or atheism of the sociology of science to be a limitation in the constructivism approach.
Abstract: The article summarises the main currents and contribu- tions of constructivist approach in Science and Technology Studies. This approach portrays science as a collective enterprise. It shows that competing claims about nature indicate that techno-scientific evidence is flexible. The paper considers that epistemological agnos- ticism or atheism of the sociology of science to be a limitation in the constructivist approach. The paper notes that, paradoxically, in order to benefit from the insights of the constructivist approach an episte- mological commitment is needed. This commitment requires admit- ting that it is possible and necessary to know what evidence is more robust, and what methodologies and theories are more powerful.

10 citations