Suchergebnisse

This is an article about the struggle for control of knowledge in a divided society. It starts off by describing Belgium as a consociational democracy — that is, a society organized around integrated pillars of society (Catholic, secular), each of which provides a wide range of services (educational, training, health, health insurance, social care, family planning, leisure) to 'its' people. This special politico-institutional arrangement inherited from the past, though it has evolved, still has profound implications for the way knowledge circulates (or not) and for the way it is used (or not) and perceived both within pillars and across the policy realm: the co-existence of distinct communities requires a form of discretion. The article then goes on to describe the specific incidents that occurred in the course of a recent research project: the authors' written reports produced unexpected effects. They try to make sense of these events by reflecting on how the specific Belgian context can affect and be affected by the production of knowledge about itself. Finally, they extend their reflection to other contexts by emphasizing the general process behind their observation: the transformative effect of knowledge. Knowledge needs to be understood as an act (of construction) that can affect its very object of analysis.

This is an article about the struggle for control of knowledge in a divided society. It starts off by describing Belgium as a consociational democracy — that is, a society organized around integrated pillars of society (Catholic, secular), each of which provides a wide range of services (educational, training, health, health insurance, social care, family planning, leisure) to 'its' people. This special politico-institutional arrangement inherited from the past, though it has evolved, still has profound implications for the way knowledge circulates (or not) and for the way it is used (or not) and perceived both within pillars and across the policy realm: the co-existence of distinct communities requires a form of discretion. The article then goes on to describe the specific incidents that occurred in the course of a recent research project: the authors' written reports produced unexpected effects. They try to make sense of these events by reflecting on how the specific Belgian context can affect and be affected by the production of knowledge about itself. Finally, they extend their reflection to other contexts by emphasizing the general process behind their observation: the transformative effect of knowledge. Knowledge needs to be understood as an act (of construction) that can affect its very object of analysis.

In current discourse the knowledge economy is viewed as the primary saviour of European competitiveness. By increasingly focusing on economic activities that utilise knowledge and innovation as the primary value-adding feature rather than cheap labour or available raw materials the EU should be able to increase its constantly weakening competitive position vis-à-vis North America and the fast growing economies in South and Southeast Asia. In the Lisbon European Council in March 2000, the European Union set a strategic goal for the next decade "of becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion". There is thus an implicit expectation that an increasingly knowledge-based economy would automatically generate larger economic growth and prosperity. Before trying to illuminate further on that issue there is however a need to establish exactly how the knowledge economy could be operationalised to quantifiable measures. A generally utilised option here is the division of the knowledge economy into input and output variables. The former could be characterised as the actual endowments of the knowledge production system and include such issues as the educational level and knowledge of the population, the social capital of the population, the amount of money invested into education or the number of students, investments into research and development (R&D), etc. Output variables could be regarded as measurements of the economic or other output of the regional research environment and include, in addition to direct economic measurements such as GDP, issues such as the number of issued patents or patent applications or employment within certain knowledge-intensive branches. Thus the main question here centres on the patterns of knowledge economy inputs and outputs in Europe and how are these distributed among the regions of the continent.

A exposição de arte contemporânea, desde o seu aparecimento no contexto museológico e curatorial, tem sofrido diversas alterações de carácter social, político e económico, influenciadas pelo período histórico e artístico onde se inserem. A figura do curador, igualmente em constante transformação, tem vindo a assumir um papel de mediador que estabelece e fortalece as relações entre os artistas, o público, os profissionais dos museus e outras instituições culturais. Recentemente, este conjunto de mudanças contribuiu para um diluir de fronteiras institucionais entre profissões, departamentos e disciplinas, que resultou na elaboração de projectos curatoriais baseados no trabalho colaborativo e em rede. É enquanto efeito destas inovações que a presente dissertação pretende estudar a exposição como produção de conhecimento. A análise dos projectos Academy (2004-2006), The New Model: An Inquiry (2011-2015) e Under the Clouds: From Paranoia to the Digital Sublime (2015), que tiveram lugar no contexto europeu dos últimos quinze anos, é o ponto de partida para uma reflexão sobre a exposição e a dimensão curatorial enquanto instrumentos de comunicação, colaboração e mediação. ; The exhibition of contemporary art, since its emergence within the museological and curatorial context, has experienced social, political and economic changes influenced by the historical and artistic in which they are inserted. The figure of the curator, equally in constant transformation, has come to play a mediating role that establishes and reinforces the relationships between artists, audience, museum professionals and other cultural institutions. Recently, this set of changes contributed to the dilution of institutional boundaries between professions, departments and subjects, which resulted in the elaboration of curatorial projects based on collaboration and networking. It is as an effect of these innovations that the present dissertation intends to study the exhibition as knowledge production. The analysis of the curatorial projects Academy (2004-2006), The New Model: An Inquiry (2011-2015) and Under the Clouds: From Paranoia to the Digital Sublime (2015), which took place in the European context of the last fifteen years, is the starting point for the study of the exhibition and the curatorial as instruments of communication, collaboration and mediation

Peace Research has long been criticized for the gap between the theory and practice of peace. This paper focuses on the role of knowledge production in peace research on knowledge-policy transfer. Delving into the mechanics of synergies developed between the academics and practitioners, the paper inquires how the multiparty interplay among the academia, practitioners and hybrid institutions acting as both research and practice-oriented bodies contributes to the knowledge production in Peace Studies. As related, the study examines following questions: How are the expectations of donors from the researchers and research institutions shaped? Do peace researchers tailor their research output in a specific manner that is expected by the donors to guarantee the flow of funding? And last but not least, how is the "knowledge" produced in the research integrated to the practice by the practitioners, local actors and facilitators? The paper relies on a field research conducted in Switzerland in 2019 and data collected through interviews with the representatives of certain peace research institutes, academics and donor institutions in Switzerland. Findings suggest that there is a general tendency among peace researchers to distinguish between the knowledge they produce for their academic agenda from the "handy" knowledge for the donor institutions. ; No sponsor

In the article we look at relational processes of engagement, negotiation and articulation of digital heritage knowledge production. By looking at creative reuse and remix of digital cultural heritage we focus on how those processes manifest at the intersection of established cultural institutions and people outside of these institutions. Two experimental arrangements are described that seek to understand how Human-Computer Interaction and design interventions might contribute to new forms of heritage knowledge production and collective memory-making by mobilizing infrastructuring interventions to question knowledge production, politics and ownership. We conclude by proposing that HCI can contribute to infrastructuring for collective knowledge production by supporting arrangements that open access to digital cultural heritage, open heritage knowledge and its practices, and reimagine authorship and ownership of contributions to heritage.

A preliminary version of this paper has been presented at the European Conference on Social Theory 'Knowledge and Society', organized by the Social Theory Research Network of the European Sociological Association. Madrid, 21-22 September, 2006. ; This paper examines knowledge resulting from applied sociology, namely from sociological research oriented towards resolving practical problems rather than providing new contributions to our understanding of social phenomena. Departing from James Coleman's analytical distinction between 'the world of discipline' and 'the world of action', I draw a conceptual framework which depicts the main dimensions of typical organizational arrangements for doing basic and applied sociological work. Secondly, I analyze applied sociology as a set of social and political conditions where research is produced. These conditions usually give rise to descriptions and, on occasions, to empirical generalizations, whereas results contrasting important theoretical hypotheses from a disciplinary point of view are produced less frequently. Thirdly, the article examines some specific mechanisms such as methodological decisions, the availability of resources and time constraints to explain why applied sociology most often produces this kind of cognitive results. Finally, effects related to cognitive and organizational divisions are addressed taking into account two processes in current research systems: the large amount of resources devoted to applied sociological research that result in non-theoretical and non-accumulative knowledge and the decoupling of disciplinary sociology from the practical world of policy making. ; Peer reviewed

The links between social protest and scientific research are complex and manifold. This article focuses on some of these connections, adopting a perspective on knowledge in which processes of knowledge production are located in all parts of society rather than being monopolised by academia. Drawing on the empirical example of the Port Vell conflict – a conflict about the the inner-city harbour tramsformation in Barcelona – moments of knowledge production and reproduction are examined. The article shows that social sciences develop and apply general concepts and theories which are adopted by activists. At the same time, protest movements contribute a specific form of alternative knowledge, e.g. about processes of exclusion following current urban transformation while also including situated and embodied consequences of these processes. This perspective on knowledge in various types challenges traditional forms of research. This article forms tentative ideas about alternative roles for researchers.

The focus of this study is on regional knowledge production activities in Europe, with special emphasis on the interplay between agglomeration and network effects. As increasingly considered in economic geography and regional science in the recent past, regional knowledge production activities, on the one hand, still remain geographically bounded; on the other hand, knowledge production activities have become increasingly interwoven and internationalized, emphasizing the crucial importance of region-external knowledge sources for a region's knowledge production capacity. The objective of the study is to estimate to what extent agglomeration and network effects influence knowledge production activities at the level of European regions. We use an extended regional knowledge production function framework as basis for the study, and derive a spatial Durbin model (SDM) relationship that can be used for empirical testing. The European coverage is achieved using 241 NUTS-2 regions covering the EU-25 member states. The dependent variable, knowledge production activity, is measured in terms of patent counts at the regional level in the time period 1998-2008, using patents applied at the European Patent Office (EPO). The independent variables include an agglomeration index, measured in terms of population density, and the regional participation intensity in the European network of R&D cooperation, measured in terms of the number of participations of a region in R&D joint ventures funded by the European Commission under the heading of the EU Framework programs (FPs). By this we are able to estimate the distinct effects of network participation and agglomeration on regional knowledge production. In our modeling framework, we further control for total regional R&D expenditures as widely used in regional knowledge production function frameworks and its empirical applications. In estimating the effects, we implement a panel version of the standard SDM that controls for spatial autocorrelation as well as individual heterogeneity across regions. The specification incorporates a spatial lag of the dependent variable as well as spatial lags of the independent variables. This allows for the estimation of spatial spillovers of agglomeration and network effects from neighboring regions by calculating scalar summary measures of impacts. The estimation results are expected to provide sketches of policy implications in a European and regional policy context.

This thesis examines the role of authority in the production of archaeological knowledge. It examines how fluid ideas and observations formed in the field become authoritative, factual, solid archaeological products, like scientific texts, reconstructions or museum displays. It asks, what makes a person, a thing or an account of history something that is authoritative? What makes someone an authority on the past? What is archaeological authority? This thesis deconstructs and exposes authority in archaeological practice. It targets how practitioners of archaeology actively enact, construct and implement authority in the process of producing knowledge. Formal representations of the past rely heavily on an underlying notion of the 'authoritative account'. The entire process of reconstructing the past in archaeology is dependent on individuals and institutions existing as authorities, who actively or passively imply that artefacts, sites and final interpretations are 'authentic' or have 'fidelity' to the past. This study examines how authority and acts of legitimation are employed and distributed through the medium of science, and how they need to be actively performed in order to acquire and maintain status. This thesis not only argues that authority is embedded in every stage of the archaeological process, but importantly, it identifies how this authority manifests through the medium of scientific acts. This thesis is structured around two comparative case studies: one case of professional archaeology and one case of alternative archaeology. Both are archaeological sites that produce their own 'authoritative' accounts of the past through practices, publications and presentations. The first case is the professional archaeological project of Çatalhöyük in the Republic of Turkey, under the direction of Ian Hodder at Stanford University. This case offers insights about how the processes of inscription, translation and blackboxing establish and maintain authority in archaeological practice. It also addresses how physical and intellectual space, as well as issues of access in localised knowledge-producing social arenas, affect archaeological authority. The second case is the controversial pseudoarchaeological project in Visoko, Bosnia, commonly referred to as the Bosnian Pyramids. This project, under the direction of amateur archaeologist Semir Osmanagić, has successfully created an account of prehistory that has been received by the general Bosnian public as authoritative, despite objections by the professional archaeological community. This case demonstrates how authority can be constructed, mimicked and performed by drawing on academic arenas of scientific practice and by eager public participation. Specifically, this case study highlights the importance of socio-politics, authoritative institutions and performative behaviour in the construction of archaeological authority.

The links between social protest and scientific research are complex and manifold. This article focuses on some of these connections, adopting a perspective on knowledge in which processes of knowledge production are located in all parts of society rather than being monopolised by academia. Drawing on the empirical example of the Port Vell conflict – a conflict about the the inner-city harbour tramsformation in Barcelona – moments of knowledge production and reproduction are examined. The article shows that social sciences develop and apply general concepts and theories which are adopted by activists. At the same time, protest movements contribute a specific form of alternative knowledge, e.g. about processes of exclusion following current urban transformation while also including situated and embodied consequences of these processes. This perspective on knowledge in various types challenges traditional forms of research. This article forms tentative ideas about alternative roles for researchers. ; Die Verbindungen von Wissenschaft und Protest sind vielfältig. Der vorliegende Artikel hat zum Ziel, einige dieser Verknüpfungen genauer zu betrachten. Dabei nimmt er eine Perspektive auf Wissen ein, die Prozesse von Wissensproduktion in allen Teilen der Gesellschaft verortet sieht und nicht allein im akademischen Bereich. Am Fallbeispiel des Konfliktes um den innerstädtischen Yachthafen Port Vell in Barcelona werden Momente der Produktion und Reproduktion von Wissen in den Blick genommen. Während in der Wissenschaft Konzepte und Theorien, beispielsweise über Prozesse der Stadtentwicklung, entwickelt und angewendet werden, die Allgemeingültigkeit beanspruchen und auch von Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten aufgegriffen werden, können Protestbewegungen – wie im dargestellten Fallbeispiel – zu einer anderen Form von Wissen beitragen. Sie vermitteln nicht nur Kenntnisse über Exklusionsprozesse in der Folge von aktuellen Entwicklungen in der Stadt sondern auch über deren Konsequenzen und darüber, wie diese sich auf die Lage der Betroffenen auswirken. Diese neue Perspektive auf Wissen stellt traditionelle Formen des Forschens in Frage. Der Artikel wirft erste Ideen dazu auf, welche Rolle Protestforscherinnen und -forscher alternativ einnehmen können.

This Special Issue aims to reflect on knowledge co-production and transdisciplinarity, exploring the mutual interaction between water governance and water research. We do so with contributions that bring examples from diverse parts of the world: Bolivia, Canada, Germany, Ghana, Namibia, the Netherlands, Palestine, and South Africa. Key insights brought by these contributions include the importance of engaging the actors from early stages of transdisciplinary research, and the need for an in-depth understanding of the diverse needs, competences, and power of actors and the water governance system in which knowledge co-production takes place. Further, several future research directions are identified, such as the examination of knowledge backgrounds according to the individual and collective thought styles of different actors. Together, the eight papers included in this Special Issue constitute a significant step toward a better understanding of knowledge co-production and transdisciplinarity, with a common thread for being reflective and clear about their complexity, and the political implications and risks they pose for inclusive, plural and just water research and governance.

Regional economies are continuously evolving shifting from more traditional manufacturing toward more service-oriented production systems. Despite the increasing relevance of services, however, the analysis of innovation at the regional aggregate level has mainly focused on manufacturing, gathering the attention on the role of R&D expenditure as input in the production process and, in some cases, accounting for research-based knowledge externalities. In this paper the role of Knowledge Intensive Business Services is studied and their contribution to the regional aggregate innovation is evaluated. The aim is twofold. First is to provide insights on the role covered by KIBS as a second knowledge infrastructure. Second is to examine the extent to which KIBS operate as bridges between the general purpose analytical knowledge produced by scientific universities and more specific requirement of innovative firms. A role commonly acknowledged to KIBS is in fact that of knowledge transferors. If on the one side it is however clear to whom they transfer knowledge, their client firms, on the other it is not as clear from whom the knowledge is originally transferred. For this reason a major attention in this work is dedicated to scientific universities considered as a primary source of knowledge. Being this knowledge analytical and highly codified, it probably can be more easily accessed by nearby located firms having higher opportunities of research collaboration and less easily by firms located in different regions. It is argued that KIBS, in transferring knowledge from universities to firms, are therefore specially important in the latter case. To test hese hypothesis a knowledge production function is estimated for a sample of 200 EU NUTS II regions including also information of university research and KIBS concentration. Parameters are estimated using the heteroschedasticity-consistent G2SLS estimator for spatial models and the evidence suggests that the contribution of KIBS to regional innovation is considerable. In fact accounting for the knowledge embedded in business services can considerably contribute to explain the cross-regional variation in innovative activities. Furthermore it is find that the KIBS contribution is more sizeable in regions in which there are not scientific universities. The highlighted results have important policy implications asking to rethink to how much effective an R&D-centered innovation strategy could be, at least in some regions.

This article develops the argument that a 'knowledge economy,' despite its cheerful optimism, is also an elegant incarnation of the demise of Western economies. An analysis of policy documents, research statements, and national accounts reveals this paradoxical coexistence of anxiety and progress in the discourse on knowledge economies. While the concept is often hailed as a temporal concept (superseding other forms of economic production), this article argues that a knowledge economy is best understood as a spatial concept – it is a way of contending with global reorganizations of production. This spatial approach is elaborated to tackle three paradoxes. (1) A knowledge economy enfolds defeat with progress. (2) A knowledge economy downplays the importance of industrial labor and simultaneously depends on it to materialize its ideas. (3) While seemingly intangible and ephemeral, a knowledge economy is fixed in place in national economies through government and corporate policy (including through the emergent phenomenon of 'knowledge-adjusted gross domestic products'). A spatial approach provides a view of the tenuous global interconnections and specific conditions that prop up a knowledge economy, and shows how the concept is mobilized to redraw the map so that endangered economies can regain their challenged sense of centrality in a world economy.

We analyse inter-regional research collaboration as measured by scientific publications and patents with multiple addresses, covering 1316 NUTS3 regions in 29 European countries. The estimates of gravity equations show the effects of geographical and institutional distance on research collaboration. We also find evidence for the existence of elite structures between excellence regions and between capital regions. The results suggest that current EU science policy to stimulate research collaboration is legitimate, but doubt the compatibility between EU science policy and EU cohesion policy.