ISA E-Bulletin, Number 15, March 2010 Contents From the Editor Featured Essays Mapping Sociology's International Pattern of Knowledge Production (original) (raw)
Related papers
The world-systemic dynamics of knowledge production
Formamente, 2019
This paper expands the framework of the Bourdieusian field theory using a world-system theoretical perspective to analyze the global system of social sciences, or what might be called the world-system of knowledge production. The analysis deals with the main agents of the world-system of social sciences, and it also investigates the core-like and periphery-like processes of the system. Our findings affirm that a very characteristic center-periphery structure exists in global social sciences, with a few hegemonic countries and distinctly peripheral world regions. Our analysis not just presents empirical data on power structures in global social sciences but it also offers meaningful typologies for analysis of the roles different world regions play in maintaining the world-system of global knowledge production. The paper also proposes a three-dimensional model by which both geographical and social/institutional center-periphery relations may be analyzed.
Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences. Made in Circulation
Despite the success of the intellectual wave known as the 'postcolonial turn', or rather precisely because of its achievements, the question of how it is possible to go on making social sciences within an epistemological context in which those historical assumptions carried by modern scientific traditions have been challenged remains highly problematic. Rather, it seems like both postcolonial and social science scholars have opted for separating off waters in order to defend one of those sides' values and practices. Few exceptions can be recalled into this picture, and the volume Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences. Made in Circulation is a refreshing and indeed necessary approach whose aim is precisely to build bridges for such an intellectual gap.
The two books reviewed in this essay mark a milestone in the turn to taking the social sciences as an object of research, compiling research about the production and use of knowledge in the social sciences, and setting an agenda to research the social. Both of them frame social knowledge in much broader terms, looking beyond the mere production of social scientific knowledge in the academic world and including social knowledge produced in think tanks and by knowledge professionals. However important the 'turn to practice' is to study the production of the social sciences, it seems to systematically leave aside one dimension that is crucial in the shaping of practices both in the social sciences and in the sciences: the labor relations of academic knowledge production.
In what sense, then, can it be said that contemporary societies are becoming more and more dependent on the production, dissemination and use of knowledge? Are we witnessing a change from a social world in which 'things' simply 'happened' to a world in which things are more and more 'made' to happen? Finally, what is the nature of the linkage between social transformations, the globalisation process and knowledge in the modern world? (1) I will discuss the place of knowledge in prominent social theories of modern society as well as the place of knowledge in major policy efforts that proceed from the assumption that knowledge plays a key role for large scale social transformations; (2) I will advance a sociological conception of knowledge and (3) I will apply it to the social analysis of change in modern society.
Journal of World-Systems Research, 2019
This paper expands the framework of the Bourdieusian field theory using a world-system theoretical perspective to analyze the global system of social sciences, or what might be called the world-system of knowledge production. The analysis deals with the main agents of the world-system of social sciences, and it also investigates the core-like and periphery-like processes of the system. Our findings affirm that a very characteristic center-periphery structure exists in global social sciences, with a few hegemonic countries and distinctly peripheral world regions. Our analysis not just presents empirical data on power structures in global social sciences but it also offers meaningful typologies for analysis of the roles different world regions play in maintaining the world-system of global knowledge production. The paper also proposes a three-dimensional model by which both geographical and social/institutional center-periphery relations may be analyzed.
International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 2007
In what sense, then, can it be said that contemporary societies are becoming more and more dependent on the production, dissemination and use of knowledge? Are we witnessing a change from a social world in which 'things' simply 'happened' to a world in which things are more and more 'made' to happen? Finally, what is the nature of the linkage between social transformations, the globalisation process and knowledge in the modern world? (1) I will discuss the place of knowledge in prominent social theories of modern society as well as the place of knowledge in major policy efforts that proceed from the assumption that knowledge plays a key role for large scale social transformations; (2) I will advance a sociological conception of knowledge and (3) I will apply it to the social analysis of change in modern society.
Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences A critical assessment
This article reviews the compelling volume edited by Wiebke Keim, Ercüment Çelik, Christian Ersche and Veronika Wöhrer Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences: Made in Circulation (2014) to critically assess some explanations of the emergence and the development the global regime of knowledge production and circulation of knowledge within it. While praising alternatives to some hegemonic and universalizing trends in knowledge production, it is sought to demonstrate that the way postcolonial studies have been projected in the Arab region does not sufficiently account for the complexity of the situation neither in this region nor elsewhere. It is argued, in the end, that it is necessary to forge post-authoritarian studies to supplement postcolonial studies.
Book Review. Wiebke Keim Et. Al. (Eds.): 'Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences'.
'Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences. Made in Circulation'. Wiebke Keim, Ercüment Çelic, Christian Ersche, Veronika Wöhrer (Eds.). University of Freiburg, Germany. Ashgate Publishing Limited. https://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472426178 Despite the success of the intellectual wave known as the ‘postcolonial turn’, or rather precisely because of its achievements, the question of how it is possible to go on making social sciences within an epistemological context in which those historical assumptions carried by modern scientific traditions have been challenged remains highly problematic. Rather, it seems like both postcolonial and social science scholars have opted for separating off waters in order to defend one of those sides’ values and practices. Few exceptions can be recalled into this picture, and the volume Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences. Made in Circulation is a refreshing and indeed necessary approach whose aim is precisely to build bridges for such an intellectual gap.