Knowing and living in academic research: convergences and heterogeneity in research cultures in the European context

246 Pages·2005·1.02 MB·English

by  Ulrike Felt (editor)

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KNOWING AND LIVING
IN ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Convergences and heterogeneity
in research cultures in the European context
Edited by Ulrike Felt
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Prague 2009
Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
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KNOWING AND LIVING
IN ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Convergences and Heterogeneity in Research Cultures
in the European Context
Edited by Ulrike Felt
Authors:
Alice Červinková
Lisa Garforth
Anne Kerr
Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer
Susan Molyneux-Hodgson
Tereza Stöckelová
Contributors:
Jutta Ahlbeck-Rehn
Magdalena Górska
Ismo Kantola
Zuzana Kiczková
Ľubica Kobová
Anne Kovalainen
Marcela Linková
Morgan Meyer
Seppo Poutanen
Veronika Řepíková
Lisa Sigl
Mariana Szapuová
Veronika Wöhrer
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Key words: audit culture, career, epistemic culture, gender in science, interdisciplinarity,
mobility, science policy, time
This publication has been published thanks to the financial support of the European
Commission for the project Knowledge, Institutions and Gender: an East-West
Comparative Study under the Sixth Framework Programme (contract no.: SAS6-
CT-2005-017617) and of the Research Plan of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy
of Sciences of the Czech Republic, “Sociological Analysis of Long-Term Social Processes
in Czech Society in the Context of European Integration Policies, Development of
Knowledge Society, and of Human, Social and Cultural Capital”, No. AV0Z70280505.
Views presented in this publication reflect solely those of the authors and cannot be,
under any circumstances, to be taken as the opinions of the European Union. The
Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained
herein.
Peer reviewed by Prof. Helen Longino (Stanford University) and Prof. Martina Merz
(University of Lucerne).
© Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague 2009
ISBN 978-80-7330-156-9
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Table of contents
Preface i
e Contexts of Knowing
Susan Molyneux-Hodgson
Chapter I 17
Introduction: Knowing and Living in Academic Research
Ulrike Felt
1. Epistemic living spaces 19
2. e co-production of research and society 23
3. New modes of knowledge production 24
4. Places of knowing and maps for orientation 26
5. Institutions of knowledge production 27
6. Changing frames: audit society and a growing trust in numbers 29
7. Structure of the study and methodological considerations 31
8. e structure of the book 35
Chapter II 41
Modes of Ordering and Boundaries that Matter in Academic Knowledge Production
Ulrike Felt & Tereza Stöckelová
With contributions from: Lisa Garforth, Magdalena Górska, Ľubica Kobová,
Marcela Linková, Morgan Meyer, Seppo Poutanen, Veronika Řepíková,
Mariana Szapuová and Veronika Wöhrer
1. Introduction: the making of research environments and their moral orders 41
2. Geographies of reference: researchers’ positioning work 51
2.1. Regions and nation states 52
2.2. Tacit geographies: centres/peripheries & East/West 58
2.3. Disciplinary maps and other epistemic orders 65
3. e politics of labelling research 74
3.1. ‘Excellent science’ and its others 75
3.2. Applied vs. basic research: an uneasy relationship 85
4. Assembling and ordering academic institutions 90
4.1. Administration: institutional cores and peripheries 91
4.2. Enterprise: competition outside and inside 94
4.3. Vision: making visible and invisible individuals 98
4.4. Vocation: the sociality of academic existence 100
4.5. Amoebic institutions 103
5. Purifying and merging the scientific, the social and the personal 105
5.1. Engaging with society? 106
5.2. Keeping society at a safe distance 110
6. Concluding remarks 112
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Chapter III 127
Working Together Apart
Anne Kerr & Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer
With contributions from: Jutta Ahlbeck-Rehn, Alice Červinková, Ulrike Felt,
Lisa Garforth, Marcela Linková, Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, Lisa Sigl, Tereza
Stöckelová, Mariana Szapuová and Veronika Wöhrer
1. Introduction 127
2. Locating working together and working apart:
networks of excellence clusters and work-nets in institutions 131
2.1. Networks of excellence clusters 131
2.2. Work-nets in institutions 132
2.3. Tensions in working together apart in the laboratory 133
2.4. Departmental anomie and networks of personal peers:
working together apart in the social sciences 138
2.5. Togetherness in politics and practice 143
3. Relocating togetherness: the call for mobility and flexible working 145
3.1. Celebrating mobility: official discourses on the move 145
3.2. Unequal flows: gender and geopolitical stratification 146
3.3. Why mobility? 147
3.4. Anxieties, insecurities, resistance 150
3.5. Mobility in politics and practice 152
4. Locating inter/disciplinarity in knowledge work 153
4.1. Multi/inter/trans-disciplinarity in European science
policies: an absent presence 153
4.2. Interdisciplinarity as relocating togetherness 155
4.3. e biosciences: interdisciplinary by default? 156
4.4. Disciplining the social sciences 159
4.5. Interdisciplinarity in policy and practice 162
5. Conclusion 163
Chapter IV 169
Times and Trajectories in Academic Knowledge Production
Lisa Garforth & Alice Červinková
With contributions from: Ulrike Felt, Ismo Kantola, Zuzana Kiczková, Anne
Kovalainen, Marcela Linková, Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer, Susan Molyneux-
Hodgson, Seppo Poutanen, Mariana Szapuová, Lisa Sigl and Veronika Wöhrer
1. Introduction 169
2. Trajectories 172
2.1. Introduction: imagining excellence 172
2.2. Individual careers: trajectories and patchworks 174
2.3. Articulations: individual and collective trajectories 185
3. Everyday time 192
3.1. Introduction 192
3.2. (No) time to think? 195
3.3. Everyday time across epistemic living spaces 209
4. Conclusion: how do times add up? 219
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