Knowledge regimes: order from chaos?

The camera is never neutral

John Tagg

Knowledge and PolicyBrussels – 21-23 September 2011

Filipa M. RibeiroPhD candidate at University of Porto

His Mécanique sociale aimed toshow that society was as ruled-based as astronomy. Forhim, variation is linked with error.

• Laplace – error curve

• Statistical science

• non-equilibrium growth and patterns

• Epstein: society is geared largely towards removing the need to make decisions (conform with minimum effort)

• The overcoming of the insufficient dualism state / market that has structured the political thought for over a century and a half is one of the perspective to look at knowledge regimes and not the least important.

Otto Neurath: antireductionist and the unity of science

• “orchestration” of sciences thatwas partly to be realized in the formof the Encyclopedia.

•Viena Circle Manifest: “We witnessthe spirit of the scientific world-conception penetrating in growingmeasure the forms of personal andpublic life, ineducation, upbringing, architecture,and the shaping of economic andsocial life according to rationalprinciples. The scientific world-conception serves life and lifereceives it” (Neurath et al, 1929).

Regimes and contexts

• historical

• socio-cultural

• individual

• situational

• structural

Schema theory : Is there room for sprucing up new knowledge?

Ebbinghaus illusion is an example of structural context. Particular circumstances seem to activate appropriate schemata. Such schemata develop from experience. They help us to ‘go beyond the information given’ by making assumptions about what is usual in similar contexts.

The third generation university (Wissema, 2009)

Third generation university

Consilience, creativity and

design

Exploitation as 3rd

objective

Two-track university

Disentangled from the sate

Cosmopolitan university

International competition

International know-how

hub

KR principles

• Similarity;

• Proximity

• Good continuity

• Closure

• Smallness

• Surroundedness

• Stability and

simplicity

VS

The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe - John Berger

• What determines the diversity of Knowledges?

• Why do some minority knowledges survive while others vanish?

• Why do any two knowledges not generally converge completely when they interact (like the scientific and the spiritual knowledge)? A simulation of cultural spread

Seeing like a State?*

• The pragmatism of each knowledge regime.

• A knowledge regime approach doesn’t mean a global narrativeanymore, rather it aims at meeting specific needs, at creating freelogics that result into governance experiences that are not anymorean ideology or policies in abstracto.

• This process of agglutination is one of the major issues concerningthe knowledge regimes approach: how can different knowledges befruitful beyond mutual recognition?

*James Scott

The devil’s pitchfork

Standards, dominations and absences

• Historical development of dominant and excluded knowledge concepts/ regimes;

• Identification of morphic fields that gave rise to dominant knowledges and contemporary issues ;

• What factors are challenging knowledge regimes?

• What relation is there today between wisdom and knowledge and how that affects the knowledge regime approach?

Patterns of dominance and standards

• Visibility window

• Level of acceptability – level of tolerance

• Level of dominance

Emergent issues (1)

1. Knowledge networks

• The network approach offers a new set of tools for illuminatingthe on the ground work of the organization and it is in thatongoing process that change is legitimized, ideas givenmeaning, relations built and practice sustained or transformed.

• Network structures emerge as key mechanisms in the complicatedinterplay of broad (macro-level) institutional and socialdevelopments and the situated (micro-level) practice of change;

• How to conceptualize knowledge and power in networks?

• Systemic power – power structures

2. Knowledge networks and Knowledge regimes

• Knowledge regimes or knowledge networks?

• Development led to universities facing a multitude of new demands from a host of stakeholders.

• Knowledge regimes and academic freedom?

• Is there inter-knowledge in the universities?

• How to distinguish between various scientific and nonscientific, Western and non-Western knowledges? What are hierarchies of knowledge?

• What kinds of relationships are possible between different knowledge in universities?

• How can these relationships be lead to research and teaching?

• Universities may or may not provide conditions for epistemologicaldiversity in society?

Emergent issues (2)

Enduring problems of change

• How do KN bear on scaling up mixing knowledges within and across HEI?

• How does the understanding and mapping of network ties and flows deepen our understanding of organizational capacity, including the nature of available knowledge?

• What happens to the quality and reach of networks as organizational attention and knowledge types shift over time?

In what ways do social networks support or constrain efforts at change at multiple levels within knowledge regimes?

Methodology and challenges (1)

Data collection focus

• Historical evolution of universities and the identification of distinctive features in the process of stabilization of methods of knowledge production and teaching;

• Criteria used by researchers / teachers to select the content they teach, on a number of disciplines;

• Perceptions of teachers / researchers on the knowledge they produce and teach;

• Knowledge policy documents about teaching and learning in universities.

Data gathering and analysis

• Historical analysis (analysis of texts and text network analysis);

• Accounts and autobiographical narratives;

• Interviews

• Social network analysis (to track changes and dominant/excluded types of knowledge).

Methodology and challenges (2)

Challenges

• Whether to measure perceived social ties or actual changes;

• How to treat temporal elements in the definition of relationships;

• Whether to seek for accurate descriptions or reliable indicators;

Big questions

• How do competitive levels (whether of tolerance, creativity) penetrate global networks?

• To what extent have Knowledge networks changed the way standards are disrupted?

Order from chaos

• Pragmatic utopia Order

• Knowledge as a battle field Chaos

? In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world, we pick

out what our culture has already defined for us - Walter Lippmann ?

Yes, there are loads of questions, but… let’s talk about it! Thank you!

Filipa M. Ribeirofilipa.ribeiro@gmail.com