Always begin with a story: memoirs of Mary Lewis

Competing discourses have always figured prominently in policy debates about violence against women and children. Legislation and services to address it have largely been developed from theory and empirical knowledge of domestic violence occurring in intimate relationships. Knowledge from an Indigenous perspective about family violence, embedded in a context of colonisation and involving a broader range of relationships, has been less influential. One of the consequences of this is that when Indigenous communities identify solutions to address family violence holistically, these solutions are difficult to implement. Research with a remote South Australian Aboriginal community, looking for ways to reduce the level of family violence, resulted in new understandings of it. Linking issues of economic deprivation, dispossession and the breaking down of culture, the community devised a holistic community development approach to reduce family violence. This paper identifies the waves of understanding about family violence and argues that community-initiated solutions must be supported by policy and funding options based on an Indigenous understanding of family violence.     

Evaluating social science and humanities knowledge production: an exploratory analysis of dynamics in science systems

Knowledge is gaining increasing importance in modern-day society as a factor of production and, ultimately, growth. This article explores the dynamics in university knowledge production and its effect on the state of university–industry–policy exchange in the Netherlands. Science systems are said to be in transformation. The university has evolved from performing conventional research and educational functions to serving as an innovation-promoting knowledge hub; dynamics that have received mixed reactions. The social sciences and humanities (SSH) take a special position, insofar as their focus seems primarily to be placed on conventional research and educational functions, and not directly on (commercial) valorization. Societal changes are, however, pressing for a reconsideration of the role of SSH. In our article, we distinguish between three important new movements that seem to be affecting SSH. It is believed that these movements, which are already having an impact today, will considerably influence SSH in the future. These developments are further differentiation, synthesis between the various subdisciplines of SSH and the natural sciences, and shifts in paradigms. The aims of this article are twofold: (1) to assess what is believed to be the most likely development of SSH by means of discovering relevant subsets of factors influencing university knowledge production; and (2) to discover whether the knowledge production factors show characteristics of a general development similar to the “Mode 2” concept. A systematic qualitative database was created by means of 22 semi-structured personal interviews with key representatives from business, university and the policy sector. Our explanatory framework employs an artificial intelligence method, i.e. rough set analysis. On the basis of these results, we find that a small minority of the respondents prefers a closer relationship of SSH to society, government and industry, and other institutional centers of authority, whilst interdisciplinarity in particular is regarded as having an overall positive influence on the future of SSH in the Netherlands. Consequently, the idea of a clear distinction between Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge production, i.e. traditional knowledge and knowledge carried out in the context of application, is not supported by our data.     

The Sociologies of Knowledge,Science, and Intellectuals: Distinctive Traditions and Overlapping Perspectives

This article reviews sociological approaches to the production, evaluation, and diffusion of knowledge in the arena of scholarly production – the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. At first glance, sociological approaches to scholarly knowledge production seem to congeal around the hard sciences, on the one hand, and philosophy, on the other. I eschew this polarization and construct an analytic frame of reference for analyzing the sociological dimensions of scholarly production more generally. This article maps successive phases of sociological approaches to scholarly production, by overlaying and distinguishing among theories in the sociology of knowledge, sociology of science, and sociology of intellectuals. I analyze classical theorists’ emphases on class analysis and the social function of intellectuals; mid-century adaptations of functionalism, social structure theory, and institutional theory to analyze intellectual and academic life; critical and reflexive theories, including feminist critiques of science and knowledge; recent emphases on how social movement politics and social networks influence intellectual change; theories of the university as a professional arena and a field of culture production; and studies of knowledge-making practices in group research situations. In addition to arguing for more theoretical and methodological precision in analyses of scholarly and scientific knowledge-making, I conclude with cautionary tales and future prospects for sociological studies of modern academic life.     

Community,Individual or Information Development? Dilemmas of concept and culture in South Asian disability planning

From the 1820s to the present, disability planning in South Asia has faced hard choices, compounded by the submersion of indigenous concepts in well-intentioned western exports of welfare ideologies and eurocentric social sciences. Cultural imperialism continues, with western evangelists insisting that South Asian disability development be seen in terms of human rights and community-based rehabilitation, regardless of the actual strengths and weaknesses of communities. Reconceptualisation of disability planning, focusing on information factors of concept, knowledge, skills, design and feedback, has been suggested as an alternative approach. However, the associated information media, while offering hope to millions, will again divide those who gain access from the hundred-millions who remain info-poor. Western information concepts risk overwhelming indigenous knowledge and diminishing the cultural confidence needed for South Asians to find their own appropriate solutions. To counteract this tendency, a strong base of Asian disability history is needed.     

Can the Sámi speak Now?

This article analyses the on-going debate concerning Sámi definition in Finland, in order to examine some of the challenges that indigenous and minority voices are facing within the increasingly ‘postcolonial’ and ‘postmodern’ academia. Since the late 1960s, universities and institutions of higher education have been nodal points in a broad range of social and political struggles that have sought to decolonize and democratize science and knowledge. These struggles have challenged previous claims to truth and objectivity and paved way for the rise of a deconstructive research ethos, whose central objective is to bring voice to silenced, marginalized and subaltern subject positions. Although the academia might therefore appear today increasingly sensitive also for indigenous voices and research agendas, this article argues that the opposite might be the case: A research ethos, which explicitly aims to strengthen and empower the margin, can just as well work to silence indigenous voices, and end up supporting the agendas of the dominant society. In conclusion, I draw attention to four interlinked domains – context, truth, justice and politics – that need to be rethought, in order to reinstate the political and ethical vigour of critical research practices at large.     

Sexual agency,risk and vulnerability: a scoping review of young Indigenous Australians’ sexual health

This review of qualitative research examining young Indigenous Australians’ sexual health highlights the profoundly social nature of young people’s sexual lives. Nineteen peer reviewed published papers were identified for inclusion. Findings reveal efforts made by some young Indigenous Australians to control their sexual lives, mitigate risk and maintain their sexual health. The review identified factors which are conducive to sexual health risks and vulnerability, including incomplete knowledge about STIs and safer sexual practices; gossip and ridicule concerning sexual activity and its consequences; damaging expectations about male prerogatives with respect to sexual relationships; limited inter-generational communication about sexual health issues; inadequate school-based sexual health education; and tensions between Indigenous and biomedical explanations of sexual health issues. Future research priorities include a focus on young Indigenous people in cities and towns across Australia, and in regional and remote settings in New South Wales and Victoria; understanding how Indigenous cultural values support young people’s sexual health; young men’s sexual and service-based practices; and the experiences of same-sex attracted and gender diverse youth. This research would inform the design and delivery of culturally safe and acceptable sexual health services and programmes, underpinned by an understanding of factors in young Indigenous Australians’ everyday sexual lives.     

SPENDING WISELY? HOW RESOURCES AFFECT KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN UNIVERSITIES

Every year billions of dollars are spent on research grants to produce new knowledge in universities. However, as grants may also affect other research funding, the effects of financial resources on knowledge production remain unclear. To uncover how financial resources affect knowledge production, we study the effects of research spending itself. Utilizing the legal constraints on university spending from an endowment we develop an instrumental variables approach. Our approach instruments for university research spending with time‐series variation in stock prices interacted with cross‐sectional variation in initial endowment market values for research universities in the United States. Our analysis reveals that research spending has a substantial positive effect on the number of papers produced, but not their impact. We also demonstrate that research spending effects are quite similar at private and public universities. (JEL H5, I2, O3)     

Defining Māori language revitalisation: A project in folk linguistics

The postmodern and critical movements in language policy, with their redefinition of governmentality and attention to power structures, call for localised perspectives on language arrangements. In this way, a polity, in its social and cultural context, can be understood as much as the policies it operates. In the case of Indigenous languages undergoing revitalisation, this allows us to define language revitalisation, and the vitality it should deliver, not through western scholarship but for local purposes with local ideas by examining local knowledge and preferences. To do this, a folk linguistic approach was applied to language policy research. A quantitative and qualitative survey investigated how around 1,300 Indigenous and non‐Indigenous youth in New Zealand define Māori language revitalisation from their own perspective and how they perceive the revitalisation processes and outcomes proposed in scholarship and local discourses. The paper shows that claimed linguistic knowledge not only exists parallel to language attitudes, but informs local policy ideas. The findings indicate that these youth define language revitalisation and vitality in terms contextualised by local ontology, knowledge, ideologies and values, therefore challenging the local applicability of universal theories.     

Carrières et contradictions en sciences de la vie : réponses du corps académique aux transformations de la connaissance et de ses utilisations

Drawing on interviews with more than 80 scientists on two university campuses, we create a typology that offers insights into how transformations in the nature and locus of life science innovation influence academic careers and work practices. Our analyses suggest that a strong outcome of increased academic concern with research commercialization is the appearance of new fault lines among faculty, between faculty and students, and even between scientists' interests and those of their institutions. We argue that life science commercialization is driven by a mix of new funding opportunities, changing institutional mandates for universities, and novel research technologies that bring basic research and product development into much closer contact. The rise of patenting and commercially motivated technology transfer on U.S. campuses is altering faculty work practices and relationships, while transforming the criteria by which success is determined and rewards are allocated. Through close analysis of interviews with four researchers who typify a range of academic responses to commercialism, we demonstrate emerging patterns of conflict and agreement in faculty responses to commercial opportunities in the life sciences.     

The Gambling Behavior of Indigenous Australians

The gambling activities of minority groups such as Indigenous peoples are usually culturally complex and poorly understood. To redress the scarcity of information and contribute to a better understanding of gambling by Indigenous people, this paper presents quantitative evidence gathered at three Australian Indigenous festivals, online and in several Indigenous communities. With support from Indigenous communities, the study collected and analyzed surveys from 1,259 self-selected Indigenous adults. Approximately 33 % of respondents gambled on card games while 80 % gambled on commercial gambling forms in the previous year. Gambling participation and involvement are high, particularly on electronic gaming machines (EGMs), the favorite and most regular form of gambling. Men are significantly more likely to participate in gambling and to gamble more frequently on EGMs, horse/dog races, sports betting and instant scratch tickets. This elevated participation and frequency of gambling on continuous forms would appear to heighten gambling risks for Indigenous men. This is particularly the case for younger Indigenous men, who are more likely than their older counterparts to gamble on EGMs, table games and poker. While distinct differences between the gambling behaviors of our Indigenous sample and non-Indigenous Australians are apparent, Australian Indigenous behavior appears similar to that of some Indigenous and First Nations populations in other countries. Although this study represents the largest survey of Indigenous Australian gambling ever conducted in New South Wales and Queensland, further research is needed to extend our knowledge of Indigenous gambling and to limit the risks from gambling for Indigenous peoples.     

Research,policy and funding – academic treadmills and the squeeze on intellectual spaces1

In recent years, there has been a great deal of collective rumination about social scientists' role in society. In the post‐1997 UK context, public policy commitments to ‘evidence‐based policy’ and ‘knowledge transfer’ have further stimulated such reflections. More recently, Michael Burawoy's 2004 address to the American Sociological Association, which called for greater engagement with ‘public sociology’ has reverberated throughout the discipline, motivating a series of debates about the purpose of sociological research. To date, most such contributions have been based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. In contrast, this paper responds directly to Burawoy's suggestion that we should ‘apply sociology to ourselves,’ in order that we ‘become more conscious of the global forces’ driving our research ( Burawoy 2005 : 285). Drawing on an empirical research project designed to explore of the relationship between health inequalities research and policy in Scotland and England, in the period from 1997 until 2007, this paper discusses data from interviews with academic researchers. The findings suggest that the growing pressure to produce ‘policy relevant’ research is diminishing the capacity of academia to provide a space in which innovative and transformative ideas can be developed, and is instead promoting the construction of institutionalized and vehicular (chameleon‐like) ideas. Such a claim supports Edward Said's (1994 ) insistence that creative, intellectual spaces within the social sciences are increasingly being squeezed. More specifically, the paper argues we ought to pay far greater attention to how the process of seeking research funding shapes academic research and mediates the interplay between research and policy.     

The social shaping of digital research

The social shaping of technology (SST) has become a broad umbrella term to cover a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives in the social sciences. It has also defined a set of funded projects in the UK focused on a particular technical initiative around e-social science – digital social research. It is increasingly understood that social science research and work on the SST, in particular, should be applied to the study of innovations in digital research and their implications for the sciences and humanities. This overview is designed to help introduce the diversity of perspectives that the social sciences can bring to bear, such as under the social shaping umbrella and explain why this set of perspectives is of value to policy and practice in this field. The continuing advance and diffusion of digital research make it ever more important to strengthen the role of the social sciences in this area of multi-disciplinary research, policy, and practice.     

Moving the Indigenous Knowledge Debate Forward?

Book reviewed in this article: The Cultural Dimension of Development: Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Edited by Michael D. Warren, L. Jan Slikkerveer and David Brokensha Farmer Participatory Research: Rhetoric and Reality. By Christine Okali, James Sumberg and John Farrington Power and Participatory Development: Theory and Practice. Edited by Nici Nelson and Susan Wright Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research and Practice. Edited by David Booth     

Framing ‘drug prevention’ for young people in contact with the criminal justice system in England: views from practitioners in the field

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the work of Rein and Schon (1993. “Reframing Policy Discourse.” In The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, edited by F. Fischer, and J. Forester, 145–166. London: UCL Press., 1996. “Frame-Critical Policy Analysis and Frame-Reflective Policy Practice.” Knowledge and Policy: the International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization 9 (1): 85–104), we explore the ways in which ‘young people’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘risk’, ‘prevention’ and ‘prevention practice’ were defined and framed by practitioners engaged in the design, delivery and commissioning of drug prevention interventions for young people in contact with the criminal justice system. We argue that practitioners describe their work in terms of both a preventative frame – based on a ‘deficit’ model – and a transformative praxis frame, more in line with an increasing shift towards ‘positive youth justice’ where practitioners aspire to actively involve the young person in a process of change. The implications of those, often competing, frames are discussed in relation to the development of prevention approaches and the challenges in designing drugs prevention for this group of young people. The paper is based on interviews and focus groups with thirty-one practitioners in England and is part of the EU funded EPPIC project (Exchanging Prevention Practices on Polydrug Use among Youth in Criminal Justice Systems 2017–2020).     

Revisiting IR in a Time of Crisis

Abstract

The sense of crisis, fueled by military conflicts, the failures of neoliberal globalization and ecological degradation, is everywhere. Neoconservative agendas and cuts in educational spending are shrinking space for critical thinking necessary for understanding the impacts of these crises on ordinary people's lives. This article examines some indigenous responses to these various crises. It reexamines IR's Westphalia triumphalist narrative about the origins of the nation-state system from the perspective of those who suffered the consequences of European expansion. Emphasizing the importance of rewriting their histories, indigenous peoples are offering very different models of world order and ways of life that are more sensitive to resource and ecological constraints. Although indigenous women have a complex relationship with feminism, indigenous knowledge is strikingly similar to certain feminist thinking. Indigenous epistemologies are hermeneutic and reflexive, seeking to uncover hidden histories and new knowledge from those whose voices have rarely been heard. The article outlines some visions of world order and national sovereignty offered by indigenous peoples in Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Central and North America, demonstrating parallels with feminist thought. It concludes by reflecting on obstacles, similar to those faced by feminists, standing in the way of alternative forms of knowledge being taken seriously by the discipline of International Relations.     

A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English‐Language Canadian Sociology

Over the past decade Canadian sociology has engaged in spirited debates on the sociology of sociological research, but it has barely begun to address its relation to Indigenous theorizing, scholarship, and politics. How does the discipline deal with the settler colonial history and current realities of Indigenous social lives, and where is the place in our field for Indigenous voices and perspectives? Drawing on Coulthard's politics of recognition and Tuck's damage‐centered research, we present here the first systematic empirical analysis of the place of Indigeneity in the Canadian Review of Sociology and the Canadian Journal of Sociology. We situate the presence of Indigeneity in Canadian sociology journals in the sociopolitical context of the time, and examine how imperialism, statism, and damage are oriented within the two journals. Most importantly, we challenge the silence in the discipline's intellectual frames and research programs with respect to Indigenous theorizing about the social world.     

Education,Research and Innovation for Sustainable Development: a Review of the G8–Unesco Forum

The G8–Unesco World Forum recently held in Trieste examined the relationship between knowledge and sustainable development, focusing on the gap between industrialised and developing countries. In reviewing the proceedings, I provide some comments on the issue of turning the broad ideas discussed during the Forum into concrete actions. Despite being the Forum largely interdisciplinary, important aspects of knowledge were not explicitly considered, namely, humanities and social sciences, as well as indigenous knowledge. The focus on research in “hard” sciences did permit a thorough discussion of a number of crucial issues but found its limits when ideas had to turn into actions. This is particularly important for sustainable development, when community involvement at regional and local levels is key in obtaining feasible solutions. In order to help promote knowledge creation and dissemination in practice, this paper will concentrate on highlighting a common ground of agreement, from different perspectives, and what ought to be done in future for promoting a better match between all knowledge components and sustainable development.      

Gender Mainstreaming versus Diversity Mainstreaming: Methodology as Emancipatory Politics

This article examines the question of whether and how the intersectional oppression of sexism and racism can be challenged by government policy. It draws on a case study of an Indigenous policy strategy in Australia to argue that, in contrast to concerns expressed by feminist policymakers, gender equality is not inevitably neglected when the target for remedial action is institutional racism. Our study suggests that successful action on Indigenous emancipation necessarily mobilizes a methodology for moving past one‐dimensional category distinctions. Therefore, focusing on the task of translating declared policy goals into action can provide a way out of the impasse over whether ‘diversity’ or ‘gender’ is the better vehicle for mainstreaming equity policy. To develop its case, the article draws conclusions about the politics of methodology from gender mainstreaming debates, intersectionality theory and institutional ethnography, then uses our conclusions to analyze the political and methodological effectiveness of the Indigenous policy strategy.     

Indigenous research methodology – weaving a research interface

ABSTRACT

Indigenous research Knowledges and methodologies have existed over millennia, however it is only recently that Indigenous scholars have been able to challenge institutional Western hegemony to reclaim sovereignty in the research space. Despite the high volume of quantitative research describing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, there has been limited evaluation of the value added through incorporation of Indigenous Knowledges and methodologies. ‘Research at the interface’ has been discussed as an Indigenous research methodology for researchers to contextualise and inform their research practices, between Indigenous and Western systems of knowledge. In this article we address the significance of ‘research at the interface’ for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research, as an exciting opportunity for innovation to ensure strength, self-determination and resilience for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities engaged in research. We also introduce weaving a methodology for ‘research at the interface’ as a process for conceptualising Indigenous and quantitative research methodologies at the interface.     

The Human Right to Safe Exit: University Evacuation Policy and Mobility Impairment

The case of Gustafson v. Regents of the University of California suggests that students with mobility impairments may face great peril when needing to evacuate multi-level university buildings, yet this problem is rarely considered in the research literature. To address this gap, the extent of this problem was assessed in a sample of 210 universities that house MSW programs. Documents representing university evacuation policy were obtained from university websites and analyzed with respect to three domains of disability rights. Results indicate that the failure to adequately respect these rights was widespread within the sample. To support the advocacy efforts of those seeking to change university policy, model language was extracted from university documents and presented as a goal.