Groups as Epistemic Communities: Social Forces and Affect as Antecedents to Knowledge

Vähämaa, Miika

doi:10.1080/02691728.2012.760660

Cited by 35 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This resonates with observations about how research relies on tacit knowledge and tacit craft skills such as trust, social interaction, and affect (e.g., Collins 2001, Delamont andAtkinson 2001;Vähämaa 2013;c.f. Polanyi 1985).…”

Section: Research As Subjectified Worksupporting

confidence: 69%

Subjectivity, governance, and changing conditions of knowledge production in the life sciences

Sigl

2019

Subjectivity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Knowledge producers are ascribed a key role for societal development today, as they produce a key resource for knowledge-based societies. Even as the institutional, social, and cultural environments of research change (c.f. "evaluation society," "academic capitalism"), we know surprisingly little about how this results in different research practices and knowledge. Building on experiences of studying research cultures in the life sciences, I argue in this paper that by studying researchers' subjectification, we learn how changing conditions are actually translated into a transformation of research processes and about the role of researchers as active agents in this transformation. Put differently, I investigate how we can study subjectification as a locus of change in research cultures. I discuss possible methodological cornerstones of using subjectification as conceptual approach for studying research cultures. Along some analytical extracts, I further demonstrate how this enables us to see tacit forms of governance in cultures of knowledge production.

show abstract

Section: Research As Subjectified Worksupporting

confidence: 69%

Subjectivity, governance, and changing conditions of knowledge production in the life sciences

Sigl

2019

Subjectivity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We answer this question by looking into the epistemic function of group membership (Fallis, 2007;Fuller, 2002;Vähämaa, 2013). Authors push information into the policy appraisal studies on the basis of their individual preferences and attitudes towards what constitutes valuable, credible and trustworthy knowledge.…”

Section: Explaining Sources Of Knowledge Usedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We know from social epistemology that all these groups function as epistemic communities (Fallis, 2007), broadly defined as 'thought collectives', meaning sociological groups with a common style of thinking (Fleck, 1939(Fleck, [1979). Such groups 'act as a type of epistemic machinery' (Bergin, 2001, p. 376), as referent groups that employ an 'epistemic calculus' (Vähämaa, 2013) with two purposes. First, a 'veritistic' one, according to which they maximize accurate beliefs, while rejecting as many false beliefs as possible (Fallis, 2007).…”

Section: Explaining Sources Of Knowledge Usedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Theoretically, we apply a social epistemology lens to knowledge utilization (Vähämaa, 2013). We argue that authors who steer the pen are powerful actors who control knowledge and information, not on the basis of 'guesses', nor of 'raw' data, but because of their subjective perceptions of what constitutes credible knowledge (Haas, 1992;Vähämaa, 2013). Such perceptions are only rarely the product of author participation in a network of professional experts, an epistemic community à la Haas (1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The knowledge behind Brexit. A bibliographic analysis of ex-ante policy appraisals on Brexit in the United Kingdom and the European Union

Pattyn

Gouglas

Leeuwe

2020

Journal of European Public Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article we map and explain the sources of knowledge cited on 85 Brexit impact appraisals, 46 of which were formal impact assessments ordered and published by the European Parliament and 39 'sectoral reports' ordered by the UK Government and released by the House of Commons Exiting the EU Committee. All reports were published between the day after the UK referendum and the year after the start of the UK-EU negotiations. We conducted a citation analysis of 3537 references and tested author push and policy sector pull hypotheses with non-parametric tests. Our findings highlight the epistemic function of the professional referent groups to which authors belong. Authors tend to generate information and cite sources that are congruent with their 'home group' in the departmental unit where they work, or their larger professional group, even in urgent high-salient risk situations like Brexit. Differences between policy sectors do not strongly matter.

show abstract

“…Keohane and Nye argue that scientific information is in part socially constructed and that a transnational expert community can only be credible if they produce information through a process that is in accordance with professional norms and characterized by transparency and procedural fairness [5, page 92] (see also [6,7] for a critical discussion of the social construction of the science of climate change). Despite their many achievements and overwhelmingly positive reputation as facilitators of international cooperation, international scientific assessments are sometimes criticized on the basis of their procedures and composition [8,9,10]. Therefore, it is important to understand how scientific assessments recruit new expert members.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Membership nominations in international scientific assessments

Leifeld

Fisher

2017

Nature Clim Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

International scientific assessments are transnational knowledge-based expert networks with a mandate to advise policymakers. A well-known example is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which synthesized research on ecosystem services between 2001 and 2005, utilizing the knowledge of 1,360 expert members. Little, however, is known about the membership composition and the driving forces behind membership nominations in the MA and similar organizations. Here we introduce a survey dataset on recruitment in the MA and analyze nomination patterns among experts as a complex network. The results indicate that membership recruitment was governed by prior contacts in other transnational elite organizations and a range of other factors related to personal affinity. Network analysis demonstrates how some core individuals were particularly influential in shaping the overall membership composition of the group. These findings add to recently noted concerns about the lack of diversity of views represented in international scientific assessments.

show abstract

Groups as Epistemic Communities: Social Forces and Affect as Antecedents to Knowledge

Cited by 35 publications

References 38 publications

Subjectivity, governance, and changing conditions of knowledge production in the life sciences

Subjectivity, governance, and changing conditions of knowledge production in the life sciences

The knowledge behind Brexit. A bibliographic analysis of ex-ante policy appraisals on Brexit in the United Kingdom and the European Union

Membership nominations in international scientific assessments

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About