Cooperation and Cluster Strategies Within and Between Technology-Intensive Organizations: How to Enhance Linkages among Firms in TechnoParks

World today is characterized by rapid transformations in all aspects of human’s life where innovation, technological change and technological progress play the most significant role. Therefore, technologyintensive organizations by engaging in strategic alliances, clusters and networks tend to extract maximum benefits i.e. to enable entry into the international markets and to develop core competences. Even though clusters have become a highly popular strategy, many of them fail to realize their intended goals. Thus, under the scope of this paper we explore why choosing a clustering strategy can be beneficial for technologyintensive organizations. Main focus will be on investigating if there are inter-firm and firm-university linkages among the actors located in a particular techno-park i.e. METU Techno-park and Bilkent Cyber-park. Results of the analysis showed certain extent of firm-university relationships and low level of inter-firm interactions. This further implied necessity of the policy interventions for enhancement of those interactions if the studied techno-parks are to become successful in the sense of the theoretical techno-park model, and if the tenant firms are to extract maximum benefits associated with cluster concept in theory.Clusters, Networks, Innovation, Techno-parks, Policy

Power in Practice: Insights from Technography and Actor-Network Theory for Agricultural Sustainability

In this paper, we use conceptual insights from two distinct traditions within the social studies of science and technology, namely actor-network theory (ANT) and technography, to explore the relationship between power and the reconfiguration of agricultural practices toward sustainability. Noting the generative (productive) and repressive aspects of power, we examine how power manifests in practice by generating and enforcing rules and norms, creating and implementing regulations, driving the adoption of specific technologies, determining how resources are used, and (de) skilling labour. In particular, the conceptual frameworks of ANT and technography help us to discuss how power is refracted through socio-material settings, oral and written discourses, organisational frameworks and cultural institutions. We consider how agency is distributed, through power in practice, among collectives constituted by human/social and nonhuman/material entities. Our discussion highlights the importance of configuring, enlarging and nurturing spaces in which small farmers and marginalised people are empowered to adjust and adapt, or resist and reject, modern and nonmodern technologies, in order to practice the kinds of agriculture they consider sustainable, appropriate and valuable. In conclusion we relate our discussion to a distinction, made earlier by other STEPS Centre researchers, between strategies for achieving sustainable agricultural transformations that aspire to a fantasy of control and those that are based on an ethic of care

Inviting atmospheres to the architecture table

In order to test this shift to the processual as well as architectural practice’s ability to design socialities, in this chapter I propose to think and work with a dynamic and seemingly intangible material: air. Although ignored throughout architectural history (Banham,1969) during the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a proliferation of inflatable structures that used air to explore the lightness, ephemerality, transparency and transportability of new plastics to propose new ways of living closer to the everyday, popular culture and political resistance (Dessauce, 1999; Topham, 2002). The project I discuss here, although sharing certain aesthetic qualities, was conceived differently. On the one hand, the Polivagina was not conceived as addressing air through its structural capacity, but on how its invisibility and dynamism destabilise architectural practice, requiring a transformation of methods, techniques, materials and social organizations. On the other hand, it acknowledges that the social is not the result of the inhabitation of inflatable structures; the air is already social. German philosoper and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk in his work on social foams (2005) proposes that sociality is not only about human exchanges of information (Wakeford, 2011), but is a foam that includes humans, structures, and the air and climate that brings them together. Then, taking the air into account in architecture shifts the attention beyond boundaries, such as walls and roofs, to what is in between them, working with humidity, pressure, smell, toxicity, and breath

Tracing back Communities. An Analysis of Ars Electronica's Digital Communities archive from an ANT perspective

Since long before the popularization of the Web, community-making has been a significant driving force for the development of the Internet. As a consequence, in mid 1990s online communities became a key object of study at the intersection of social sciences, organizational studies and computer sciences. Today, about fifteen years after these early studies, the concept \u2018online community\u2019 seems to be at stake. As a matter of fact, while communitarian ties enabled by digital media are more and more invocated, in late 2000s the Internet is revealing itself as a much more bureaucratic and profit-oriented domain than ever, to the point that it is not clear whether there exist online ties that are specific enough to be called \u2018communitarian\u2019. In order to analyse such an opaque and unstable object of study as current techno-social assemblages, innovative methods specifically developed to study fuzzy objects have to be devised and some epistemological questions have to be addressed. This research starts indeed from the impasse that the digital communitarian culture is experiencing at the end of the 2000s and borrows some epistemological insights from the Actor-Network Theory. By analyzing the entry forms submitted to the world\u2019s leading competition for digital communities, Prix Ars Electronica, this research thus calls into question some \u2018black-boxed\u2019 concepts like \u2018cyberculture\u2019, \u2018digital revolution\u2019, \u2018empowerment\u2019 and \u2018online community\u2019 itself. On one hand, the results bring into question both leading sociological positions and hype-generated commonplaces. On the other hand, the results offer evidence to those arguments according to which current ICT developments represent the beginning of a new phase of technological enclosure

Communities at a Crossroads. Material semiotics for online sociability in the fade of cyberculture

How to conceptualize online sociability in the 21st century? To answer this question, Communities at a Crossroads looks back at the mid-2000s. With the burst of the creative-entrepreneur alliance, the territorialization of the internet and the commercialization of interpersonal ties, that period constituted a turning point for digital communitarian cultures. Many of the techno-libertarian culture\u2019s utopias underpinning the ideas for online sociability faced systematic counter evidence. This change in paradigm has still consequences today. Avoiding both empty invocations of community and swift conclusions of doom, Annalisa Pelizza investigates the theories of actions that have underpinned the development of techno-social digital assemblages after the \u2018golden age\u2019 of online communities. Communities at a Crossroads draws upon the analysis of Ars Electronica\u2019s Digital Communities archive, which is the largest of its kind worldwide, and in doing so presents a multi-faceted picture of internet sociability between the two centuries. Privileging an anti-essentialist, performative approach over sociological understandings of online communities, Communities at a Crossroads proposes a radical epistemological turn. It argues that in order to conceptualize contemporary online sociability, we need first to abandon the techno-libertarian communalist rhetoric. Then, it is necessary to move beyond the foundational distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and adopt a material semiotic approach. In the end, we might have to relinquish the effort to define online or digital communities and engage in more meaningful mapping exercises

Governing the policy network on urban agriculture in Bangkok: The role of social capital in handling cooperation and conflicts

Since 2010 a policy network on urban agriculture (UA) has emerged in Bangkok, incorporating policy actors from both governmental and non-governmental bodies. This study argues that multiple forms of social capital – including shared rules, reputation, trust, reciprocity, moral obligation, shared norms and shared knowledge among various actors – have shaped the functioning of this policy network since its emergence. In addition, the study argues that these forms of social capital support the capacity of the policy network to enhance cooperation and handle conflicts. The role of social capital in governing the UA policy network is examined in relation to the floods experienced in Bangkok between late 2011 and early 2012. The analytical framework adopted is based on two contrasting theories: Ostrom’s institutional rational choice (IRC) and Habermas’ communicative action theory (CAT). Both are applied to link social capital and policy network studies. Following these two perspectives, this study conceptualises social capital by considering both rational and normative commitments. By focusing on IRC and CAT perspectives on power, this study analyses how instrumental, communicative and structural power relates to social capital. Findings reveal that the aforementioned forms of social capital influenced the emergence of the policy network by determining the status of the network’s constituent organisations and groups and their power relations. Members of organisations and groups that shared forms of knowledge agreed that the reason for cooperation was epistemic, while reciprocity and moral obligation supported their decision to cooperate. The study also found that the reputable and trusted organisational leader within the network, who shared rules, norms and knowledge with others, played a key role in facilitating a deliberative process while handling conflicts. The analysis aims to bridge social capital and policy network studies, and reveals the benefits of articulating IRC and CAT to understand policy network governance

Open and distance learning for basic education in South Asia: its potential for hard to reach children and children in conflict and disaster areas

This is the main report in a UNICEF funded project which explores the ways in which, across South Asia, various forms of open and distance learning could be developed to better meet the needs of marginalised children and those affected by natural disaster and by conflic

Can we play science?: philosophical perspectives on participation in science research

Tese de mestrado, História e Filosofia da Ciência, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2015Podemos jogar ciência? Abordagens contemporâneas oferecem a possibilidade de participar na investigação científica. Muitas destas abordagens são feitas através duma gamificação da investigação científica usando a internet e ferramentas da Web 2.0, enquanto outras têm abordagens comunitárias que não estão dependentes do on-line. Como um trabalho de Filosofia da Ciência, este estudo preocupa-se sobre o significado de tal transformação. Isabelle Stengers é próxima à prática científica e sabe como o cientista é definido pelas suas paixões, por uma forma de se reportar ao mundo (Stengers 1993). No seu trabalho encontramos um ímpeto para re-inventar, re-enquadrar como as ciências se relacionam com a especialidade e a democracia. Será que estas abordagens participativas podem fazê-lo? Será que uma nova ciência está em movimento? Considerando as três ecologias de Félix Guattari, do nível mental, ao social, ao ambiental, ele considera que um valor maior se ganha abordando os diversos níveis de prática na sua singularidade (Guattari 1989). Neste estudo, um conjunto diverso de práticas participativas são investigadas, como os jogos de ciência cidadã Foldit e CosmoQuest e as redes de Do-It-Yourself biology e Nouveaux Commanditaires Sciences. Ciência cidadã on-line lida com desafios concretos apresentados à investigação científica e coloca novas questões científicas, contando com a contribuição cognitiva de cidadãos. Há uma quantidade enorme de informação e continua a aumentar. Este “conhecimentointensivo-em-informação” dá foco a inferências sintéticas, como o processo de fazer hipóteses, a abducção. Seguindo Charles Sanders Peirce, verificamos como o raciocínio abductivo construiu muitas perspectivas de interesse na epistemologia e filosofia da ciência. Seguindo cronologicamente o pensamento Peirciano, viajamos da fundação da retroducção nos silogismos aristotélicos até à sua aplicação numa lógica de ícones, em que as premissas se tornam em imagens. A partir da interacção com o ecrã onde a ciência é um jogo, a iconicidade dos elementos ganham relevo. Em segundo lugar, focando no conceito de experiência, tomamos a filosofia de John Dewey. Ele não tem a solidez lógica de Peirce, mas parece mais sistemático. Na interacção entre sujeito e natureza, o conhecimento torna-se instrumental. “Coisas na experiência” específicas servem como guias, como características que são sinais, índices de algo que prevalece na experiência. O que guia as inferências é parte da experiência do sujeito e envolve uma ligação entre a consciência e a natureza, que substancia uma ligação ao “universo completo”. O naturalismo empírico de Dewey faz um contraste interessante com o pensamento diagramático Peirciano.Para Dewey, qualquer esperança duma lógica da descoberta está perdida. Também o Pragmaticismo de Peirce não está preocupado com consequências práticas, como o Pragmatismo clássico. Em comum, sem dúvidas, está a importância dada à experiência. Considerando o nível social, usamos a emergência de esferas públicas como enquadradas por Habermas para ter um entendimento mais fino de como ferramentas online como os forums contribuem para o esforço intelectual conjunto da ciência cidadã virtual. Para participar no uso público da razão, é preciso de ser capaz de o fazer. O modelo heavyweight de produção de pares têm altos valores limites à participação. Mais, o papel do gatekeeper é criado, que pode ser reconhecido quando se abrem as portas da prática científica em jogos on-line, tal como nos salões franceses do século XVII. Outros jogos de investigação cientifica, como CosmoQuest e Zoo Universe têm valores limite à participação mais baixos. Quem quer que se registre, consegue imediatamente uma oportunidade para 'fazer ciência', usando as suas capacidades cognitivas para com os objectos no ecrã. O que é tida em linha de conta é o voto da maioria, pois muitos jogadores recebem a mesma imagem. Cientistas profissionais já assinam artigos científicos em publicações bem cotadas com peer-review. Assim é o caso do Foldit, do Polymath e do Galaxy Zoo. Interessantemente, muitos são assinados sobre um nome colectivo, que se relaciona com este enquadramento colectivo. Em tensão, existe uma dimensão agonal muito presente na gamificação da investigação científica. Há uma relevância dada ao pacto de competição, equivalente ao contrato de Agon. Colan Duclos dá ênfase ao elementos de tensão, stress, aleatoriedade e incerteza que fazem o jogo agonal. Um terceiro nível em análise é o político. Seguindo o argumento de uma re-encenação da comunidade de iguais com Jacques Rancière vemos que a comunidade de iguais: (i) é parte da interacção aleatória entre o que está lá e o que força a mudança; (ii) é fundamentalmente um processo de partilha; (iii) refere-se a um evento equalitário anterior e a um texto equalitário. O texto equalitário do movimento Do-It-Yourself biology corresponde ao Biocommons white paper. Ali está circunscrita uma forma inclusiva de abordar os comuns, a incluir não só “bens naturais”, como água, ar, terra, mas também organismos inteiros, processos bioquímicos e outras descobertas e conceitos biológicos e bioquímicos feitos pelo Homem. Biotecologia tem, então, com o Do-It-Yourself Biology, uma nova visão política e económica baseada na igualdade. Ainda, seguido o raciocínio de Rancière, podemos ver como este movimento tem que lidar com a desigualdade da organização social, tal como os fundados de Icaria tiveram que fazer no passado. Mas isto não significa por força que um tal empreendimento está fadado a fracassar. O “significador equalitário” que é agora parte integrante da sua identidade pode-se desvainecer, tal como o antigo apeiron grego, o desejo sem-limites pode enfraquecer. Se há perspectivas de ciência cidadã em favor do progresso e aceleração, outros querem desacelerar, tal como com os Nouveaux Commanditaires Sciences (NCS), pois a desconstrucção da investigação científica, no sentido de a fazer mais socialmente inclusiva, precisa de tempo. Inspirada pela emancipação de Freire, NCS usa a investigação científica para fazer trabalho comunitário. Acreditamos que participar na investigação científica é um acto de empoderamento. A aventura da Emancipação Intelectual foi aquela que juntou Rancière e Jacotot no livro de 1987 Le maître ignorant : cinq leçons sur l’émancipation intellectuelle. A lição do poeta no âmago do método de Jacotot é feita para soltar a vontade, para ser um participante activo. As decisões que vêm da sociedade que têm decisores em tópicos que concernem à comunidade científica é um tópico em discussão nos estudos sociais da ciência. Para Funtowicz e Ravetz uma exigência que vem dum decisor seria interpretado como um caso de ciência pós-normal, no sentido de legitimar a expertise de outros actores em decisões políticas. Em oposição, Collins tem dúvidas sobre o reconhecimento de expertises locais ao mesmo nível que a investigação científica. Ele preferiria criar ambientes nos quais o foco seria reconhecer e compreender a atitude científica. Em relação à descoberta de Jacotot, a educação está em tal relação com a não-educação, tal como a emancipação intelectual está para o embrutecimento. NCS e Jacotot estão, antes de mais, focados na dimensão da emancipação, enquanto Collins, a par de muitas outras iniciativas, estão focados na pedagogia. A ciência cidadã on-line está a crescer em número de participantes, projectos e escala. Estas soluções lidam com desafios novos concretos à investigação científica que parecem fadados a ser mais desenvolvidos. Podeser mais do que uma moda ou uma linha de fuga. Podemos estar perante uma re-territorialização destas abordagens massivas à investigação científica. Do outro lado da moeda, os movimentos contra-progressistas também lidam com uma resingularização da investigação científica. Este jogo é possível, mas a escala e eficiência deste processo de heterogénese continua por qualificar.Can we play science? Contemporary approaches offer the possibility of participation in science. Many of these approaches are done through a gamification of science research done using the internet and web2.0 tools, while others, have community-based approaches that aren't exclusive to the on-line environment. As a work of Philosophy of Science, this study is concerned about the meaning of such transformation. Isabelle Stengers is a close relative to scientific practice and knows how the scientist is defined by his or hers passions, by a way of reporting to the world (Stengers 1993). Inspired by the three Ecologies of Félix Guattari, we engage the diverse levels of practice in their singularity (Guattari 1989). In this study, a diverse set of participative practices are researched in connection to relevant philosophical perspectives. “Data-intensive knowledge” brings forward the synthetic inferences, as the process of making hypothesis, abduction. From the interaction with the screen, the iconicity of the elements come forward. Following Charles Peirce, we travel from the foundation of retroduction in the Aristotelian syllogisms to the application of abduction in a logic of icons, in that the premisses become images. Focusing on the concept of experience we take John Dewey's philosophy. The experience to the subject involves a connection to the “complete universe”. Dewey's empirical naturalism, gives an interesting contrast to Peirce's diagrammatic reasoning. Considering a social level, we use the emergence of Habermasian public spheres. To participate to a public use of reason, one needs to be able to do it. Moreover, the role of the gatekeeper is crafted, that can be recognized when opening the gates of scientific practice in on-line citizen science games. In tension, there's an agonal dimension very much present in the gamifications of science research. On a political level we follow Jacques Rancière, and see how Do-It-Yourself biology statement of equality will have to deal with the inequality of social organization. Just as the “egalitarian signifier” that is part of its identity might fade away, as the old greek apeiron, the unbound desire might get dimmer. If there are perspectives of citizen science as in favor of progress and acceleration, others want to decelerate, as with Nouveaux Commanditaires Sciences (NCS). On the work of Rancière we see that education is in such relation to uneducation, as intellectual emancipation is to stultification, giving an insight into a dispute at Social Studies of Science. On-line citizen science might signify a reterritorialization of this massive approaches to science research. On the other side of the coin, the counter movements of progress also deal with a resingularisation of science research. This play seems feasible, but the scale and efficiency of this heterogenesis process remains unaccounted

Making in the making

During the last two decades, we have witnessed the spreading of shared spaces of work and production in different urban contexts, attracting attention from both policymakers and scholars in economic geography and urban studies. In particular, Fablabs are considered open workshops for grassroots innovation, which is enabled by the availability of shared digital fabrication machines and by the possibility to share knowledge with peers and work together on a project, either in person or online. People attending Fablabs are usually called Makers and, according to the discourse surrounding them, they are deemed the harbingers of a democratisation of production and part of a broader transformation of urban economies and work in the era of digital capitalism. The book is the result of a PhD research on Makers and Fablabs in Turin, mainly based on an ethnographic observation conducted at Fablab Torino. It offers an original theoretical framework inspired by the recent strand of post-structuralist economic geography, together with a reliance on ontological tenets coming from Actor-Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the study is therefore of interest for scholars in different social sciences who study the reconfiguration of work and production in cities and digitally mediated economic transformations. The analysis unpacks the enactment of Making as a new form of work and production through three different conceptual foci – knowledge, materiality, and work. Notably, the inquiry looks at how Fablab Torino and the urban ‘Maker scene’ in Turin are performatively enacted through the entanglement between economic theories on the phenomenon with specific socio-technical arrangements aiming at making those economic theories true. The geographical relevance of the phenomenon is identified not in some static spatial configuration but, on the one hand, in the heterogeneous and emergent spatialities that emerge from individual practices of Making and, on the other, in the sociomaterial practices of organising that bring into being economic organisations such as Fablabs