The Extraction of Community Structures from Publication Networks to Support Ethnographic Observations of Field Differences in Scientific Communication

The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an important unit of analysis for understanding the field specific shaping of scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however, a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap, have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through examination of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping sub- communities within a research specialty and we provide evidence that they differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the community structures of scientific fields we aim to increase confidence about the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set in order to adequately represent a research specialty, and methods to extract community structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.Comment: Accepted for publication in JASIS

An Ethnography of Entanglements: Mercury’s Presence and Absence in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold-mining in Antioquia, Colombia

This paper describes a ‘follow the thing’ methodology as applied to an ethnography of entanglements. This methodology allowed for a materially and politically nuanced understanding of Antioquia, Colombia’s response to mercury pollution. This pollution primarily originates from the Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (ASGM) industry where mercury is employed in the gold extraction process. In following the mercury, the authors experiment with an ethnography of entanglements. The paper discusses how they address the current lacunae in mining ethnographies by focussing on mining as ‘practice’, going past the provision of technical descriptions of mining and ethnographic descriptions of miners to an ethnography of mining. This ethnographic approach considers the politics of materiality and addresses a lack of attention to the impacts of the presence and absence of materials on social life. Various mining practices in Antioquia illuminate how entanglements between miners and mercury have been co-constitutive of particular modes of ASGM. The paper will also provide examples of ‘negative mercury entanglements’ where efforts have been made to extricate mercury from mining practices. Rather than creating a vacuum, these mercury absences have been generative of new contested symbolic and material arrangements including entrepreneurial and ‘responsible’ mining, debates over miners’ rights, and the creation of new political relationships between ASGM and large-scale mining companies.fals

Of BI research : a tale of two communities

The Business intelligence (BI) literature is in flux, yet the knowledge about its varying theoretical roots remains elusive. This state of affairs draws from two different scientific communities (informatics and business) that have generated multiple research streams, which duplicate research, neglect each other’s contributions, and overlook important research gaps. In response, we structure the BI scientific landscape and map its evolution to offer scholars a clear view of where research on BI stands and the way forward. For this endeavor, we systematically review articles published in top-tier ABS journals and identify 120 articles covering 35 years of scientific research on BI. We then run a co-citation analysis of selected articles and their reference lists. This yields the structuring of BI scholarly community around six research clusters: Environmental Scanning (ES), Competitive Intelligence (CI), Market Intelligence (MI), Decision Support (DS), Analytics Technologies (AT), and Analytics Capabilities (AC). The Co-citation network exposed overlapping and divergent theoretical roots across the six clusters and permitted mapping the evolution of BI research following two pendulum swings. Our article contributes by 1) structuring the theoretical landscape of BI research, 2) deciphering the theoretical roots of BI literature, 3) mapping the evolution of BI scholarly community, and 4) suggesting an agenda for future research.© 2020 Emerald Publishing Limited. This manuscript version is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY–NC 4.0) license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Ethnographic perspectives on global mental health

The field of Global Mental Health (GMH) aims to influence mental health policy and practice worldwide, with a focus on human rights and access to care. There have been important achievements, but GMH has also been the focus of scholarly controversies arising from political, cultural and pragmatic critiques. These debates have become increasingly polarized, giving rise to a need for more dialogue and experience-near research to inform theorizing. Ethnography has much to offer in this respect. This paper frames and introduces five articles in the issue of Transcultural Psychiatry that illustrate the role of ethnographic methods in understanding the effects and implications of the field of global mental health on mental health policy and practice. The papers include ethnographies from South Africa, India and Tonga, that show the potential for ethnographic evidence to inform GMH projects. These studies provide nuanced conceptualizations of GMH’s varied manifestations across different settings, the diverse ways that GMH’s achievements can be evaluated, and the connections that can be drawn between locally observed experiences and wider historical, political and social phenomena. Ethnography can provide a basis for constructive dialogue between those engaged in developing and implementing GMH interventions and those critical of some of its approaches

Metascientific views: Challenge and opportunity for philosophy of biology in practice

In this paper I take evolutionary biology as an example to reflect on the role of philosophy and on the transformations that philosophy is constantly stimulated to do in its own approach when dealing with science. I consider that some intellectual movements within evolutionary biology (more specifically, the various calls for 'synthesis') express metascientific views, i.e., claims about 'what it is to do research' in evolutionary biology at different times. In the construction of metascientific views I see a fundamental role to be played by philosophy, and, at the same time, a need to complement the philosophical methods with many more methods coming from other sciences. What leads philosophy out of itself is its own attention to scientific practice. My humble methodological suggestions are, at this stage, only meant to help us imagine metascientific views that are built with a more scientific, interdisciplinary approach, in order to attenuate partiality, subjectivity and impressionism in describing the scientific community. And yet, we should not be naïve and imbued with the myth of 'datadriven' research, especially in this field: other complex issues about metascientific views call for a serious, constant philosophical reflection on scientific practice

Ethnographies of Collaborative Economies across Europe

“Sharing economy” and “collaborative economy” refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models, digital platforms and forms of work that characterise contemporary life: from community-led initiatives and activist campaigns, to the impact of global sharing platforms in contexts such as network hospitality, transportation, etc. Sharing the common lens of ethnographic methods, this book presents in-depth examinations of collaborative economy phenomena. The book combines qualitative research and ethnographic methodology with a range of different collaborative economy case studies and topics across Europe. It uniquely offers a truly interdisciplinary approach. It emerges from a unique, long-term, multinational, cross-European collaboration between researchers from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, geography, business studies, law, computing, information systems), career stages, and epistemological backgrounds, brought together by a shared research interest in the collaborative economy. This book is a further contribution to the in-depth qualitative understanding of the complexities of the collaborative economy phenomenon. These rich accounts contribute to the painting of a complex landscape that spans several countries and regions, and diverse political, cultural, and organisational backdrops. This book also offers important reflections on the role of ethnographic researchers, and on their stance and outlook, that are of paramount interest across the disciplines involved in collaborative economy research

Global Ethnography

Globalization poses a challenge to existing social scientific methods of inquiry and units of analysis by destabilizing the embeddedness of social relations in particular communities and places. Ethnographic sites are globalized by means of various external connections across multiple spatial scales and porous and contested boundaries. Global ethnographers must begin their analysis by seeking out 'placemaking projects' that seek to define new kinds of places, with new definitions of social relations and their boundaries. Existing ethnographic studies of global processes tend to cluster under one of three slices of globalization 'global forces, connections, or imaginations' each defined by a different kind of place-making project. The extension of the site in time and space poses practical and conceptual problems for ethnographers, but also political ones. Nonetheless, by locating themselves firmly within the time and space of social actors 'living the global', ethnographers can reveal howglobal processes are collectively and politically constructed, demonstrating the variety of ways in which globalization is grounded in the local