62 research outputs found
Critically evaluating collaborative research: why is it difficult to extend truth tests to reality tests?
We argue that critical evaluation achieves the reflexivity needed to facilitate collaboration by proposing boundary-negotiating artefacts to configure a joint action domain. Those objects become mediators for innovation by triggering controversies, conceived preventatively via an organized extension of what Boltanski calls âtruth testsâ to âreality testsâ so that they dynamize ongoing affairs. However, critical evaluation must also anticipate actorsâ reappropriation of boundary-negotiating artefacts in the effort to protect their rights, stakes or room for manoeuvre. Three scenarios commonly arise: avoidance or utopian projecting, enactment of inverted reality tests, and disavowal through role exchange. The article develops these propositions through the reconstruction of a modified theory-based evaluation of a collaborative research programme. The programme set out to explore how evidence from health research could be used rapidly and effectively in the context of practical problems and organizational challenges, so an internal evaluation was set up to facilitate learning during the process. What ensued, however, was a loss of trust between partners, resolved only by repositioning the evaluation as a reflective academic study, reducing its reflexive capacity to intervene on the level of activity and organizational integration. We conclude that doing successful critical evaluation and, more generally, achieving political pertinence for social scientific discourses depends on creating the conditions in which actors are able to take the risks and share the costs associated with the enhanced level of reflexivity necessary to engage in collective action as well as knowledge production
Interface Methods: Renegotiating relations between digital social research, STS and sociology
This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called âinterface methods.â We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasised the significant differences between prominent methods built into digital media and those of STS and sociology. This paper advocates a third approach, one that a) highlights the dynamism and relative under-determinacy of digital methods, and b) affirms that multiple methodological traditions intersect in digital devices and research. We argue that these two circumstances enable a distinctive approach to methodology in digital social research â thinking methods as âinterface methodsâ - and the paper contextualizes this approach in two different ways. First, we show how the proliferation of online data tools or âdigital analyticsâ opens up distinctive opportunities for critical and creative engagement with methods development at the intersection of sociology, STS and digital research. Second, we discuss a digital research project in which we investigated a specific âinterface methodâ, namely co-occurrence analysis. In this digital pilot study we implemented this method in a critical and creative way to analyse and visualise âissue dynamicsâ in the area of climate change on Twitter. We evaluate this project in the light of our principal objective, which was to test the possibilities for the modification of methods through experimental implementation and interfacing of various methodological traditions. To conclude, we discuss a major obstacle to the development of âinterface methodsâ: digital media are marked by particular quantitative dynamics that seem adverse to the methodological commitments of sociology and STS. To address this, we argue in favour of a methodological approach in digital social research that affirms its mal-adjustment to the research methods that are prevalent in the medium
Towards an analytics and an ethics of expertise: learning from decision-aiding experiences in public risk assessment and risk management
Validar a guerra: a construção do regime de Expertise estratégica
This article is intended to contribute to the interpretative analysis of war. For that purpose, it investigates how some apparatuses located in strategic thinking help to make modern war a social practice considered both technically feasible and, at the same time, legitimate for soldiers. In so doing, it makes use of two different but closely related theoretical fields, pragmatic sociology (finding inspiration in the work of scholars such as Luc Boltanski, Nicolas Dodier and Francis Chateauraynaud), and the sociology of scientific knowledge (based mostly on the work of Bruno Latour). On the one hand, the sociology of scientific knowledge has developed a productive questioning of the construction of scientific facts that is particularly relevant to the present research. On the other hand, pragmatic sociology generates a compatible framework able to describe collective actions. The combination of both approaches allows the description of the formation of a strategic expertise regime that supports the technical legitimacy of the use of military force. Together, the sociology of scientific knowledge and pragmatic sociology bring a particularly relevant perspective to research pertaining to war.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
Economie de la perception et qualité des produits : L'exemple des contrefaçons dans le domaine agro-alimentaire
Parler et faire parler : travail en centre d'appels et dispositif de surveillance équipée
Combining Text-mining Analysis and Agent-based Modeling Methods: A Case Study to Address a Controversy
The methodological approach proposed here combines textual statistical analysis and agent-based simulations. The controversy concerning the unusual disappearance of pollinating bees (Apis mellifera) covered in the French press over a period of 13 years was chosen to describe the different stages of this heuristic framework. First, the articles are categorized according to the origin they attribute to the phenomenon as a univariate cause, a multivariate cause or a lack of understanding. Then, the different proportions of agents supporting either of these causes are obtained and reproduced from a dynamic opinion model, which shows the existence of agents with pre-determined choices. The change in the proportions over time leads to questionning the consistency of the data concerning the independence of all agents. In particular, it becomes possible to assume the existence of networks of influence, a hypothesis that could be verified by other techniques such as qualitative, ethnographic or interview methods.Lâ approche mĂ©thodologique proposĂ©e combine analyse statistique textuelle et simulation par agents. La controverse autour de la disparition inhabituelle des abeilles pollinisatrices (apis mellifera) traitĂ©e dans la presse francophone sur une pĂ©riode de 13 ans est choisie pour dĂ©crire les diffĂ©rentes Ă©tapes de ce cadre heuristique. PremiĂšrement, les articles sont catĂ©gorisĂ©s selon lâorigine quâils attribuent au phĂ©nomĂšne : soit une cause unifactorielle, soit une cause multifactorielle, soit une absence de comprĂ©hension du phĂ©nomĂšne. Ensuite, les diffĂ©rentes proportions dâagents soutenant lâune ou lâautre de ces causes sont obtenues et reproduites Ă partir dâun modĂšle de dynamique dâopinion, ce qui fait apparaĂźtre lâexistence dâagents prĂ©-dĂ©terminĂ©s dans leur choix. La variation de leurs proportions au cours du temps amĂšne Ă questionner la cohĂ©rence des donnĂ©es quant Ă lâindĂ©pendance de tous les agents. En particulier il devient envisageable de supposer lâexistence de rĂ©seaux dâinfluence. HypothĂšse qui pourrait ĂȘtre vĂ©rifiĂ©e Ă partir dâautres techniques comme des mĂ©thodes qualitatives, ethnographiques ou par entretien
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