Improving the road planning process

Two Swedish road projects were studied to find ways to shorten the time spent in the road planning process. The results indicated that the road projects developed very differently. One planning project developed rather smoothly, while the other received an escalating flood of letters. Concerns about the environment and landscape were present in the majority of these letters, pointing to the importance of involving the expertise of landscape planners or environmentalists in the management of road development projects. This article's conclusion stresses the importance of inviting early submission of viewpoints and of responding to people's questions in order to achieve acceptance of a project; it also stresses the significance of keeping communication open with affected sectors of the public from the very beginning of a project

The acceptance process in road planning

This paper presents a case study of the dialogue between the road department and the general public during the early stages of two Swedish road projects. The two road projects were located in Skåne in southern Sweden. Both concerned bypasses past villages and passed valuable recreational areas as well as environmentally sensitive areas. The study focused on the public’s reaction to landscape information. The basis for the discussion comprises two articles: Article 1, concerning letters sent to the road department, is in press, while Article 2, analyzing the official documents of the two projects, is currently under review. The road projects studied were very similar at the outset, but the dialogue between the involved parties took different turns in the two projects. One project ran into difficulties, whereas the other managed to build acceptance established early on, which proved to be beneficial for all involved

Transparency in road planning documents

Public opinion, expressed through written comments, developed very differently throughout the planning phases of two road projects in southern Sweden. Each project's Prefeasibility Study, Feasibility Study, and Environmental Impact Report (EIR) were studied to analyze the changes between five evaluation phases: background and inventory of base data, replenishment with additional information, consequence analysis, conflict analysis, and priorities. For one of the road projects, rich and early descriptions of impact estimates, along with appraisals of the effects on the landscape, paved the way for more effective dialogue. Better disclosure of its reports' established facts and evaluations might explain the more solid acceptance for that road project. The other project did not clearly show the reasoning behind its priorities, which may explain the many public and agency comments on the EIR; consequently, people constructed and submitted their own viewpoints regarding impact. This article discusses how transparent documentation and presentation of priorities ultimately can contribute to the success of similar projects

Studying the science of economics: Outline of a realist sociology of science

This paper discusses the prospect of a sociology of science informed by the critical realist philosophy of science. The discussion departs from the need for a theoretical framework to account for theoretical struggle and reproduction in the field of econom-ics. The recent talk about an ontological turn in science studies and the wider back-ground for such a turn is then related to the earlier turn to ontology by critical realism. It is argued that the realist philosophy gives the most reasonable account of the way science works. Informed by such a view of science, an outline of a realist sociology of science influenced by a Bourdieuan sociology of science is presented, pointing to three central aspects of science: the social or political, the specific scientific habitus, and the relationship to its real object. Finally, a few implications for a sociological study of economics are noted

Disciplined reasoning : Styles of reasoning and the mainstream-heterodoxy divide in Swedish economics

Economics is one of the most influential social science disciplines, with a high level of internal consent around a common theoretical and methodological approach to economic analysis. However, marginalised schools of thought have increasingly unified under the term “heterodox” economics, with their critical stance towards the “neoclassical mainstream” as common denominator. This has spawned debates among scholars about how to understand the nature of the mainstream-heterodoxy divide in economics.This thesis sets out to explain how such a common approach to science is generalised and stabilised in modern economics, and how this process is related to heterodoxy. Grounded in the sociology of science, it aims first to provide an empirical account of the mainstream-heterodoxy dynamics in Swedish economics, and second, to contribute to theory development. Drawing on the literature on distinct styles of reasoning in the history of science, I develop a theoretical framework of relational disciplinary styles of reasoning, which is used to analyse two bodies of empirical material from Swedish economics. The first is an in-depth interview study with researchers in economics, and the second is a document study of expert evaluation reports from the hiring of professors of economics at four of the top Swedish universities during 25 years. Through the two empirical studies, the fine-grained qualitative material provides an insight into the ways economists understand their discipline and the character of proper knowledge production.I argue that the mainstream-heterodoxy divide is fruitfully understood in terms of the institutionalised stabilisation of a disciplinary style of reasoning, and show how economists understand their scientific approach and its merits. The maintenance of the style of reasoning is the achievement of the thought collective of economists, where boundaries are constructed in relation to contesting heterodox economics and to other scientific disciplines. I show how the disciplinary style with its conception of good science and the notion of a core of the discipline is linked to the reproduction of disciplinary boundaries. I trace how this plays out through shifting quality evaluation practices, and show how top journal rankings have become a powerful judgement device which links the hierarchical ranking of top journals to the notion of a disciplinary core, and effectively functions as a mechanism of disciplinary stabilisation. In conclusion, I argue that these processes form a self-stabilising system in which the disciplinary style of reasoning and its boundaries is reproduced, with potential implications for how we understand intellectual dynamics and pluralism

Algoritmernas kunskapssociologi : Introduktion till avsnittets texter

Människor kategoriserar och ordnar världen omkring sig genom att konstruera gränser, producera värderingar, rangordningar och kvantifierade data. Att undersöka hur sådana ordningar konstrueras, reproduceras och ifrågasätts har länge varit en central fråga för kunskapssociologin. Att förstå sådana processer idag innebär att vi i allt större utsträckning måste förstå hur algoritmer kommit att bli en oskiljaktig del av samhället och ordnandet av kunskap, inte minst genom den roll som utvecklingen av så kallad big data, driven av globala jätteföretag som Facebook, Google, Amazon och Apple, spelar idag. Jag lyfter fram fyra generella sociala processer som utgjort delvis överlappande ämnen för teoridriven empirisk forskning inom kunskapssociologin de senaste decennierna. Det rör sig om tillkomsten och reproduktionen av kategoriska gränser, rankningar, kvantifiering, och slutligen värderingar. Jag menar att förståelsen av dessa fyra former av sociala processer, relationerna mellan dem, och de sätt på vilka de är socialt reaktiva, dvs att institutionaliserade sätt att ordna kunskap om den sociala världen också återverkar på denna värld, kan ge oss kraftfulla teoretiska verktyg för att närma oss algoritmer.Slutligen diskuterar jag hur detta görs bland annat i Marion Fourcade och Kieran Healys arbeten, med hjälp av begreppen klassificeringssituation och überkapital, vilket illustreras med samtida exempel från Netflix science fiction-serie Black Mirror och det framväxande sociala kreditsystemet i Kina

The world is not a field - An interview with Michèle Lamont : Interviewed by Anders Hylmö

In this interview, Michèle Lamont discusses her intellectual trajectory in relation to other sociologists and research fields. The starting point is her relationship to Bourdieu’s field theory in 1980s Paris. She describes how her empirically grounded work developed as a critique of Bourdieu’s oeuvre yet draws heavily on it. A common thread in her work is a focus on social and symbolic boundaries and their relation to evaluation and pluralism, which she has extended from her early studies of class boundaries to empirical and theoretical work, ranging from more general cultural processes of inequality and stigmatization, to knowledge production and evaluation in academia. The importance of cumulative work in sociology and the value of a plurality of criteria of worth across different domains emerge as two central themes in the interview. Finally, Lamont reflects on the current status of the sociology discipline and its role in the public sphere. The interview took place in Lund on 7 March 2018, where Lamont was invited keynote speaker at the Sociologidagarna 2018 conference.Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv</p

Från ontologi till ideologi: en undersökning av den kritiska realismen som sociologisk vetenskapsteori

I denna uppsats undersöks den kritiska realismen som vetenskapsteori för samhällsvetenskaperna. Tillvägagångssättet är en immanent kritik, där den kritiska realismen följs genom dess grundläggande argument, för att sedan vända dess egen begreppsapparat mot sig själv för att visa på spänningar och motsägelser i teorin. Särskild uppmärksamhet kommer genomgående att riktas mot den nära relationen till marxismen, samt synen på abstraktioner som ett centralt samhällsvetenskapligt verktyg. Undersökningen tar sin utgångspunkt i argumenten för en realistisk vetenskapsteori utifrån det naturvetenskapliga experimentet som oomstritt faktum, och upplyftandet av ontologin framför epistemologin. Den kritiska realismens ontologiska modell presenteras, liksom dess kritik av empirismen och idealismen. Vidare undersöks argumenten för en samhällsvetenskap med emancipatorisk potential, och den kritiska realismens syn på vetenskapens produktionsprocess. De skilda ståndpunkterna i frågan om vad avsaknaden av experiment innebär för samhällsvetenskaperna behandlas, och jag argumenterar för att detta bör ses som tecken på en underliggande och olöst problematik vad gäller den kritiska realismens syn på vetenskapens transitiva objekt. Denna kritik fördjupas med en granskning av ideologibegreppet hos Roy Bhaskar respektive Louis Althusser, varpå den kritiska realismens tendens att underbetona vetenskapens irrationella eller ideologiska aspekter lyfts fram

The world is not a field - An interview with Michèle Lamont : Interviewed by Anders Hylmö

In this interview, Michèle Lamont discusses her intellectual trajectory in relation to other sociologists and research fields. The starting point is her relationship to Bourdieu’s field theory in 1980s Paris. She describes how her empirically grounded work developed as a critique of Bourdieu’s oeuvre yet draws heavily on it. A common thread in her work is a focus on social and symbolic boundaries and their relation to evaluation and pluralism, which she has extended from her early studies of class boundaries to empirical and theoretical work, ranging from more general cultural processes of inequality and stigmatization, to knowledge production and evaluation in academia. The importance of cumulative work in sociology and the value of a plurality of criteria of worth across different domains emerge as two central themes in the interview. Finally, Lamont reflects on the current status of the sociology discipline and its role in the public sphere. The interview took place in Lund on 7 March 2018, where Lamont was invited keynote speaker at the Sociologidagarna 2018 conference.Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv</p