When grassroots innovation movements encounter mainstream institutions: implications for models of inclusive innovation

Grassroots innovation movements (GIMs) can be regarded as initiators or advocates of alternative pathways of innovation. Sometimes these movements engage with more established science, technology and innovation (STI) institutions and development agencies in pursuit of their goals. In this paper, we argue that an important aspect to encounters between GIMs and mainstream STI institutions is the negotiation of different framings of grassroots innovation and development of policy models for inclusive innovation. These encounters can result in two different modes of engagement by GIMs; what we call insertion and mobilization. We illustrate and discuss these interrelated notions of framings and modes of engagement by drawing on three case studies of GIMs: the Social Technologies Network in Brazil, and the Honey Bee Network and People's Science Movements in India. The cases highlight that inclusion in the context of GIMs is not an unproblematic, smooth endeavour, and involves diverse interpretations and framings, which shape what and who gets included or excluded. Within the context of increasing policy interest, the analysis of encounters between GIMs and STI institutions can offer important lessons for the design of models of inclusive innovation and development

Whose Side are Ethics Codes On? Power, Responsibility and the Social Good

The moral authority of ethics codes stems from an assumption that they serve a unified society, yet this ignores the political aspects of any shared resource. The sociologist Howard S. Becker challenged researchers to clarify their power and responsibility in the classic essay: Whose Side Are We On. Building on Becker's hierarchy of credibility, we report on a critical discourse analysis of data ethics codes and emerging conceptualizations of beneficence, or the "social good", of data technology. The analysis revealed that ethics codes from corporations and professional associations conflated consumers with society and were largely silent on agency. Interviews with community organizers about social change in the digital era supplement the analysis, surfacing the limits of technical solutions to concerns of marginalized communities. Given evidence that highlights the gulf between the documents and lived experiences, we argue that ethics codes that elevate consumers may simultaneously subordinate the needs of vulnerable populations. Understanding contested digital resources is central to the emerging field of public interest technology. We introduce the concept of digital differential vulnerability to explain disproportionate exposures to harm within data technology and suggest recommendations for future ethics codes.Comment: Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* '20), January 27-30, 2020, Barcelona, Spain. Correcte

Beyond words: Aesthetic knowledge and knowing in design

Aesthetic knowledge comes from practitioners understanding the look, feel, smell, taste and sound of things. It is vital to work in many organizational contexts. In this paper, we explore aesthetic knowledge and knowing in organizations through detailed observation of design work in the architectural practice Edward Cullinan Architects. Through our research, we explore aesthetic knowledge in the context of architectural work, we unpack what it is, how it is generated, and how it is applied in design projects, shared between practitioners and developed at the level of the organization. Our analysis suggests that aesthetic knowledge plays an important part in organizational practice, not only as the symbolic context for work, but as an integral part of the work that people do. It suggests that aesthetic reflexivity, which involves an opening up and questioning of what is known, is experienced as part of practice as well as a `time out' from practice

Topic Modeling and Text Analysis for Qualitative Policy Research

This paper contributes to a critical methodological discussion that has direct ramifications for policy studies: how computational methods can be concretely incorporated into existing processes of textual analysis and interpretation without compromising scientific integrity. We focus on the computational method of topic modeling and investigate how it interacts with two larger families of qualitative methods: content and classification methods characterized by interest in words as communication units and discourse and representation methods characterized by interest in the meaning of communicative acts. Based on analysis of recent academic publications that have used topic modeling for textual analysis, our findings show that different mixed‐method research designs are appropriate when combining topic modeling with the two groups of methods. Our main concluding argument is that topic modeling enables scholars to apply policy theories and concepts to much larger sets of data. That said, the use of computational methods requires genuine understanding of these techniques to obtain substantially meaningful results. We encourage policy scholars to reflect carefully on methodological issues, and offer a simple heuristic to help identify and address critical points when designing a study using topic modeling.Peer reviewe

Promover a partir do interior: o papel do facilitador no apoio a formas dialógicas e reflexivas de auto-avaliação

Resumo Este artigo apresenta uma abordagem reflexiva e dialógica para a avaliação que tem sido desenvolvida ao longo de cerca de vinte anos por um grupo de pesquisa em educação na Universidade de Pavia e que foi testado em campo em várias experiências e pesquisas realizadas na Itália, em que educadores de creches e escolas de educação infantil estiveram diretamente envolvidos. A abordagem, inspirada na avaliação de quarta geração de Guba e Lincoln e na teoria do pensamento reflexivo de Dewey, considera a avaliação como um processo pelo qual as pessoas que trabalham em uma instituição de ensino podem refletir em grupo sobre suas crenças e práticas educacionais, a fim de planejar e implementar ações de melhora. Depois de delinear brevemente os principais benefícios da abordagem, vou me concentrar no papel desempenhado nela pela figura dofacilitador, alguém de fora da realidade educacional objeto de avaliação, cuja principal tarefa é ajudar os participantes a reconstruir uma imagem compartilhada da realidade em que operam, o que torna possível prever o futuro, pensando em por que você faz o que você faz e como você pode melhorar isso. O principal objetivo dessa figura é “promover a partir de dentro” provocando, através da reflexão, o “empoderamento” de grupos de educadores e professores. Com base em uma pesquisa recente, as estratégias comunicativas e maiêuticas utilizadas por essa figura na promoção de processos de auto-avaliação em grupos de educadores e professores também serão apresentados

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead