Climate change and sustainability science have become more international in scope and transdisciplinary in nature, in response to growing expectations that scientific knowledge directly informs collective action and transformation. In this article, we move past idealized models of the science–policy interface to examine the social processes and geopolitical dynamics of knowledge mobilization. We argue that sociotechnical imaginaries of transdisciplinary research, deployed in parallel to “universal” regimes of evidence-based decision-making from the global North, conceal how international collaborations of scientists (...) and societal actors actually experience knowledge mobilization, its systemic barriers, and its paths to policy action. Through ethnographic study of a transdisciplinary research program in the Americas, coupled with in-depth analysis of Colombia, we reveal divergences in how participants envision and experience knowledge mobilization and identify persistent disparities that diminish the capacity of researchers to influence decision-making and fit climate knowledge within broader neoliberal development paradigms. Results of the study point to a plurality of science–policy interface, each shaped by national sociotechnical imaginaries, development priorities, and local social orders. We conclude that a geopolitical approach to transdisciplinary science is necessary to understand how climate and sustainability knowledge circulates unevenly in a world marked by persistent inequality and dominance. (shrink)

There is no safe place and no single locus of enunciation from where the uni-versal could be articulated for all and forever. Hindu nationalism and Western neo-liberalism are entangled in a long history of the logic of coloniality (domination, oppression, exploitation) hidden under the rhetoric of modernity (salvation, civilization, progress, development, freedom and democracy). There are, however, needs and possibilities for Indians and Western progressive intellectuals working together to undermine and supersede the assumptions that liberal thinkers in the West are (...) better placed to understand what is the common good better than Indian thinkers in post-partition India. Science, in the last analysis, doesn't carry in itself an ethics and politics. Therefore, it is doubtful to argue that science is beyond both, and only concerned with the advancement of the frontier of knowledge and understanding. Science could be (like Christianity, Hinduism, Liberalism or Marxism) both imperial and liberating. Knowledge and understanding, rather than science; gnoseology rather than epistemology, should be thought out as which the horizon toward a dialogical and critical cosmopolitanism (e.g., pluriversallity as universal project), could be envisioned beyond East and West, Hindu nationalism and Westertn (neo) liberalism. (shrink)

The contributors to _Constructing the Pluriverse_ critique the hegemony of the postcolonial Western tradition and its claims to universality by offering a set of “pluriversal” approaches to understanding the coexisting epistemologies and practices of the different worlds and problems we inhabit and encounter. Moving beyond critiques of colonialism, the contributors rethink the relationship between knowledge and power, offering new perspectives on development, democracy, and ideology while providing diverse methodologies for non-Western thought and practice that range from feminist approaches to (...) scientific research to ways of knowing expressed through West African oral traditions. In combination, these wide-ranging approaches and understandings form a new analytical toolbox for those seeking creative solutions for dismantling Westernization throughout the world. Contributors Zaid Ahmad, Manuela Boatcă, Hans-Jürgen Burchardt, Arturo Escobar, Sandra Harding, Ehsan Kashfi, Venu Mehta, Walter D. Mignolo, Ulrich Oslender, Isiaka Ouattara, Manu Samnotra, Aram Ziai. (shrink)

The promotion of knowledge economies and societies, equated with the mobile subject as bearer of technological, managerial and cosmopolitan competences, on the one hand, and insecurities about social order and national identities, on the other, have in the past few years led to increasing polarisation between skilled migrants and those deemed to lack useful skills. The former are considered to be bearers of human capital and have the capacity to assimilate seamlessly and are therefore worthy of citizenship; the latter (...) are likely to pose problems of assimilation and dependency due to their economic and cultural ‘otherness’ and offered a transient status and partial citizenship by receiving states. In the European context this trend has been reinforced by the redrawing of European geopolitical space creating new boundaries of exclusion and social justice. The emphasis on the knowledge economy also generates gender inequalities and stratifications based on skills and types of knowledge with implications for citizenship and social justice. (shrink)

Science policies and science studies largely share an understanding of scientific knowledge and objects as immutable mobiles. This article shows how the analysis of research assessment in a non-Anglophone country and its effects on social sciences can shed new light on this shared notion. The preference for immutable mobiles in assessment regimes pushes social scientists to publish in specialized, usually Anglophone journals, which can result in the attenuation of local relevance of the knowledge they produce and contribute to (...) the performance of globally converging societies. The author argues that the observed consequences for the social sciences in non-Anglophone countries underscore a larger problem with both the policy ideal and the science and technology studies idea of immutable mobiles on two counts: the relation of the social and natural sciences to society and the engagement of sciences with the multiplicity of societies as well as natures. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo tiene por objetivo establecer las bases para una comprensión disciplinaria y epistemológica de la geopolítica, considerando su ubicación como campo de estudio y el principal debate entre la perspectiva clásica y crítica de la misma en América del Sur. En este sentido, se efectúa un abordaje histórico sobre la evolución de la geopolítica, decantando en la manera en cómo el conocimiento geopolítico se ha dado en la región mencionada, al tiempo que se señalan las dificultades y propuestas (...) de investigación en el campo señalado. Se concluye que una discusión epistemológica de la geopolítica no solamente ayudará a lograr una mejor construcción y entendimiento del conocimiento geopolítico, desde un punto de vista holístico, sino que ayudará a destacar el rol de la academia en la necesidad de ser el eje articulador de dicha discusión.: This article aims to establish the basis for a disciplinary and epistemological understanding of geopolitics, considering its location as a field of study and the main debate between the classical and critical perspective in South America. In this sense, a historical approach is made on the evolution of geopolitics, decanting in the way in which geopolitical knowledge has been given in the region while pointing out the difficulties and research proposals in the field. It concludes that an epistemological discussion of geopolitics will not only help to achieve a better construction and understanding of geopolitical knowledge, from a holistic point of view, but also highlight the role of academics to articulate the discussion. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, two different paradigms have reshaped industrial societies: the Neoliberal paradigm and a Research and Innovation paradigm. Both have been conceptualized and translated into strong policies with massive economic and social consequences. They provide divergent responses to the environmental transition. The Neoliberal paradigm is based on economic models and geopolitical solutions. The Research and Innovation paradigm's goal is to manage knowledge differently in order to reorient the evolution of society. Since the mid-1990s, a version of the Research (...) and Innovation paradigm has led to the design of large-scale research and innovation policies. This book examines how these policies have evolved and how they can be extended and reformed to respond to present and future environmental constraints. It studies the transformation of the conception, organization and role of science and technology in the evolution of industrial societies and explores the future of these developments. The book offers three unique lines of enquiry. The first is to focus not specifically on economics, sociology, political science or history, but on knowledge creation from an institutional and reflexive point of view. The second is to establish a convergence between the British school of science and technology studies and the research trends opened by the work of Michel Foucault. Both introduced trans-disciplinary and policy-oriented research associating case studies, long-term perspectives and theory. The third is to consider climate change as the overwhelming challenge of our time. The book is an insightful guide for students, scholars and researchers across the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, political science, law, economics, business and media. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus has not only brought along disruptions to daily socio-economic activities, but sickness and deaths due to its high contagion. With no widely acceptable pharmaceutical cure, the best form of prevention may be precautionary measures which will guide against infections and curb the spread of the disease. This study explored the relationship between COVID-19 knowledge, risk perception, and precautionary behavior among Nigerians. The study also sought to determine whether this relationship differed for men and women. A web-based (...) cross-sectional design approach was used to recruit 1,554 participants from all geopolitical zones in Nigeria, through social media platforms using a snowball sampling technique. Participants responded to web-based survey forms comprising demographic questions and adapted versions of the Ebola knowledge scale, SARS risk perception scale, and precautionary behavior scale. Moderated mediation analysis of the data showed that risk perception mediated the association between COVID-19 knowledge and precautionary behavior and this indirect effect was in turn moderated by gender. Results indicate that having adequate knowledge of COVID-19 was linked to higher involvement in precautionary behavior through risk perception for females but not for males. It was also noted that awareness campaigns and psychological intervention strategies on COVID-19 related activities may be particularly important for males more than females. Drawing from the health belief model, we recommend that COVID-19 awareness campaigns should target raising more awareness of the risks associated with the infection to make individuals engage more in precautionary behaviors. (shrink)

Afrosofian Knowledge and Cheikh Anta Diop wrestles with the cultural, epistemological, ethical, and geopolitical conundrums of our contemporary world. It argues that sofia is a psychological, discursive, social, and civilizational sickle constantly sharpened to weed imperial-colonial, mental, linguistic, racist, and barbaric alienation.

To understand the negative effect in the discursive multiplicity, it’s necessary to comprehend that the production of knowledge is not a free and natural exercise of the human spirit but a series of codes and rules of formation that leads to the production of speeches. That is the reason why we will take in high consideration Focault’s studies in the control of speeches. By doing this we will be capable to understand the way that subjects of knowledge, the (...) epistemes and the universal speeches (of all societies) are organized. We will use some arguments that belong to Latin American postcolonial studies to prove that discursive rank founded in the Western way of thinking allowed racial, social and cultural rankings that led to a global domination in many aspects. In this frame we will also introduce the “knowledge coloniality” category in order to define the way how the production of knowledge was under control in the colonial system (that, by the way, is still current). To bring matters to a close, this procedure will let us define the “geopolitics of knowledge” (as proposed by Mignolo) in a sense that cognitive capitalism is a geopolitical determination of the actual knowledge production. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century geographers analyzed at length the individual's relationship with his natural environment. The French school of humanist geography must be credited with stressing the influence of environment which, in proportion to its pronounced characteristics, becomes more and more powerful. Thus we came to understand the causes which determine a way of life, the customs, psychology, and idiosyncracies of those who inhabit the mountains, plains, forests, deserts, or seas. Our task has been a more (...) daring one : we have studied the relationships established in the past between a certain geographical environment and the civilizations which formerly flourished there. In recognition of their meaning we labeled these relationships “geopolitics.” The term, coined by the German school, enjoyed a tremendous vogue because it was so apt. However, as critics have amply demonstrated, of and by itself it was really meaningless because the subject matter with which it must be concerned belonged to other, previously established and independent disciplines, such as economics or political geography. An inexact term, the word “geopolitics” crept into our present-day language. We, however, have chosen it to designate a determinate historical relationship. (shrink)

Producing, Localising, and Imagining Knowledge. On “false maps” and “scientific expeditions” in the Brazilian‐French Debates about Guyana (1880s–1900s). This paper analyses the interferences between knowledge production, space and colonial claims from translocal, actor‐based perspectives. Due to its ‘thickness’ the examined material, found particularly at the Perthes collection (Gotha/Germany), allows multifaceted views on a topic which influences our scientific knowledge‐based world views. In his writings the Swiss naturalist Emil Göldi underlined his point of view that was both ‘Brazilianized’ (...) and scientific. Especially his letters and articles between the 1880s and the 1900s are testimony to his positioning in situ (‘an Ort und Stelle’) against the cartographic ‘alienated’‐colonial perspectives of French scientists, especially those of his counterpart Henri Coudreau. Sometimes it reads more like an adventure story than a scholarly debate. By working with and using the internationally renowned periodical Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen (Perthes), Göldi managed to design an image of the spatial situation that convinced the deciding people and thus to obtain for Brazil a huge territory in the Eastern part of the Guyanas. (shrink)

Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalization of sociology, seen as a militant science serving the nation-state. Geography re-defined itself as both geohistory and geopolitics and tried to articulate German Geopolitik and French géographie politique in order to create a science of national and global spaces compatible with this new sociology. Geopolitics became, at the end of the 1930s and during WWII, a major discourse in national politics and gathered a group of scholars, public (...) administrators, and military elites, who aimed to quickly and massively transform the nation and the state. Two important local scholars, the sociologist-demographer Anton Golopenţia and the geographer-turned-sociologist Ion Conea, were central in constituting geopolitics as an important political language and an instrument of state reform inside a radical biopolitical project. (shrink)

This article is about weaponisation of emotions through visual culture. It interrogates how geopolitics trickles down to everyday life and becomes personal through the embodiment of screen actors....

La «société de la connaissance» concerne l'ensemble des secteurs productifs. Elle induit une réorganisation des entreprises, qui a des conséquences sur la définition du travail et sur l'établissement de la valeur des firmes. Les enjeux de transfert de connaissances pour le développement sont devenus critiques, comme le montre l'exemple des médicaments. Dans cette situation, une stratégie de verrouillage, par la construction de nouvelles enclosures dans le domaine immatériel est en chantier dans l'ensemble des pays développés. En contrepoint, les nouveaux mouvements (...) sociaux du numérique visent à étendre le domaine public et à construire les biens communs de l'information. Ces mouvements se rapprochent des pays en développement et permettent de définir un nouvel équilibre économique et géopolitique mondial. Deux questions peuvent nous servir de boussole pour inventer les nouvelles formes d'organisation publique de l'ére informationnelle: le critère de l'accès au savoir pour tous et celui de la défense de la vie privée.The "knowledge society" refers to all productive sectors. It induces a reorganization of companies, which has implications for the definition of work and the establishment of the value of firms. Issues of knowledge transfer for development have become critical, as the example of drugs. In this situation, a foreclosure strategy by building new enclosures in the field site is immaterial in all developed countries. In counterpoint, the new social movements aim to extend the digital public domain and build common property information. These movements are similar in developing countries and help to define a new global economic and geopolitical balance. Two questions can serve as a compass to invent new forms of organization of public informational era: the criterion of access to knowledge for all and the defense of privacy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Grades of Epistemological Involvement The Socratic Certification Program The General Account‐Requirement Definitional and Explanatory Accounts Chronic and Episodic Perspectives on Knowledge The Formal Aitia Metaphysics and Epistemology in the Republic The Simple and Subtle Aitiai in the Phaedo “Analytic” Formal Accounts in the Late Dialogues Note.

Philip Pettit’s neo-Roman republican theory of non-domination is billed as a more egalitarian alternative to classical liberal theories of non-interference. As a theory of geopolitical affairs, however, his republicanism fails to fulfill this egalitarian promise in ways that closely echo John Rawls’s liberal law of peoples. Pettit’s republican law of peoples is ill equipped to address structural sources of transnational and global domination because it exaggerates the ontological separateness of peoples, it overvalues the self-sufficiency of states for purposes of achieving (...) internal non-domination, and it conceives of domination too narrowly as an evil that must be intentionally or negligently imposed by identifiable agents. (shrink)

Book Information Knowledge, Cause, and Abstract Objects: Causal Objections to Platonism. Knowledge, Cause, and Abstract Objects: Causal Objections to Platonism Colin Cheyne , Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers , 2001 , xvi + 236 , £55 ( cloth ) By Colin Cheyne. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Pp. xvi + 236. £55.

최근에 이른바 신유물론과 포스트휴머니즘의 배경에서 인간과 비인간타자 간의 소통에 관한 문제의 한 갈래로 ‘다종 간 지식’의 가능성 문제가 대두하고 있다. 이 논문에서 우리는 ‘다종 간 지식’의 개념을 명료화하면서, 종과 종 사이의 이해 내지 소통은 공감을 통해 부분적으로 그러나 실질적으로 가능하다는 관점을 고찰한다. 문제는 다종 간 지식에 토대적으로 연관하는 공감의 개념과 이론이 보다 더 확고하게 밝혀지고 확립되어야 한다는 점이다. 이와 관련하여 우리는 인간과 동물 종 사이의 앎의 방식으로서, 뱅시안 데스프레(Vinciane Despret)가 제안하는 ‘체화된 공감’ 개념에 주목한다. 그는, 인간과 동물 사이에 비록 종들의 (...) 차이에 기인하는 비대칭성이 존재한다고 하여도 그들 사이의 소통과 이해는 체화에 기반한 상호 응답과 조율로 구성된 부분적 친화성을 통해 가능하다고 역설한다. 본 논문은 이 입장의 의의와 난점 그리고 앞으로의 과제를 논의한다. 이를 통해 우리는 비인간 타자에 대한 지식 이론의 정립을 향한 한 실마리를 제시한다. (shrink)

This volume presents timely commentaries on issues relating to Africa and Latin America, demonstrating the value of intercultural dialogue amongst voices from the Global South on decoloniality, cultural rights and politics.

Affective geographies examine the emotional dimensions of space and spatial relationships; geopolitics seeks to understand the role of space and geography in international relations. In this paper, we consider a hybridization of these concepts in the context of the Nordic countries, and in particular Denmark. Nordic countries have shifted attention to the wielding of “soft power” as a tool in seeking to achieve international relations and economic goals. We argue that in the case of Denmark, these soft power tools (...) bear an interesting affective dimension through an emphasis on “hygge,” or, “coziness.” Through media analysis, we illuminate the components of soft power in the Danish case and highlight the role of affect as a key element of these soft power tools. (shrink)

Shrinking resources and the increasing complexity of clinical decisions are stimulating research in knowledge-intensive computer applications for the delivery of social services. The expected benefits of knowledge-intensive applications such as expert systems include improvement in both the quality and the consistency of service delivery, augmentation of institutional memory, and reduced labour costs through greater reliance on paraprofessionals. This paper analyses the likely impacts of knowledge-intensive systems on social service organisations, drawing on trends in related service-delivery fields, and (...) on known impacts of computer applications in organisations. A structural change may be anticipated: decision making and planning functions will shift increasingly from social service professionals to administrators. (shrink)

Annotation Redefines globalization as merely the framework of the current political debate on the future of world power.

In 2021 global sales in semiconductors reached $556 billion, with the US accounting for 46% of the global market, yet as Zhi Su (2022) reports: ‘The share of modern semiconductor manufacturing capa...

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

1. What is the relation between skilful action and knowledge? According to most philosophers, the two have little in common: practical intelligence and theoretical intelligence are largely separate...