Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy (MPP/LPF)
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A response to Marianne de Laet’s “Anthropology as social epistemology”Ratner, Helene (, 2013)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: As her title indicates, Marianne de Laet suggests that social epistemology could be thought of as anthropology, in terms of how this mode of knowing has helped flesh out the social dimensions of scientific knowledge. She does so firstly, by accounting for how anthropological methods and concepts have contributed to science and technology studies (STS) by providing an alternative to “believing the natives” i.e., scientists, hence challenging positivist and objectivist accounts of science. She then specifies selected analytical insights of anthropology. The concepts ‘culture’ and ‘practice’, she argues, enable us to learn how “knowledge is social in an epistemic sense” (2012, 421). She concludes her argument by questioning the distinction between epistemology and ontology, maintaining that anthropology is social epistemology. De Laet touches several key debates in the history of STS and much of her commentary on the sociality of knowledge is difficult to disagree with. There are however, also some elements in her argument with which I wish to engage critically. These include the relationship between anthropology and STS and the relationship between the concepts of culture and ontology. I will do so by drawing my inspiration from a contemporary a debate across STS and anthropology that — like de Laet — regards entanglements of epistemology and ontology, practice, and materiality. This project is also known as post- ANT and empirical philosophy in STS (Mol 2002; Gad and Bruun Jensen 2010, 55-80; Law and Hassard 1999) and lateral, multi-natural and ontological engagements in anthropology (Maurer 2005; Riles 2000; Strathern 2004 [1991]; Carrithers et al. 2010, 152-200; Viveiros de Castro 2004, 463-484). De Laet mentions some of the same sources. I will focus my commentary on these debates’ implications for the concept of culture and “our terminological tinkering” (2012, 420). My aim is to provide a different account of what anthropology has to offer STS and, as a consequence, to keep some interesting tensions open between the conceptual and the empirical, between “us” and “them”, which I believe de Laet resolves too quickly. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8691 Files in this item: 1
ratner.pdf (157.6Kb) -
Overcoming Stereotypes and Embracing Ideological VarietyVallentin, Steen (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper makes a contribution towards a more nuanced understanding of the ambiguous and contested relationship between neoliberalism and CSR (corporate social responsibility). It challenges stereotypical depictions of CSR as a neoliberal discourse and argues that there is a need for greater awareness of the varieties of liberalism at play in CSR. The paper is concerned with neoliberalism both in regard to the theory and the practice of CSR. Theoretically, it presents the Foucauldian understanding of neoliberalism and neoliberal governmentality as its primary means of identifying and analyzing processes of neoliberalization. On the practical side, it focuses on the neoliberalization of governmental approaches to CSR. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8689 Files in this item: 1
Vallentin.pdf (211.8Kb) -
How special groups organize for collaborative creativity in conditions of spatial variability and distanceO’Donnell, Shannon (Frederiksberg, 2013)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The enormous challenges and opportunities impacting the world community today increasingly require people to practice collaborative innovation effectively both in person and across geographic boundaries. Simultaneously, advances in technology such as social networking tools, digital 3-D representations, virtual worlds, and open source practices are inspiring generations of users to develop new kinds of adaptive collaborative networks and capabilities. But when people work across organizational and geographic boundaries, new challenges arise that make it difficult for groups to achieve the levels of excellence they are capable of achieving together in close proximity. Practitioners need help determining how best to perform collaborative creativity given unique and dynamic work conditions. Meanwhile, as new forms of creative group work emerge at an accelerating pace, researchers struggle to keep up with and develop nuanced understanding of the variations in collaborative processes we increasingly see performed. With this PhD research, I aim to increase our understanding of a particular, specialized form of collaborative creativity called “ensembling.” I investigate this phenomenon by studying it in diverse—including “stretched”—conditions. By stretched, I mean that, literally, groups are stretched apart in space as membership size and spatial distance between members increase and work configurations vary. The groups I study are those both capable of achieving and driven to achieve a peak-performance state of ensemble, and do so via the enactment of an interdependent set of methods that call ensemble into being, a process I call ensembling. In their ideal form, these work methods support the emergence of ensemble and result in the creation of aesthetically coherent and novel outcomes that are particularly responsive to the contexts in which they are made. To investigate the phenomenon of ensemble, I first develop a construct of ensemble based on informant descriptions, and use theory and data to develop a detailed description of how ensembling is performed in natural conditions (i.e., in close physical proximity). Then I look at an extreme example in which a set of expert groups’ ability to ensemble was put under stress by an unprecedented work task. In 2009, multiple string quartets (many considered world class) organized to perform a new musical composition. The composition challenged four quartets at a time to perform as an integrated ensemble while sitting apart, in various configurations, and at spatial distances of up to 70 feet. To help them address the difficulties produced by increased membership and distance, the musicians integrated a simple coordinating technology into their process. To learn how participants made ensemble possible given these new conditions, I engaged multiple qualitative methods for generating data and multiple perspectives for interpretation. I first considered their process as an iterative approach to exploring strategies for addressing constraints, in order to show how the methods of ensembling interacted with conditions of increased group size, increased spatial distance and configurational variability, and to elicit their evolving beliefs about what methods made ensemble more likely to occur given these conditions. Then I performed an alternative interpretation, disrupting this logic and exploring the ways in which participants used methods of ensembling—particularly openness to uncertainty and reconceiving—to create unanticipated potentialities for ensemble to emerge despite constraints. I show how they worked with a coordinating technology called a “click-track” in important new ways that went beyond “merely” achieving synchronous coordination to increasing their autonomy, relatedness, and ability to demonstrate artistic virtuosity, enabling them to engage equally in leadership and participation and to play. Finally, performing a comparative analysis across sub-units of the case, including examples of breakdown in the process, I generated additional insights into what conditions, beliefs, methods and behaviors enable or inhibit processes of ensembling. Integrating learning from analysis and interpretation, I propose a new range of conditions in which ensembling is possible, and a revised and expanded description of the methods by which groups ensemble. Conditions can expand to include larger groups with limited-tenure consisting of enduring-tenure sub-groups, multiple task interdependencies at group and sub-group levels, balanced tenure at sub-group level, a balance between proximity and distance, opportunities to work with and without technological mediation, and self-determined configuration variability. I show that the emergence of ensemble depends on, for instance, a shared purpose to ensemble, and methods such as a “struggle” phase, episodes of close physical proximity, collective leadership, “dueting” in different configurations, reconceiving constraints, living with the paradox of one-and-four, opening the process to uncertainty and to the emergence of consent, and subliminal technology engagement. Ultimately, these groups demonstrated an increasing ability to adapt to new conditions faster and more creatively, making new configurations possible, and suggesting ways in which ensemble might be performed in other kinds of group settings. I summarize findings in the form of a “framework of ensembling” that is meant to serve as a tool to further enrich our yet nascent understanding of this complex phenomenon and to aid in the exploration of ensembling in contexts outside the usual places we expect it to occur. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8653 Files in this item: 1
Shannon_O'Donnell.pdf (7.529Mb) -
En socialpsykologisk analyse af forholdet imellem selvledelse, ledelse og stress i det moderne arbejdslivGroth-Brodersen, Signe (Frederiksberg, 2013)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Afhandlingen rejser et kritisk perspektiv på individualiseringen af sundhedsfremme ud fra en diskussion af ledelse af selvledelse i det moderne arbejdsliv. Det er karakteristisk for den eksisterende danske og internationale forskning i selvledelse, at der er gennemført en begrænset empirisk udforskning af selvledelsens funktion og virke i arbejdslivets praksis. Det er i særlig grad empirisk underbelyst, hvordan variationer i forholdet imellem selvledelse og ledelse indvirker på forekomsten af stresssymptomer. Et nyere dansk empirisk projekt placerer selvledelse, beskrevet som en særlig form for selvorganiseringskompetence, i en positiv position i forhold til at håndtere det grænseløse arbejdsliv. Det grænseløse arbejdsliv beskrives her som det at have frie grænser i forhold til organiseringen af ’arbejdstid og arbejdssted’. Disse resultater udfordrer tidligere studier indenfor arbejdslivsforskning, hvor man i højere grad har set selvledelse koblet sammen med stress og stigende krav til individet (Phil-Tingvad, 2010; Allvin et. al., 2011, Lund & Hvid, 2007). I den internationale forskning beskrives selvledelse som ’Self-Leadership’. Self-Leadership handler om en særlig form for selvkontrol, hvor individet giver sig selv feedback og er selvmotiverende (Neck & Hougton, 2006; Manz & Neck, 2004). Self-Leadership er en teori, der arbejder med selvledelse uden en konkret kobling til arbejdslivet. Teorien beskæftiger sig derfor ikke med selvledelsens sammenspil med ledelsen og herunder betydningen af ledelse som relevant kontekstuelt parameter. Selvledelse bliver set som en eksistentiel form for egenledelse.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8626 Files in this item: 1
Signe_Groth-Brodersen.pdf (1.643Mb) -
Online GPA Data in Lower Secondary SchoolsNormann Andersen, Kim; Zinner Henriksen, Helle; Medaglia, Rony; Hjerrild Carlsen, Mathilde; Sløk, Camilla (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Despite ten years of direct regulation, our study of Danish lower secondary schools shows that they do not provide online access to the GPA for individual public schools (N=1,592). Using Lipsky’s gate-keeping theory, we investigate the lack of data provision as indicator not only of professionals’ being reluctant to accept imposed standards and control from central level (top-down) but also avoiding demands from parents (and children) on transparency and accountability (bottom-up). The lack of accessibility of grades on the web can thus be seen as a classical gate-keeping mechanism evolving in the age of information society where expectations of end-of-gatekeeping by providing accessibility and transparency using information systems has been outnumbered by classical forces of gate-keeping. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8593 Files in this item: 1
