KNOWLEDGE INSTITUTIONS GENDER : an east-west comparative study Framing the project Ulrike Felt

We are interested in … understanding the multiple articulations of knowledge, institutions and researchers (gender) investigating how institutions of research and society at large with its different histories and contingencies frame knowledge production while at the same time being framed by it exploring how policy is structuring research while simultaneously imaginaries of the future potentials of knowledge as well as of the potential futures drives the way these policies are articulated

We are interested in … Places (the material settings) of research, and how they open up or close down possibilities Spaces - social and epistemic ones - in which collective and individuated ways of working emerge and find expression in the multiple forms of knowledge produced. Institutions and how they frame and imagine research as well as the researchers

Researchers are central … Investigate how they …. inhabit the different cognitive landscapes and participate in giving shape to them, organize their environments and get organized by them, embody the norms and values of their workplace and epistemic culture while at times also resisting, make and brake social ties, move in and out of places. are confronted by and share existing but also participate in the creation of new myths on what it means to be a researcher and working in a field.

Central concept: Epistemic living spaces it is a space with symbolic, institutional, social and physical dimensions delimiting in multiple, more or less subtle ways what researchers can do/can know in research. Notion tries to capture dimensions of a research environment such as –feeling intellectually and socially “at home”, –holding an understanding of the often non-codified sets of values which matter, –sharing tacitly a repertoire of practices which are seen as adequately addressing the knowledge question, –knowing basic survival strategies intertwinedness of the personal, the institutional, the epistemic and the political both opening up and closing down possible degrees of action create feelings of being on safe grounds from which to start exploring unknown territories while at the same time also imposing limitations they are giving tacit guidance while simultaneously potentially curtailing more radical forms of innovation.

Comparison research and analysis was guided by a “comparative optics as a framework of seeing” (Knorr Cetina 2002: 4) on at least three levels –Different epistemic cultures (social science/biodciences) –Different national contexts (East/West) –Gender Comparison on a rather aggregated level; not necessarily systematic; Aiming to show how –seemingly „universal“ policy measures create rather different forms of multiple realities –different contexts lead to commonly shared problem visions carve out through the lense of the three analytic foci relevant facets of the relation between knowledge, institutions and researchers (gender)

How to deal with gender? treat gender as “a separate”, clear-cut and well-delimited category which need simply elaboration on each level of analysis rather as something vague and indefinite, that gleams through many of our observations, that is being de- and reconstructed simultaneously in different places and at different moments, is imposed, performed or refused as explicit category needs careful reassembling work in order to be made visible Making use of the broad corpus of feminist literature which has drawn our attention to the gendered dimensions of working in research, to the situatednesses of knowing and to gender as a major mode of ordering.

How to deal with East/West as categories? East/West is evidently also not treated as “a separate”, clear-cut and well-delimited category which need simply elaboration on each level of analysis rather as something vague and indefinite, that somehow runs through many of our observations, –being used and denied at the same time –Opens up/closes down possibilities (reflection on the own project) –geographic and symbolic; relational and fixed –reflects invisible orders (like centre & periphery) –“channels” knowledge flows (e.g. what gets translated, ….) needs careful reassembling work in order to be made visible

Conceptual positioning work Epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina) Notion which captures nicely “the strategies and policies of knowing that are not codified in textbooks but do inform expert practice” Goes beyond discipline it seems better suited to “make visible the complex texture of knowledge as practiced in the deep social spaces of modern institutions”. (Knorr-Cetina 2002: 2) As we are interested in practices as a mode of ordering action within knowledge-producing contexts withattention to the more symbolic components of research work  epistemic cultures seems an interesting and highly relevant concept

Conceptual positioning work Going beyond epistemic cultures We also Consider the intense framing of research through policy discourse and practice, e.g. changes in the monitoring and assessment practices Reflect the societal imaginaries that penetrate the research world Take into account the broader institutional aspects and normative frames, embedded in notions like career, mobility, speed, etc.  We look at “machineries of knowledge production” (Knorr-Cetina 2002) in a much broader sense beyond the epistemic focus  The concept of epistemic living spaces captures these complexities

Conceptual positioning work Co-production (Jasanoff) Stands for the close intertwinedness of science and society and draws out attention to the idea that “the ways in which we know and represent the world (both nature and society) are inseparable from the ways in which we choose to live in it.” “living in the world” takes in our project at least two distinct meanings – inhabiting an epistemic living space : The way people chose to inhabit this space would be closely intertwined with the institutional embedding, with the discursive framing as well as with narratives and imaginations about the objects they were working with and the knowledge to be generated.  „knowledge and its material embodiments are at once products of social work and constitutive of forms of social life“ in academia. – researchers’ being part of society at large : points to the ways in which contemporary research systems are framed by society. Discourses on knowledge society, the role attributed to research driven innovation in the advancement of contemporary societies, the importance attached to knowledge work and knowledge workers, all these are important forces shaping research.

Conceptual positioning work Mode 1/Mode2 Research (Nowotny, Gibbons et al.) Temporality, transdisciplinarity & Contextualisation of knowledge as a key-concepts  doing away with “the politics of doing away with politics“ (Latour) Shift from focusing on cultures of science to cultures of research  looking at practieces of knowing (Latour) Importance of Places (Gieryn): –geographic location with multiple dimensions: coordinates on rather different maps being organised in our case according to categories like institution, building, lab, city, country or region; perceptions of similarities and differences might emerge, become visible and give meaning to social organisation, research processes and the knowledge produced. –physicality, which invites to reflect how they have been constructed, what imaginations of knowledge production are inscribed in them, how they open up or close down potential dynamics. –places come into being because they are named, identified and represented. Neoinstitutionalism Reassembling academis: University autonomy movement

Three analytical foci: “seeing more while looking at less” Modes of ordering and boundaries which matter in knowledge production How are epistemic living spaced delimited and internally structured and organised? What are the dynamic forces at work? What are essential distinctions which matter? What kinds of orders are undone, created, performed? Working together apart thinking research as a kind of work, as something people do together and apart; it will look at mobility and interdisciplinarity as too rather strong forces giving texture to epistemic living spaces Times and trajectories in academic knowledge production Focus on the plurality of times at work and at play in epistemic contexts; look at the ways in which heterogeneous forms of practice, discourse and ordering constitute different times and temporalities