Changing Research Communities : Essays on Objectivity and Relativism in Contemporary Cultural Research
Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation examines the effects of a change in the roles that extra-academic agents have in academic research: they are participating in the production of academic knowledge more actively than used to be the case. The focus is mainly on disciplines that fall under the umbrella of cultural research. Former informants are nowadays often becoming collaborators, co-researchers or co-authors in collaborative or participatory projects, or conducting activist research on their own cultures. Cultural research is in a unique position when facing the contemporary urge towards more "democratic" knowledge production. In disciplines such as anthropology, folkloristics and ethnology, researchers have always interacted with their informants' knowledge systems and developed research practices for approaching these systems. These practices are presently colliding with new demands that arise from the now common call for collaborative and participatory research. I focus on normative epistemic questions related to relativistic research practices and to objectivity. When the roles of the extra-academic agents change, the composition of research communities is also changed. An interactive notion of objectivity has recently been defended in social epistemology. It takes a research community as the unit whose objectivity is to be assessed. In the articles I identify shortcomings in the interactive objectivity of the emerging research communities, and develop analytical tools that can hopefully be of use in improving the situation. As the composition of research communities is changed, the established ways of approaching extra-academic knowledge systems also have to change. The moderately relativistic practice of avoiding the appraisal of alien knowledge systems is no longer as practicable as it used to be. When former informants join research teams in participatory projects, or indigenous activists become activist researchers, they become part of communities whose interactive objectivity can and should be assessed. This is the case even if some or all of the members of the communities are taken to represent, or see themselves as representing, extra-academic knowledge systems. The contributions of everyone belonging to a research community must be met with the same critical attitude, or the objectivity of the community will suffer.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Inkeri Koskinen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1501654648