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According to common understanding, knowledge emerges when information meets theory. But given AI's new capabilities for machine integration of mass data, do we even need theories anymore? The book is based on a two-day symposium jointly organized by the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies and the Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsforschung Berlin. The symposium focused on three themes: 1) Theorizing and its new media: What kind of theorizing do science podcasts enable? 2) Epistemology and the metaphysics of theory, with some remarks on the philosophy of science, including the role of theory in university teaching; 3) AI and theory, with the final question of theory and the transparency ...
This Open Access book offers a novel perspective on the role of quantification in the making of education utopias through an analysis of expert knowledge and its producers. Drawing on empirical findings from the European Research Council funded project ‘International Organisations and the Rise of a Global Metrological Field’ (METRO, 2017-2022), Education, Quantification and Utopia focuses on the ways that metrological realism has constructed a well-supported epistemic infrastructure, built on relationships and practices that go beyond the mere objectivity and reliability of numerical evidence. The book’s chapters outline how the production of new forms of education expertise have led to ideational and institutional interdependencies, and ultimately the making of an intricate, fragmented and opaque knowledge and governance web.
The Routledge International Handbook of Valuation and Society builds on the growing research interest in practices of valuation throughout contemporary society, providing an up-to-date overview of the different facets of research in the sociology of valuation. The handbook is divided into five major sections with attention to the treatment of valuation in major areas of sociological theory, as well as its key concepts, discourses, and approaches: Part I: Theoretical perspectives Part II: Central valuation practices in societal spheres Part III: Cross-cutting valuation practices Part IV: Valuation and societal change Part V: Reflections Together, the chapters in this book characterize distinc...
The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Breathing fresh life into a once lively dialogue, this is a valuable resource for navigating of the varied sociological scholarship we witness amongst today’s organization scholars.
Practices of comparing shape how we perceive, organize, and change the world. Supposedly innocent, practices of comparing play a decisive role in forming categories, boundaries, and hierarchies; but they can also give an impetus to question and change such structures. Like almost no other human practice, comparing pervades all social, political, economic, and cultural spheres. This volume outlines the program of a new research agenda that places comparative practices at the center of an interdisciplinary exploration. Its contributions combine case studies with overarching systematic considerations. They show what insights can be gained and which further questions arise when one makes a seemingly trivial practice - comparing - the subject of in-depth research.
This book considers the challenges posed by fieldwork in centres of power to researchers in the social sciences, with a focus on deliberative assemblies. It includes work by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars united around a common interest in producing complementary knowledge about today’s political institutions based on qualitative approaches. The chapters feature various case studies on specific issues that arose from the authors’ fieldwork, as well as broader theoretical syntheses. The contributors offer some practical tools and solutions for others who would like to engage in this type of research, given the difficulties and complexities of doing fieldwork in centres of power and the lack of methodological resources currently available. The volume is valuable reading for anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and others with an interest in the ethnography of politics.
This comprehensive Handbook takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of parliaments, offering novel insights into the key aspects of legislatures, legislative institutions and legislative politics. Connecting rich and diverse fields of inquiry, it illuminates how the study of parliaments has shaped a wider understanding surrounding politics and society over the past decades.
Countries all over the world make decisions of national and international importance in a national parliament. Today, for a country to have a national parliament is a global norm, but this has only been the case for the last few hundred years. The development of this remarkable uniformity has seen national parliaments become a global institution. National Parliaments as a Global Institution scrutinizes how the current world order comprising national legislatures evolved, how parliaments work, and how they form a global network or field for the transfer of ideas and information. It highlights the remarkably similar structures and practices of national parliaments all around the world, with even the opening words of a session replicating those of other parliaments, and the four sacred principles that define national parliaments as an institution: national sovereignty, parliamentary immunity, the national interest or common good, and the sanctity of fellow parliamentarians. By considering national parliaments as a global institution, Pertti Alasuutari explores how legislatures symbolize, sanctify, and naturalize the nation-state as the component part of world society.
Transparency has become an unquestionable good in modern society, spreading from its origins in governance to most arenas of the modern world. But is it always good? This book turns a critical eye towards transparency, deconstructing its theoretical preconceptions and seeking a more nuanced view of what it means to be transparent.
Gathering unique and thoughtful contributions from leading international scholars, this timely Research Handbook offers diverse perspectives on university rankings twenty years after the first global rankings emerged. It presents an in-depth analysis that reflects the current state of research on rankings, their influence and impact.