Global trading zones of knowledge : how to explore the transfer of knowledge between networks

Title data

Clemens, Iris ; Vollmer, Theresa:
Global trading zones of knowledge : how to explore the transfer of knowledge between networks.
2018
Event: International Sunbelt Social Network Conference , 26.06.2018-01.07.2018 , Universiteit Utrecht (NL).
(Conference item: Conference , Speech )

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Abstract in another language

All research starts with an interest in a certain phenomenon, which already influences the school of thought that is applied. Both aspect – phenomenon and theory - in turn of course affect the choice of research methods. But all steps are recursive as well: our choice of methods will influence the networks we are going to see, its specific characteristics as well as the general reflexion we can do upon networks and the phenomenon. Using the notion of emergent worlds, Helen Verran (2001) points out that the applied imaginary of any emergence in sciences can never attempt an unbiased account. One has to be aware that “why I want to make some things explicit is intimately tied to what I make explicit” (ibid. S. 43). In social network research, one wants to make networks explicit, because any outcomes, scientific ones as well as any other social phenomena, are estimated to be generated in collective action (Verran) and must be observed and explained relational.
In our case, the starting point is an interest in the transfer of knowledge across networks: why does some knowledge ‘travel’? Who are the actors involved in this process? And what happens with these meaning forms within this process of transition from one network to another? We focus on the educational concepts attached to the student assessment tool PISA, and the research context is India. Accordingly, we follow theories that emphasize the dynamic character of knowledge and its emergence as well as the general context relatedness of it. The approach of the trading zones of knowledge following Raina (2016) seems to be promising here. Other than argumentations which follow the line of diffusion of knowledge with a one-way centre-and-periphery-thinking, arrows of traveling point in all kinds of direction here. As the term of trading zones already suggests, knowledge is seen rather as a process than an entity, object of permanent communication (as negotiation, bargaining etc.) between many different actors. The connectivity to network theory in the following of Harrison White and colleagues seems to be obvious, from which we took e.g. the concept of stories.
Consequently, our set of methods reflect this assumed relatedness of networks, knowledge and movements. To reconstruct the relevant network, we consider experts on education, institutions, papers, reports, events and more as nodes in a multimodal network. We collect and analyze diverse types of data - documents, literature and expert interviews. With the aid of document analysis and of qualitative content analysis we explore global relationships of actors and semantics in the education sector and thereof resulting transformation processes.