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This paper introduces the contributions of Alan Sugarman (US), Rachel Blass (Israel), Paul Denis (France), Luisa Perez (Uruguay), Bernard Reith (Switzerland) and David Tuckett (UK) to a debate on the question of how we can enable productive discussion about our scientific differences and why historically it has been so difficult for the discipline of psychoanalysis to initiate and sustain such discussions. By way of introduction the historical example of the Controversial Discussions in the British Psychoanalytic Society is briefly reviewed and several possible factors contributing to the difficulties are provisionally identified, including over-reliance on authority and tradition, eagerness to supervise on the basis of our own theoretical models rather than trying to understand those of others, the lack of clarity and consensus in our definitions of terms, a lack of mutual curiosity resulting in theoretical silos, an experienced threat to identity when adjustments to our positions are called for, and the lack of a methodology for undesrstanding and / or resolving differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austerity policies and austere socio-economic conditions in the UK have had acute consequences for everyday life and, interconnectedly, the political and structural regimes that impact upon the lives of women and marginalised groups. Feminist geographies have arguably been enlivened and reinvigorated by critical engagements with austerity, bringing to light everyday experiences, structural inequalities and multi-scalar socio-economic relations. With this paper I propose five areas of intervention for further research in this field: social reproduction, everyday epistemologies, intersectionality, voice and silence, and embodied fieldwork. To conclude, I argue for continuing feminist critique and analyses given the legacies and futures of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the writings of homeless and formerly homeless memoirists from the United States and United Kingdom, this paper examines how the voices and ideas of those who experience homelessness are consistently removed from public debate and historical memory. While people without homes are discussed at length in journalistic and academic texts, their own voices are rarely at the center of such conversations. Memoirists argue that this exclusion is not passive or benign. They attest to persistent efforts to make their voices heard, even as newspapers, television stations, and other institutions of knowledge obstruct their efforts. In this way, homeless voices are actively and repeatedly displaced by the commentary of elite experts. Based on these insights, I engage with literature in geography and subaltern studies to advance a new understanding of subalternity as a process of epistemic displacement. Moving beyond deconstructive approaches to representation, I argue that challenging subalternity involves disseminating subaltern scholarship, journalism, and expertise to confront society's failure to listen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an illustrative example to demonstrate one way of combining qualitative methods. The context for the study was a UK inpatient psychiatric hospital. Data set one was collected from weekly ward rounds where inpatient staff met with autistic patients to review medication, listen to patient concerns and make plans or adjustments in light of this. Data set two was reflective discursive interviews with patients and staff. The research objective was to critically consider the potential reasons for discrepancies in dissatisfaction reports from patients in the interviews, compared to relative compliance exhibited by patients in the ward rounds. Utilising a video‐reflexive design and critical discursive psychology approach, both data sets were analysed together. It is possible to simultaneously analyse two different data sets, one naturally occurring and one researcher generated because of the epistemological congruence in the overall design. We have presented an argument for the benefits of mixing two qualitative methods, thereby extending the mixed‐methods evidence base beyond the traditional discussions of quantitative and qualitative paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is a critical reflection on the challenge to academic freedom presented by the globalisation of practices of knowledge production. It explores a tension within the logic of the internationalisation agenda: UK universities are premised upon forms of knowledge production whose roots lie in European Enlightenment values of rationalism, empiricism and universalism, yet partnerships are growing with universities premised on rather different, non-liberal and, perhaps, incommensurable values. Therefore, in advancing the internationalisation agenda in non-liberal environments, UK-based scholars find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place: either legitimising and sustaining the subjection of knowledge production to the state on one hand, or engaging in a form of epistemological colonialism by demanding adherence to 'our values' on the other. Using Chinese research culture as an illustration, the article contributes to ongoing debate on the ethics of social science research collaboration with universities based in contrasting epistemological cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vine et al.’s (2014) call for more randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in government-funded energy efficiency policy evaluation practice raises timely questions about what constitutes effective designs for evaluating and informing energy policy. Their implicit hypothesis that policy organisations share the same epistemic perspective as they do, and that the reason there are few RCTs are due to a set of barriers to be overcome is examined in relation to the UK government Department of Energy and Climate Change. Drawing on the author’s experience of working in the ministry, the claim that barriers are a reason for preventing RCT use is discounted. An alternative explanation is presented, framed around the idea of an ‘energy policy epistemology’ that legitimately places certain specific knowledge demands and ways of knowing on research and evaluation designs. Through examination of a specific set of research and evaluation outputs related to the UK energy efficiency policy called the ‘Green Deal’, aspects of the proposed ‘energy policy epistemology’ are elucidated to explain the lack of demand for RCT designs. Final consideration is given to what kinds of designs are more likely to gain support in this context that might also deliver many of the benefits attributed to RCTs with longitudinal panels being one important example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by reviewing the historical construction of ‘SciArt’, and the way in which its supposed interdisciplinarity often shaded into science communication. Early discussions about the complementarity of art and science were conceived in terms of epistemology, notably the qualities of imagination and curiosity. The paper moves on to discuss how, during the current decade, Art and Science (A&S) discourse has altered due to changes in the cultural politics of both its constituent fields, emerging as a ‘transdiscipline’ characterized by ‘creativity’. Eighteen in-depth surveys with leading practitioners in A&S form a substantial part of the research material, yielding an evaluation of what the disciplinary, economic and cultural implications of this changed discourse may be. Though potentially angled towards the solution of ‘wicked’ problems, transdisciplinarity also sacrifices the specific critical expertise of art, fetishizes tech at the expense of science and selectively ignores institutional problems inherent in funding and power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how ignorance of vulnerability – particularly of others’ vulnerability – may be produced and maintained in schools, especially in the context of pedagogical engagement with difficult histories. A focus on ignorance forces educators to ask not only about the epistemological presence of ‘difficult knowledge’ in schools, but also how epistemological absences operate affectively, formulating particular ‘emotional regimes’ of ignorance. The article shows how the denial of others’ vulnerability – in the name of race/racism, nation-state/nationalism and the like – invokes and moulds particular emotional regimes that reproduce the ignorance of vulnerability underlying difficult histories. It is argued that only with a systematic analysis of the production and reproduction of emotional regimes of ignorance can educators conceive of vulnerability as being a pedagogical resource for ethical response and political resistance to regimes of ignorance in schools. The article discusses the implications for critical education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 2005, health trainers and other lay public health workers ( LPHWs) have been increasingly active in the UK. Although elsewhere in the world LPHWs are expected to come from the communities within which they work and know that their knowledge is valued, neither is the case for LPHWs in the UK. This study sought to discover the lay knowledge of health trainers and other LPHWs, aiming to ascertain how this knowledge might more effectively be utilised within UK public health services. This paper describes a participatory and ethnographic case study research project undertaken on an anonymised urban estate in North East England. Findings were generated by a range of means including by participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Seven LPHWs took part, as did 32 other community members. This study found that the lay health knowledge of an individual UK LPHW is determined primarily by his or her position within, or in relation to, the community within which he or she works. Insider LPHWs possess an embodied knowledge and incomer LPHWs possess an experiential knowledge which, although different from one another, are essentially interpersonal in nature. Lay health knowledge can take different forms, and different LPHWs can provide different forms of lay health knowledge. Public health structures and services in the UK should make better use of all forms of LPHW knowledge, and should seek from LPHWs training on how to engage the most 'hard-to-reach' or 'difficult-to-engage' groups. Services recruiting LPHWs should decide whether they are seeking embodied insider LPHW knowledge, experiential incomer LPHW knowledge or a mixture of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism and financialization are not synonymous developments. Financialized nations are directed by particularly financialized epistemologies, cultures, and practices, not only neoliberal ones. In examining the financialization of the UK economy since the mid-1970s, this study discovers a socio-economic shift beyond the broad transition from Keynesianism towards free-market fundamentalism. Economic developments were guided by the very particular economic paradigms, discursive practices, and financial devices of the City of London, as financial elites became influential in the Thatcher governments. Five epistemological elements specific to finance are discussed: the creation of money in financial markets, the transactional focus of finance, the centrality of financial markets to economic management, the orthodoxy of shareholder value, and the intensely micro-economic approach to financial calculation. Identifying these distinctions creates new possibilities for understanding financialization, elites, and the neoliberal condition that brought about both the financial crash of 2007–8 and the political and economic crises that have followed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education of children in public, or Local Authority ( LA), care, known in the United Kingdom ( UK) as looked-after children ( LAC), is supported by government initiatives to reduce the attainment gap that exists between LAC and their non- LAC peers. These children often find remaining in education a challenge, are twice as likely to be permanently excluded, and three times more likely to receive a fixed-term exclusion than other school-age children. A high proportion (61%), have been labelled as having special educational needs ( SEN) (DfE, ). In the UK, the Virtual School ( VS) has a statutory role in the education of LAC (DfE, 2014a) and aims to encourage more stringent monitoring and intervention for pupils. This is partly achieved through the creation of a personalised education plan ( PEP) for each LAC pupil, which outlines progress, strategies intended to accelerate attainment, and resources needed for doing so. The process involves the pupil, their social worker and the designated teacher (responsible for the welfare of LAC pupils) of the school attended. The current study uses Actor-Network Theory ( ANT, e.g. Latour, ) as a lens through which to conceptualise change for LAC pupils during the PEP process. The focus is upon three PEP meetings in one LA setting, in order to explore the people and things that are active in driving forwards change for LAC, with a view to examining the efficacy of the process and the roles of those involved. The analysis made visible the importance of the role of the designated teacher in the PEP process, in contrast to the relative inactivity of social workers and of pupil voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science progresses by the discovery and correction of mistakes in the interpretation of data. John Rex sought ‘to distinguish among the various studies made by sociologists those which are distinguishable as race relations studies’. He examined them from the standpoint of classical sociological theory. His main mistake was his continued but unsuccessful attempt to synthesize two quite different kinds of sociological knowledge. He underestimated the importance of differences in the criteria for the validation of causal explanation and for the projection of historical trends. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The claim that mind is an epiphenomenon of the nervous system became academically respectable during the 19th century. The same period saw the establishment of an ideal of science as institutionalized endeavour conducted in laboratories. This article identifies three ways in which the ‘physiological psychology’ movement in Britain contributed to the latter process: first, via an appeal to the authority of difficult-to-access sites in the analysis of nerves; second, through the constitution of a discourse internal to it that privileged epistemology over ontology; and third, in its articulation of a set of rhetorical tools that identified laboratories as economically productive institutions. Acknowledging the integral place of physiological psychology in the institution of science, it is claimed, has the potential to alter our understanding of the significance of current neurological science for historical scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on examples from the past twenty years of British theatre performance, a conceptual approach to the analysis of scientific ideas and discourse in dramatic and post-dramatic theatre is outlined. The focus is on plays and theatre pieces inspired by the ideas, the discourse and the images of science, thereby considering it above all as a form of knowledge and enquiry (leaving aside plays that focus on the characters of great scientists, or laboratory life). Examples are all drawn from the last twenty years of British theatre, and are mostly text-based drama and performance. Three levels of analysis are proposed: discursive questions, drawing on theories of metaphor and intertextuality to examine the effects of scientific discourse on stage and the poetic uses of epistemological terminology; the relation between the embodied nature of performance and the detachment of scientific theory, including phenomenological descriptions of theatrical embodiment; and the ways in which scientific images and shapes can inspire formal experimentation in the theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, the gender relations of the family farming 'way of life' have been shown to be stubbornly persistent in their adherence to patriarchal inheritance practices. This article demonstrates how such 'agri-cultural' practices are situated both within the subjective sphere of farming individuals' and within global agri-economics, bringing new challenges to patrilineal farm survival. It is suggested here that the recent tendency for post-structuralist theorisation in rural studies has underestimated the existence and impact of patrilineal patterns in family farming. Such patterns mean that women are shown to largely occupy relational gender identities as the 'helper', whilst men are strongly identified as the 'farmer'. Drawing on repeated life-history interviews conducted with farming men and women from Powys, Mid Wales, the aim of this article is to generate debate as to the extent to which men can be brought into feminist research practice in order to reveal patriarchy to a greater degree. The article begins by situating the near-exclusion of men from feminist research practice within theoretical developments in feminist geography. This discussion also assists in deriving issues of research methods, positionality and interpretive power which focus the integration of empirical material in the methodological reflections provided in section three. In section two, the rationale for the epistemological stance taken in the research is provided. The article provides an example of the successful integration of men into a feminist research frame, suggests avenues for theoretical development and identifies future research directions which can be informed by 'doing it with men'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how ethnographic and action research methodologies can be justifiably combined to create a new methodological approach in educational research. It draws on existing examples in both educational research and development studies that have discussed the use of ethnography and action research in specific projects. Interpretations of ethnography and action research are developed that aim to minimise the epistemological differences between them. The paper also contextualises an 'ethnographic action research' approach with reference to an example of the author's research into participation in three 'reception' (first year of schooling) classes in the United Kingdom. It is argued that research into the theme of participation in early years education, using participative methods, was particularly suitable for this new methodological approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning from the Teaching, Research, and International Politics (TRIP) survey, this paper outlines the most important emerging paradigm in international political economy (IPE), known as open economy politics (OEP). This approach forms the core of the 'American' school of IPE. The paper then contrasts the epistemology of OEP, based on partial equilibrium analysis, with that of the 'British' school of IPE, which favors a more holistic approach. This difference is not captured well in the TRIP survey, nor is it particularly well understood by many proponents of either side. Recognizing the progressive nature of the OEP research program, the essay concludes with a call to bridge but not necessarily to abolish the transatlantic divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates British Black women's hermeneutical approach to reading and retelling biblical narratives in such a way that they unearth rather than bury the vitality and centrality of women, Black people and the poor in the fulfilment of the gospel. Based on an ethnographic study of six Black women (including the author) ill one-to-one Bible study sessions engaging with the Mary and Martha texts, it highlights how Black women rely on an experiential knowledge base that reflects a Black feminist epistemology, which moves, in turn, towards a Womanist Pneumatological Pedagogy (WPP). Thus, it argues that the key anti-oppressive reading strategy employed by Black women is an expanded experiential imagination which allows them to transpose and/or link their marginalized experiences/stories onto/with the marginalized biblical characters. In this way they enhance their understanding of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bevir and Rhodes' interpretive approach underpins the Differentiated Polity Model (DPM) which has replaced the Westminster Model as the dominant model of British politics. This article critiques both the interpretive approach and the DPM, arguing that the latter fails to recognise the continued importance of the role hierarchy, inequality and a dominant political tradition play in British politics, omissions which result, in large part, from its roots in an interpretist position. As such, the main aim of the article is to defend an alternative conception of British politics, the Asymmetric Power Model (APM), by considering three empirical areas in which these two models differ substantially: whether hierarchy or networks are the dominant mode of governance in the UK; the extent and importance of structured inequality in the UK; and whether there is a dominant tradition in British politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the concept of the intellectual biography, I explore the relational and symbolic importance of life histories for the reflexive history of anthropology. Legacies of questioning disciplinary self-awareness exist for fieldwork, data analysis, writing up, and academic social networks. The intellectual biography, as a newly developing self-conscious genre, is becoming central to the way in which the discipline writes its own history. This article situates five recent biographies of “British” anthropologists into a theoretical, methodological, and intellectual landscape that encompasses the international development of a century of social anthropology in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing orthodoxies in British studies of ethnic and racial relations have been challenged, most recently by perspectives developed within cultural studies. The issues that divide the contending parties have still to be clarified. Three of them appear to be: (i) problem definition; (ii) problem selection; and (iii) conceptual obsolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses epistemological and methodological issues that surfaced for the authors in a visual research project. Engaging with visual discourse necessitated the authors' interrogation of their own take on issues associated with text and context and the role of reflexivity in the research process. This reflection led us to ruminate still further about the insights that visual discourse could have for qualitative data in general. Thus, the paper first considers the validity of visual data before moving on to address issues of text/context and reflexivity through reference to our work with racist graffiti, in particular, that aimed at people seeking asylum in the UK. In conclusion, the paper argues that there is much to learn from engaging with visual discourse, in terms of understanding social phenomena as well as the process of doing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines some of the possibilities which might be opened up by adopting a postmodern perspective in conducting and interpreting educational research, and considers the implications of such a perspective for educational policy and practice. The argument is set in the context of current moves in the UK towards increasingly prescriptive classroom practice, driven by closely controlled central policies and punitive inspection procedures. The dominance of visuality and performativity in the evaluation of educational practice and the impact of the concept of `evidence-based practice' on educational research are explored. As an alternative to this instrumental approach to research and practice, the postmodern concept of research as a way to produce different knowledge or to produce knowledge differently (St. Pierre, 1997a) is endorsed. The way postmodernism challenges existing ideas of certainty objectivity, validity and truth, using examples from a range of postmodern writers is examined, and the ways of deconstructing both the texts and the textual silences from which education and educational research are constructed are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The housing and illness literature is fascinating because it represents a key battleground on which social science has waged an empirical war upon its traditional enemies in the natural sciences. However, while this literature is of immense sociological importance, it has yet to attract any theoretical interest from sociologists - despite the recent surge of interest in the sociology of the body. In this article I attempt to fill this lacuna by developing a sociological critique of the housing and illness literature. Specifically, I argue that housing researchers' commitments to making social factors conceptually prior to, and thus an external trigger of, physiological events might enable them to identify ''bad housing'' as a cause of illness. It cannot, however, enable them to explicate the variability and complexity of the relationship between housing, health and illness, namely why bad housing does not always cause illness, because it posits a conception of the human body as a ''physiological dope'', without agency. I suggest that this necessitates the embodiment of the epistemology of social science, so that pychosociological factors become internal and integral (rather than external and prior) to physiological events. I develop this theme by ''theory-building'' a three-dimensional (socio-psycho-physiological) conception of the body that possesses reflexive agency. This enables me to explicate how things can and do ''happen otherwise'' in the housing/health/illness relationship, i.e. how and why some reflexive occupants of bad housing can remain in good health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore, from a philosophy of knowledge perspective, the contribution of the guideline development process to reducing epistemic uncertainty in clinical decision-making – defined as the challenge of applying evidence to patients, dealing with conflicting information and determining the level of confidence in a medical conclusion. Longitudinal ethnographic study of national guideline development panels. Fieldnotes were collected from 19 panel meetings in UK, Netherlands and Norway (~120 h of observation) between September 2016 and February 2019. Draft guidelines, review protocols and background material were collated (~200 documents). Data were analyzed thematically to gain familiarity and then theorized using concepts of knowledge development and use and clinical decision-making. Guideline development panels in all three countries wrestled with epistemic tensions – notably between the desire to "purify" an assumed external truth (for example by limiting included evidence to high-quality randomized controlled trials) and a more pragmatic and pluralist approach that drew on a wider range of evidence including qualitative research, real-world data, clinical experience and patient testimony. Detailed analysis of the process by which particular guideline recommendations were constructed allowed us to draw out the implications of these tensions for guideline users in clinical practice. Guideline development panels apply multiple – often conflicting – understandings of knowledge, inference and truth in an attempt to reduce epistemic uncertainty. Guidelines makers, clinicians, scientists and students should engage critically and reflexively with the philosophical assumptions that underpin guideline development and inductive inference to build capability to deal with clinical complexity. • Ethnographic study of guideline development panels. • Informed by philosophical notions of the nature of knowledge, inference and truth. • Panel discussions included clinical experience and a broad range of knowledge. • Panels wrestled with tensions between purist and pluralist approaches of EBM. • Our findings question the philosophical assumptions of guideline development panels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts a comparative critique of interdisciplinary cultural analysis in the US and Central Europe. It tries to sketch out the different points of departure and methodological approaches used in American and British cultural studies on the side, and in German Kulturwissenschaften (cultural sciences) on the other side. Furthermore it is asked in which ways the critical political impetus of cultural studies can be made productive for the further advancement of Kulturwissenschaften, and how they could perform an innovative role for the understanding of problems posed by the current political and social situation in Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Relevance', 'accountability' and 'users' are now prominent terms in the policies of public research funding agencies. In countries such as the UK, the funding of research in social science and other subjects has become increasingly dependent on the perception that research will contribute towards the achievement of certain national goals. Despite renewed discussions surrounding the utility of social analysis, these are rarely informed by debates in academic communities about the meaning of 'relevance' or associated debates about the status of knowledge. However divergent policy and academic discussions about relevance may appear, they intersect in concerns over the identity of researchers, the practices of research, and the claims made on behalf of research. This article draws on a case study in an attempt to show the difficulties of reconciling competing demands for relevance. Preliminary reflections are offered on a strategy for creating a productive tension between policy and academic discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]