Knowledge Domains

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Knowledge Domains Communities of Practice

• Science TechnologySocial Sciences

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the nature of knowledge
realist
social
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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Realist nature of knowledge world is completely
  objective (pure realism)
• Social nature of knowledge there is no
  foundation to knowledge apart from the perception
  of humans (purely socially determined)

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• science objectively establishes truth, but does
  not control the context in which the scientific
  discovery will assist in the creation of
  knowledge

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• If scientific truth is objective, it is also
  blind because it ignores the social context in
  which knowledge is circulated
• How individuals beliefs are formed is based on
  information supplied by others
• social nature of knowledge
• may be contentious regarding the nature of
  truth

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Scientific data may be used / misused
• to justify social stratification and prejudice
• so that certain groups will appear to be inferior
  (e.g. behavioral research, studies of heredity
  and human behavior, genetics, race and IQ,
  psychobiology, or sociobiology)

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• S/R Standards of evidence are not hopelessly
  culture-bound, though judgements of justification
  are always perspectival (e.g. knowledge is
  truth-indicative but not absolute)
• Knowledge is built through the perspectives of
  disciplines (processes of cultural selection,
  institutional arrangements that shape knowledge)

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Important to understand how disciplines structure
  knowledge
• Disciplinary domains are formed by communities
  of practice
• how do they circulate information?
• what are the rules of engagement?
• need to recognize the social structure of research

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Knowledge entails cognitive effort within
  communities
• Communities form consensus based on
• attribution of authority
• division of opinion

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Knowledge claims form an important part of
  journals content
• Knowledge claims based on
• Epistemology logical argument, testimony,
  empirical evidence
• Rhetoricpersuasion

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Journal content analysis reliability
  attribution)
• Reliability
• Source of the claim (speaker)
• Bodies of evidence supporting claims
• Perspectival processes shaped by social forces
  (gender, national origin, social structures of
  scholarship and research - does it embrace
  multiple perspectives on which knowledge claims
  are based)

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Journal content reliability attribution)
• Attribution realized through citation of
  published work
• epistemic (new idea is incorporated)
• procedural (authors work is cited as proof that
  researcher has that knowledge -- association)

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Information policy literature (Rowland)
• ISI citation indexes to define document test
  collection
• Assumption authors interact with existing
  knowledge through referencing behavior (use of
  the accumulating body of recorded literature)

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Accumulation of a body of recorded literature
  varies according to subject area (how older
  materials are incorporated in more recent
  publication through citation)
• Science and technology select nucleus of
  specific journals brief span of time covering a
  few current years
• Social sciences humanities greater dispersion
  of publications in different forms, on different
  subjects over a comparatively long span of time
• Ephemeral vs. classical literature

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Comte (1798-1857) - taxonomy of sciences
• science (physics, biochemistry)
• soft science (social science)
• non-science (humanities)
• Price (1970) - Prices index
• how references are distributed over an archive of
  material
• hard sciences cite works in the last 6 years

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Cole (1983)
• fundamental differences bw disciplines lie not in
  citation habits but in the structure of their
  knowledge systems (cognitive)
• how empirical knowledge is codified into succinct
  and interdependent theoretical statements
• Cozzens (1985)
• periods of intellectual focus
• reception - obsolescence of literature

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Bradford (1934)
• core zones
• core - scatter determine the structure of
  knowledge in a discipline (older,
  institutionalized have core)
• Nadel (1980)
• catholicity of interests is a function of the
  maturity of a specialty (institutionalization
  level)

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Other observations
• less highly structured or specialized
  disciplines people read widely outside their own
  current areas of concern (arts and humanities -
  information from a wide variety of sources)
• Coauthoring sciences (apparatus for
  experimentation) social sciences (division of
  labor as strategy) humanities (coauthoring not
  practiced)

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Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Other observations
• degree of institutionalization (professional
  associations, specialist journals)
• institutional arrangements support encourage
  research
• debates over establishment of new forms of
  institutional knowledge and established academic
  fields