Subjectivity, governance, and changing conditions of knowledge production in the life sciences

Abstract

Knowledge producers are ascribed a key role for societal development today, as they produce a key resource for knowledge-based societies. Even as the institutional, social, and cultural environments of research change (c.f. "evaluation society," "academic capitalism"), we know surprisingly little about how this results in different research practices and knowledge. Building on experiences of studying research cultures in the life sciences, I argue in this paper that by studying researchers' subjectification, we learn how changing conditions are actually translated into a transformation of research processes and about the role of researchers as active agents in this transformation. Put differently, I investigate how we can study subjectification as a locus of change in research cultures. I discuss possible methodological cornerstones of using subjectification as conceptual approach for studying research cultures. Along some analytical extracts, I further demonstrate how this enables us to see tacit forms of governance in cultures of knowledge production.

From ‘making lists’ to conducting ‘well-rounded’ studies: Epistemic re-orientations in soil microbial ecology

“…We see our paper as contributing to STS literature in different ways. While emphasizing the importance of possibilities for creating do-able problems in epistemic re-orientations, we have adopted a perspective that, in contrast to previous work ( Fujimura, 1987 , 1988 ), considers researchers not only as strategic actors who aim to create do-able problems but as also bringing other valuations to their work (see, e.g., Fochler et al, 2016 ; Sigl, 2019 ). This approach has helped us illustrate that it is not only do-ability that plays a role in re-orienting fields, but also collective sense-making about the desirability of new modes of research for reasons of scientific and social-environmental relevance.…”

Seeing oneself as a data reuser: How subjectification activates the drivers of data reuse in science

“…A longitudinal design would lend itself to measuring reuse recurrence and determining whether the activating role of subjectification stays constant, weakens, or strengthens over time. In her discussion of methodological designs for studying subjectification, Sigl [ 23 ] endorses this longer-term approach, although she suggests allowing for enough flexibility to explore environmental inputs that may not have been identified at the outset.…”

“…This process both enables and constrains the individual undergoing it, who at once experiences themselves as the subject of their own thoughts and desires and is subjected to a certain shaping of what is thinkable or desirable. Recently, the science studies scholar Lisa Sigl [ 23 ] has defined subjectification as “a non-deterministic process by which actors come to understand themselves in relation to their particular social, cultural, and institutional environments,” and has called for the study of subjectification as a site where structural transformations in the science system are registered and translated into modest, but consequential changes in individual research practices. While issues of self-understanding have not as yet been empirically investigated in relation to data reuse, concepts such as persona, identity, and subjectification may offer some traction on the problem of how different types of factors known to influence reuse behavior at different levels of analysis actually exert their effects.…”

“…Our results extend existing theoretical approaches to data reuse, by proposing scripts of scientific selfhood previously discussed in terms of persona and identity [21,22] as a point of articulation between different types of factors influencing reuse behavior at the individual, project, and institutional levels of analysis. Furthermore, we connect an emerging stream of literature on scientific subjectification [23] to a new empirical context of data reuse. More broadly, we advance a multilevel program of research on the antecedents, contingencies, and consequences of the many varieties of openness and collaboration in science [24], of which data reuse is just Development (http://www.stiftung-fte.at).…”

Giving the outrage a name – how researchers are challenging employment conditions under the hashtags #IchBinHanna and #IchBinReyhan

“…Researchers have to win at the 'competitive excellence game' before they are granted long-term working horizons (Felt, 2009;Müller & De Rijcke, 2017). Researchers seem to subjectify external demands as individual challenges (Sigl, 2019) and align their practices with the changing requirements (Burrows, 2012). When individuals fail to secure a permanent position and leave academia, this is often framed as an individual failure of someone who simply could not keep up with the high demands of the sector.…”