Social and Epistemic Control in Collaborative Research — Reconfiguring the Interplay of Politics and Methodology

ABSTRACT

In this article we argue that the notion of control poses a critical conceptual and historical connection between scientific and political power. While many meanings of control originate in the sciences, concepts of experimentation, care, and learning currently translate into increasingly decentralized governance concepts, be it through market-logics or surveillance technologies. That is, epistemic and social control is co-constituted. Collaborative research plays a transformative but paradoxical role in this interplay: Science and Technology Studies scholars have leveraged powerful critiques against techno-scientific control and have shaped practical modes of transdisciplinary research. However, the critique of techno-scientific control is increasingly mixed up with post-truth controversies, and the appeal to inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration has been appropriated by neoliberal science policy. The historical conundrum culminates in a practical dilemma: Collaborative researchers seek to overcome the very regimes of techno-scientific control that the sciences are bound to co-produce. Can they shift the control regimes that they are part of? Collaborative research requires a critical and pragmatic standpoint with regard to both the methods of politics and the politics of methodology. This special issue seeks to come to terms with the inherent contradictions of collaborative research and make useful proposals with regard to its political potential.

KEYWORDS:

• History of inter- and transdisciplinarity
• post-truth
• control theories
• transformative research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeremias Herberg

Jeremias Herberg studied Sociology in Vienna; Science and Technology Studies in Maastricht; He was a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley and subsequently gained his PhD in sustainability studies from Leuphana University Lüneburg. His research explores the scope for cross-field collaboration in transformation processes. His dissertation on the so-called skills gap developed a field-theoretical approach and shows, based on regional comparisons and a two-year organizational ethnography, how educational organizations deal with regional economic expectations. In a post-doctoral project he examined the knowledge–historical entwinement of transdisciplinary research approaches with politics and industry. At the Institute for Advance Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam he is currently involved in and leading research projects that explore collaborative formats within ecological transformations, especially the coal phase-out in the region of Lusatia.

Ulli Vilsmaier

Ulli Vilsmaier studied Geography at Salzburg University and has been Junior Professor of Transdisciplinary Methods, a Presidential Delegate for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity, and a member of the inter-faculty Methodology Center at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her research focus is on epistemological and methodological foundations of inter- and transdisciplinary research and the development of text-, image-, and artifact-based methods of boundary work for collaborative research. She has accompanied several collaborative inter- and transdisciplinary research teams and doctoral candidates in the field. She is presently visiting professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art at Leuphana University, exploring the concept of nomadic sciences and the transformative potential of Latin American, civil-society-based research traditions.