Re-invent Yourself! How Demands for Innovativeness Reshape Epistemic Practices.

Minerva
Ruth I Falkenberg

Abstract

In the current research landscape, there are increasing demands for research to be innovative and cutting-edge. At the same time, concerns are voiced that as a consequence of neoliberal regimes of research governance, innovative research becomes impeded. In this paper, I suggest that to gain a better understanding of these dynamics, it is indispensable to scrutinise current demands for innovativeness as a distinct way of ascribing worth to research. Drawing on interviews and focus groups produced in a close collaboration with three research groups from the crop and soil sciences, I develop the notion of a project-innovation regime of valuation that can be traced in the sphere of research. In this evaluative framework, it is considered valuable to constantly re-invent oneself and take 'first steps' instead of 'just' following up on previous findings. Subsequently, I describe how these demands for innovativeness relate to and often clash with other regimes of valuation that matter for researchers' practices. I show that valuations of innovativeness are in many ways bound to those of productivity and competitiveness, but that these two regimes are nevertheless sometimes in tension with each other, creating a complicated double bin...Continue Reading

References

Apr 16, 2014·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Bruce AlbertsHarold Varmus
Jul 28, 2017·Nature·Michele Pagano
Jun 16, 2019·Social Studies of Science·Axel Philipps, Leonie Weißenborn
Feb 2, 2021·Science, Technology & Human Values·Clémence Pinel

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