Shaping Science

Shaping Science
Author: Janet Vertesi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2020-11-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022669108X

Drawing on a decade of immersive ethnography with NASA’s robotic spacecraft teams to create a comparative account of two great space missions of the early 2000s, Janet Vertesi uncovers how the social organization of a scientific team affects their scientific practices and results. In Shaping Science, Janet Vertesi draws on a decade of immersive ethnography with NASA’s robotic spacecraft teams to create a comparative account of two great space missions of the early 2000s. Although these missions featured robotic explorers on the frontiers of the solar system bravely investigating new worlds, their commands were issued from millions of miles away by a very human team. By examining the two teams’ formal structures, decision-making techniques, and informal work practices in the day-to-day process of mission planning, Vertesi shows just how deeply entangled a team’s local organizational context is with the knowledge they produce about other worlds. Using extensive, embedded experiences on two NASA spacecraft teams, this is the first book to apply organizational studies of work to the laboratory environment in order to analyze the production of scientific knowledge itself. Engaging and deeply researched, Shaping Science demonstrates the significant influence that the social organization of a scientific team can have on the practices of that team and the results they yield.

The Shaping of Africa

The Shaping of Africa
Author: Francesc Relano
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2020-08-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9781138721340

This title was first published in 2002. When did Africa emerge as a continent in the European mind? This book aims to trace the origins of the idea of Africa and its evolution in Renaissance thought. Particular attention is given to the relationship between the process of acquiring knowledge through travel and exploration, and its representation within a discourse which also includes previously acquired cosmographical elements. Among the themes investigated are: How did the image of Africa evolve from the conception of a symbolic space to a Euclidean representation? How did the Renaissance rediscovery of Antiquity interact with the Portuguese discoveries along the African coast? And once Africa was circumnavigated, how was the inner landmass depicted in the absence of first-hand knowledge? Also, overall, in this whole process what was the interplay of myth and reality?

Discourses We Live By: Narratives of Educational and Social Endeavour

Discourses We Live By: Narratives of Educational and Social Endeavour
Author: Hazel R. Wright
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2020-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1783748540

What are the influences that govern how people view their worlds? What are the embedded values and practices that underpin the ways people think and act? Discourses We Live By approaches these questions through narrative research, in a process that uses words, images, activities or artefacts to ask people – either individually or collectively within social groupings – to examine, discuss, portray or otherwise make public their place in the world, their sense of belonging to (and identity within) the physical and cultural space they inhabit. This book is a rich and multifaceted collection of twenty-eight chapters that use varied lenses to examine the discourses that shape people’s lives. The contributors are themselves from many backgrounds – different academic disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, diverse professional practices and a range of countries and cultures. They represent a broad spectrum of age, status and outlook, and variously apply their research methods – but share a common interest in people, their lives, thoughts and actions. Gathering such eclectic experiences as those of student-teachers in Kenya, a released prisoner in Denmark, academics in Colombia, a group of migrants learning English, and gambling addiction support-workers in Italy, alongside more mainstream educational themes, the book presents a fascinating array of insights. Discourses We Live By will be essential reading for adult educators and practitioners, those involved with educational and professional practice, narrative researchers, and many sociologists. It will appeal to all who want to know how narratives shape the way we live and the way we talk about our lives.

Shaping Written Knowledge

Shaping Written Knowledge
Author: Charles Bazerman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1988
Genre: Technical writing
ISBN: 9780299116941

The forms taken by scientific writing help to determine the very nature of science itself. In this closely reasoned study, Charles Bazerman views the changing forms of scientific writing as solutions to rhetorical problems faced by scientists arguing for their findings. Examining such works as the early Philosophical Transactions and Newton's optical writings as well as Physical Review, Bazerman views the changing forms of scientific writing as solutions to rhetorical problems faced by scientists. The rhetoric of science is, Bazerman demonstrates, an embedded part of scientific activity that interacts with other parts of scientific activity, including social structure and empirical experience. This book presents a comprehensive historical account of the rise and development of the genre, and views these forms in relation to empirical experience.

For Space

For Space
Author: Doreen Massey
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2005-03-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781412903622

Questioning the implicit assumptions that we make about space, this text considers conventional notions of social science, as well as demonstrating how a vigorous understanding of space can impact on political consequences.

Professional Practice Discourse Marginalia

Professional Practice Discourse Marginalia
Author: Joy Higgs
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2016-07-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9463006001

This is a book for practitioners, university educators, workplace learning educators, researchers and the professions. It draws together two key elements of the lives of these people: professional practice – what people do, and practice discourse – what they write and say about what they do. And, it focuses these discussions around two spaces – the core and the margins, of practice and discourse. Writing in the margins of texts has a very long history. People have always left part of themselves – their ideas, personality and reflections – in the margins of texts. In this book we have taken up the idea of such written marginalia and we have expanded it into writing into the texts of practice discourse as well as speaking and acting in the margins of professional practice. Such deliberate practice changes in marginal practice spaces and in written practice discourse provides ways of shaping and critically appraising current and future professional practice. This book provides a dialogue between two fascinating phenomena: professional practice and discourse. In the 21st century these two are facing challenges as they negotiate their contested spaces in a rapidly changing global society. They draw on strong established traditions and expectations but they cannot be complacent in these illusory stabilities. Rather they must be awake to the imperatives of their own re-invention and re-claimed relevance to today’s society and today’s professional class in the workforce. Across the chapters we explore the core spaces of professional practice discourse from the vantage point of the margins of this space, and the margin spaces as they interact with the core. Marginalia serves as an architect of destabilisation, challenge, revolution, reflection or sometimes affirmation of the central discourse space. There are five sections in the book: Section One: Professional practice discourse, Section Two: Leading the practice discourse, Section Three: Writing from inside practice, Section Four: Writing onto and into practice and Section Five: Marking trails and stimulating insights. Readers are invited to contribute to our exploration of the phenomenon and practice of professional practice discourse marginalia.

Shaping Abortion Discourse

Shaping Abortion Discourse
Author: Myra Marx Ferree
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2002-09-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521793841

This book compares the political process and role of the media using controversy over abortion.

Space, Identity and Discourse in Anglophone Studies

Space, Identity and Discourse in Anglophone Studies
Author: Attila Dósa
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2024-02-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 152757685X

This book explores the dynamic intersections where cultures, languages and spaces converge, shaping identities and creating new forms of expression. The authors attempt to unravel the complexity of narrative and imaginative spaces by examining cultural identities in global contexts. The essays on literary representations consider abstract border crossings through rewriting and reappropriation in various genres, while also looking at immigrant fiction, post-Anthropocene narratives and hybrid spaces through a postcolonial lens. The essays on history and politics critically examine identity conflicts in the United States, while the contributions on applied linguistics and language pedagogy offer insights into online teaching experiences during COVID-19, sociocultural aspects of language use and the formation of bilingual identities. Employing innovative methods in reinterpreting literary works, political narratives and different types of discourse, past and present, this collection contributes to ongoing scholarly dialogues on the multifaceted challenges associated with identity construction through border crossings.

Message and Medium

Message and Medium
Author: Caroline Tagg
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2020-06-08
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3110670836

Studies of digital communication technologies often focus on the apparently unique set of multimodal resources afforded to users and the development of innovative linguistic strategies for performing mediatised identities and maintaining online social networks. This edited volume interrogates the novelty of such practices by establishing a transhistorical approach to the study of digital communication. The transhistorical approach explores language practices as lived experiences grounded in historical contexts, and aims to identify those elements of human behaviour that transcend historical boundaries, looking beyond specific developments in communication technologies to understand the enduring motivations and social concerns that drive human communication. The volume reveals long-term patterns in the indexical functions of seemingly innovative written and multimodal resources and the ideologies that underpin them, and shows that methods are not necessarily contingent on their datasets: historical analytic frameworks can be applied to digital data and newer approaches used to understand historical data. These insights present exciting opportunities for English language researchers, both historical and modern.

Scramble for the Skies

Scramble for the Skies
Author: Namrata Goswami
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1498583121

With a focus on China, the United States, and India, this book examines the economic ambitions of the second space race. The authors argue that space ambitions are informed by a combination of factors, including available resources, capability, elite preferences, and talent pool. The authors demonstrate how these influences affect the development of national space programs as well as policy and law.