Re-making the global economy of knowledge

The latest report from our study of intellectual workers and knowledge production in Brazil, South Africa and Australia has just been published online:
Connell, Raewyn, Rebecca Pearse, Fran Collyer, João Maia and Robert Morrell. 2017. Re-making the global economy of knowledge: do new fields of research change the structure of North-South relations? British Journal of Sociology, published online August 2017, DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12294.
This has a paywall.  The penultimate text is available open access on my website, here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7PfMzZfEk7vTmxyNkZGRDZFYms .
This paper reports interviews with experienced researchers in the fields of  HIV/AIDS, Climate Change, and Gender Studies about the dynamics of these domains and changing global relations of knowledge.  Here are the section headings, after (of course) Introduction and Method:
Making new domains of knowledge
Instituting global hierarchy in new domains
            Resource inequality
            Forming a workforce
            Intellectual structure
Tensions in the global economy of knowledge
Initiatives in the Southern tier
Reflection

In Praise of Sociology


What’s the relevance of sociology, or more generally, of social science?  The Canadian Review of Sociology has just published a symposium on this question, having kindly invited me to be a contributor.  I called my essay “In Praise of Sociology”, and you will find the text, open access, here:
The citation is: Connell, Raewyn. 2017. In praise of sociology.  Canadian Review of Sociology, vol. 54 no. 3, 280-296.
You will find the printed version here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cars.12150/abstract  but be warned, this version has a paywall.
Basically, I argue that sociology has only a marginal position in a world of tabloid politics and market logic – though it could survive as surveillance of the losers, or a source of entertainment.  But there are other possible futures.  Knowledge of the social world is tremendously important for democratic projects.  And all the tools of current sociology are relevant.  But the way sociological knowledge is organized, including the way it is embedded in a global economy of knowledge, is deeply problematic.  Now read on...

Jessie Bernard Award - returning thanks


Remarks at the American Sociological Association awards ceremony, on receiving the 2017 Jessie Bernard Award for “scholarship that has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass the role of women in society”.
With Margaret Andersen; photo courtesy of ASA
I thank you all, and I thank the Association, for your kindness in making this award.  I appreciate the ASA’s commitment to principle, in a time when foreigners from remote places are often suspect, and transsexual women are among the targets in new campaigns of bigotry.
Science is now under threat from post-truth media, corporate greed and authoritarian politics.  Social science is not exempt.  Our critical edge and capacity to document social reality are heartily unwelcome to the powerful and privileged.
Yet a time of trouble is also a time of renewal. Jessie Bernard, for whom this award is named, was one of the pioneers in a feminist insurrection in the 1960s and 1970s that transformed sociology.  As the joke goes, if you can remember the ‘sixties, you weren’t there.  But a lot of strong women were there, and the gender research they launched has grown in sophistication, and increasingly links global North with global South.
Making knowledge is a collective project.  My research on gender depended ultimately on thousands of fellow-workers and students.  Good understanding of society really matters for democratic projects, so it’s vital to sustain that creative workforce. But conditions have changed, and the new generation faces a harder task than my generation did.  I wish you well.
Sociologists, go forth!  You have nothing to lose but your Founding Fathers.  You have a wide world to know.
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