Participating in the knowledge society : researchers beyond the university walls / edited by Ruth Finnegan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Finnegan, Ruth H.

Classes of 1883 and 1884 Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Interdisciplinary research--History.

Interdisciplinary research.

Learning and scholarship--History.

Learning and scholarship.

History.

Amateurism--Research.

Amateurism.

Research.

Physical Description:

xiv, 292 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Summary:

Seventeenth-century village astronomers, missionary meteorologists, Victorian amateur botanists, industrial investigators, modern-day think tankers, local archaeologists, freelance family historians, Internet bloggers and debaters, and many others - through a range of fascinating cases complemented by overview analysis, this multi-author volume reveals the extent and vitality of the often invisible researchers who operate outside the university.

It provides a startling rebuttal of the conventional notion that the university is the primary site for knowledge production or that 'research' can and should be delimited within academically policed boundaries. The most creative and untrammelled researching today may be outside the universities, among other things exploiting the dialogic space of the Internet to bypass traditional academic controls over the production and validation of knowledge.

This interdisciplinary and transhistorical volume will interest - and challenge - all readers concerned with the theory and practice of higher education and lifelong learning; the organisation of research; the sociology and history of knowledge; and the implications and research of 'the knowledge society'.

Contents:

Introduction: Looking Beyond the Walls / Ruth Finnegan 1

Part I Looking Back 21

1 To the Heavens in Rural Lancashire: Jeremiah Horrocks and His Circle, and the Foundation of British Astronomical Research / Allan Chapman 23

2 Collectors Harnessed: Research on the British Flora by Nineteenth-Century Amateur Botanists / David E. Allen 36

3 Scientific Inquiry and the Missionary Enterprise / David N. Livingstone 50

4 Listening and Learning? Audiences and Their Roles in Nineteenth-Century Britain / Sophie Forgan 65

5 Locating Industrial Research: Universities, Firms and the State, 1916-39 / Keith Vernon 79

Part II Outside and Across the Walls 93

6 A Brief History of Field Archaeology in the UK: The Academy, the Profession and the Amateur / Alexander J. Hunt 95

7 Inside-Out or Outside-In? The Case of Family and Local History / Michael Drake 110

8 Community Historians and Their Work Around the Millennium / John H. McKay 124

9 Researching Ourselves? The Mass-Observation Project / Dorothy Sheridan 138

10 Science With a Team of Thousands: The British Trust for Ornithology / Jeremy J.D. Greenwood 152

11 Think Tanks and Intellectual Authority Outside the University: Information Technocracy or Republic of Letters? / Dolan Cummings 166

Part III Openings and Challenges through the Web? 181

12 Everyday Domestic Research in the Knowledge Society: How Ordinary People Use Information and Communication Technologies to Participate / Ben Anderson 183

13 Building Knowledge through Debate: OpenDemocracy on the Internet / Caspar Melville 198

14 Blogging: Personal Participation in Public Knowledge-Building on the Web / Mark Brady 212

15 Using the Internet as a Research Tool: Between Information and Communication / William Davies 229

Part IV Reflections: Are There Lessons for the Present? 243

16 Research, Universities and the Knowledge Society / Frank Webster 245

17 Re-opening Research: New Amateurs or New Professionals? / Ronald Barnett 263.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Classes of 1883 and 1884 Fund.

ISBN:

1403939462

OCLC:

59003010

Publisher Number:

9781403939463 (cloth)