On the division of social knowledge and its breakdown

Most social scientists reading this title will think, aha that’s modelled on Émile Durkheim’s De La Division du Travail Social (The Division of Labour in Society) (1893). They ‘know’ that book; at least its title. It’s part of their knowledge repertoire. What’s underneath the title may not go very deep or may be forgotten, as in …

Open access and MOOCs: follow the money

This is a guest blog written by John Holmwood, member of the Leverhulme Making Science Public programme, and founding member of the Campaign for the Public University In the extensive debate that has followed RCUK and Hefce announcements that ‘Gold’ open access under an ‘author pays’ system is to be mandated (with a short transition period) for the publication …

The language of knowledge: A new tower of Babel?

For some time I have been intrigued by the word ‘knowledge’. The more I hear it being used, the less I understand its meaning. The confusion increases with every ‘compound’ use that I come across (in linguistics a ‘compound’ refers to a combination of two or more words). Most recently I came across the compound …

Knowledge, language and society

Twenty years ago, at the beginning of my academic career, I became interested in pragmatics, the linguistic study of the use of language in society. Twenty years on I have become involved in the study of science in society (or Science and Technology Studies, STS for short), where the topics of knowledge and society have …