| 41. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
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The impact of tourism research
- 2019
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Ingår i: Annals of Tourism Research. - : Elsevier BV. - 0160-7383 .- 1873-7722. ; 77
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The exceedingly competitive climate of academia has increased the emphasis on performance-based research funding. In this paper we evaluate the UK's government assessment of research impact and critically comment upon the implications for future research conduct. The key findings are as follows; firstly we provide a summary of UK tourism research impact. Secondly, we demonstrate the effect of the resulting significance gap, and comment upon the consequences of the Research Excellence Frameworks' (REF) research impact assessment in terms of a research culture change. Lastly, we proposition that the current assessment structure can have negative long-term consequences in that key issues facing tourism fall outside 'good' research impact.
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| 42. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
-
The language of sustainable tourism as a proxy indicator of research quality
- 2020
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI. - 2071-1050. ; 13:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sustainable tourism (ST) has recently become the mainstream of the tourism industry and, accordingly, has influenced contemporary tourism research. However, ST is not just theories about indications and contraindications of global travel, but also a specific language that needs mastering to take sustainability work forward. In other words, what research receives recognition depends on the proficiency in how the articulation in research proposals and within assessment under the heading of “research impact”. The aim of this paper is to investigate how tourism research gains recognition within research evaluation, by investigating the national research appraisal in the United Kingdom (Research Excellence Framework). By using content analysis, we disentangle the rhetorical choices and narrative constructions within researchers’ impact claims. Our findings suggest that researchers adopt a rhetorical style that implies causality and promotes good outcomes facilitating ST. However, the structure of the assessment format enforces an articulation of sustainable research impact without stating the methodological limitations of that such claim. Therefore, the rhetorical choices of ST researchers merely represent a proxy indicator of the claimed impact. We conclude that the lack of rigor in accounting for the impact of ST research may inadvertently restrict attaining ST.
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| 43. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
-
The value of the negative
- 2016
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Ingår i: 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) / EASST (European Association for the Study of Science and Technology) Conference: “Science and Technology by Other Means”, 31 August–3 September 2016, Barcelona, Spain.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Assessing the value of research results is long-known to be a difficult task. The problem lies in distinguishing between positive and negative results, because this demarcation always depends upon the underlying value system. Regardless of this philosophical difficulty, research assessments largely focus on positive results (i.e. positive impacts of research). For example, UK's 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) reported that an "impressive [array of] impacts were found from research in all subjects" (REF 2015); accordingly, no negative impacts were reported. This effectively marginalises negative results in favour of positive results, inadvertently deeming them 'valueless'. As a marketing strategy for research, it is indeed a powerful approach. However, as an objective scientific standard to justify what research gets funded (or not), due to this one-sided focus, it is less useful. However, negative results can be cognitively and sociologically extremely beneficial (cf. Pinker 2002, Taleb 2014). The paper explores the construction of REF's impact assessment in the case of tourism studies. We show that the impact criteria not only shift the emphasis on positive results, but also emphasize economic gains and short-term impacts. By unpacking the underlying values implicit within the REF, we propose a new socio-material approach that does not marginalise the value of negative results. By using Collins and Evans' (2007) notion of 'interactional expertise', we argue that the underlying value problem can be addressed sociologically.
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| 44. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
-
Trust vs. indirect harm of research: Introducing the defiltration maxim
- 2016
-
Ingår i: RSA (Regional Studies Association) Conference: “Towards Impact and Contributions to Knowledge”, 27-28 October 2016, Newcastle, UK.
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- “Trust is central to our social world (…) and to the knowledge claims we make as academics” (Withers, 2016). In the context of human geography and other regional studies, however, trust has not been subject to detailed review, including inquiries into under what conditions trust in the testimony of geography can be warranted, and possibly lost. While research ethics committees represent a formal accountability system set out to ensure that geographers follow ethical guidelines in order not to cause harm, for research-induced harm to be identified there must be a direct connection between research and victim. This raises the question of what to do when there are premises suggesting that research may cause harm indirectly. How can we as researchers deal with this dilemma until the link between research and harm has become formalized through an accountability system? In this paper, we address this problem through the example of collective research practices of human geographers, whose central analytical categories of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ are amenable to harmdoing when emulated by policymakers in subsequent so-called “rural” and “urban” development programs. Realizing that raising awareness about the potential harms of research is a time-consuming process, there is a need for provisional solutions in the meantime. In this sense, informal accountability procedures play an invaluable role as they offer guidance to individual researchers how to scrutinize their own positionalities. In this presentation, we propose a new informal accountability procedure that can help the individual researcher evaluate the analytical value of some potentially harmful concepts in order to minimize their impact. Given that human geography has been defined less by its canonical works but rather by its canonical concepts (Johnston & Sidaway, 2014), we must ensure that the canonical concepts we rely on are of such quality as to ascertain solid geographical inquiry. This is particularly important in times of greater academic transparency, when uncritical use of canonical concepts is likely to undermine trust in human geography.
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| 45. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
-
Understanding conceptual vestigiality within social sciences from an ecosystem perspective
- 2017
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Ingår i: 3rd Nordic Science and Technology Studies Conference, 31 May-2 June 2017, Gothenburg, Sweden..
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Given that conceptual frameworks always guide our thoughts, judgments and actions, the ways in which we relate to concepts are crucial for how we organize the society. The different ‘turns’ in social sciences (linguistic, cultural, performative, ontological, material, etc.) have had enormous impact on conceptual development, including efforts to reconceptualize, modify or abandon ‘old’ concepts (e.g. class, gender, race, etc.). Nevertheless, despite fierce criticisms, some concepts have managed to “[survive] the onslaught of material reality and philosophical repositioning” (Cloke & Johnston, 2005:10). In biology, this property is known as vestigiality, where it refers to genetically determined structures that have apparently lost most or all of their ancestral function, but have been retained in spite of evolutionary development. With regard to social sciences, the epiphenomenon of vestigiality is seldom reflected upon and hence less understood, despite the fact that continued use of denunciated concepts is likely to exert undesired impact on knowledge production within any given discipline. As such, understanding vestigiality as an aspect of conceptual development is not only important in assessing how concepts develop; it can also yield insights into the human influence on knowledge production without invoking “context” (cf. Asdal, 2012). Departing from an actor-network theory perspective, in this presentation we sketch out a theoretical framework for understanding vestigiality in a social-science context using the parable of an ecosystem. By merging sociomaterial components with psychological factors, such a move acknowledges that conceptual developments are evolutionarily contingent upon both internal (motivations, biases, cognition) and external (materiality, power, group behavior) forces. Departing from the ecosystem idea, we elaborate on 12 drivers most likely to regiment the academic enactment of vestigiality.
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| 46. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
-
Understanding the telos of ‘research impact’ – or how to survive the new tourism-studies agenda
- 2017
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Ingår i: 9th International Congress on Coastal and Marine Tourism, 13-16 June 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Studies on coastal and marine tourism, as well as tourism studies in general, face significant problems regarding streamlining, organization and subsequent financing due to the divergent character of tourism studies as a discipline (cf. Tribe and Liburd, 2016). In order to overcome these difficulties and to justify their relevancy, UK tourism-studies faculties have started to embrace research impact (i.e. the influence of research beyond academia) as a way to secure future funding opportunities. This strategic move elevates research impact as an overarching research objective (telos) for tourism research in general. The aim of this paper is to unpack the practical difficulties that arise in accounting for one’s own research impact and what can be done to secure potential future funding. In this paper, we present insights derived from having discursively studied the assessment process of the governmental research evaluation institution in the UK , which ranked universities according to their research impact, based upon self-reported material. Furthermore, in order to better contextualise the submission of the seven tourism studies faculties, ten UK tourism researchers’ were also interviewed. The results show a general acceptance of the research impact agenda, but also several difficulties in presenting and evidencing research impact, such as accounting for causality, reach and significance. Moreover, the interviews emphasized the difficulties of utilizing research impact in order to secure future financing, in terms of; lack of marketing skills and resources, time constraints and other conflicting strategic considerations. The implications for the individual tourism researcher are as follows; research impact is a promising avenue in order to distinguish oneself from other researchers in order to secure future funding. However, acceptance of research impact as a telos also requires researchers to gain proficiency in non-academic areas of expertise (e.g. as political activists, entrepreneurs or regional planners etc., depending on the type of impact). Thereby, in order to survive in the current UK tourism research sector, academics need to acquire new skills or need to collaborate with individuals who already possess these types of expertise. Acknowledging research impact as a strategy increasingly employed internationally to justify research funding, in this paper we present a number of practical considerations that can be taken into account in order to “survive” this new agenda.
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| 47. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
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Using topic modelling to analyse EU’s Rural Development policy
- 2013
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Ingår i: Systematizing and digitalizing Nordic policy studies: Emergent perspectives within Swedish and Finnish research, Symposia, Aalto University, 27 November 2013, Helsinki, Finland.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Any social research at some point always touches upon issues dealing with the situatedness of the researcher. Policy analysis is no exception, and there have been many quantitative attempts to mitigate problems that arise from human biases. The general concern is that, for the most part, these methodological approaches remain fairly basic (e.g. word frequencies) in comparison to the semantic nuances a human reader would normally experience. In that light, the here presented approach explores the possibility of using topic modelling as a way to quantitatively assess policy without forgoing those finer nuances of human analysis. In this presentation, the material subject to topic modelling is EU’s Rural Development policy for 2007–2013 (RDP). It proclaims itself as the first European rural policy to in its conceptual framework cover aspects labelled as quality of life (QOL). In this paper, we treat this particular statement as a hypothesis, to which topic modelling is used to investigate if this really is the case. For any concept (not just QOL) to be incorporated into a policy and to retain its influence, it must be both mentioned and linked to other parts of that same policy, elsewise it could strike as merely a rhetorical strategy. Thereby, the hypothesis is that the more themes (topics) relate to a particular concept the more relative importance the policy allocates to that particular concept. In order to gauge this relative importance of QOL within RDP, we created a categorisation based upon: (1) the RDP’s own conceptual understanding of QOL, and (2) definitions provided by contemporary cutting-edge research dedicated to QOL. The analysis shows that only about 4 % of the topics found within the RDP relate to the issues of QOL. These particular topics only mention aspects of QOL without any explicit signs of implementation. This marginal position of QOL within RDP has been corroborated by other audits of the RDP using traditional qualitative techniques. Therefore, with further methodological development, this experimental application of topic modelling in policy analysis might represent one potential alternative to traditional qualitative methods.
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| 48. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
-
What is the research impact of (the ideal of) scientific truth?
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Education Culture and Society. - : Foundation Pro Scientia Publica. - 2081-1640. ; 12:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This conceptual paper addresses how the emergent impact agenda is slowly but surely changing the normative framework of modern science. In order to understand such a cultural shift, we draw a chronology around the evaluation regime of research impact and identify a causal mechanism that changes the disciplinary structure of the research ecosystem. We draw upon a sociological model of scientific knowledge production that allows us to contrast and discuss how ‘impact facts’ mimic the process of scientific knowledge creation but are geared towards a different end. Such an explicit emphasis on societal contribution not only propositions a different purpose for research, but also changes the very logic of research along its entire construction. Our argument is that an emphasis on the advancement of knowledge, as opposed to impact, maintains innovation and pre-empts social tensions. The contribution of our paper is outlining the societal influence of the scientific ideal of truth, alongside identifying and articulating the unintended consequences around the impact agenda as the emerging impact or starve paradigm. We provide a sociological model of how this new paradigm mimics the creation of scientific facts, nevertheless as it geared towards a different end, it hermetically seals itself from criticism. We conclude that only with an explicit acknowledgement of the adverse potential of the impact agenda is it possible to maintain science’s beneficial impact upon society.
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| 49. |
-
Bulletin of Geography. Socio-Economic Series (Volume 33)
- 2016
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Ingår i: Bulletin of Geography. Socio-Economic Series (De Gruyter). - 1732-4254 .- 1732-4254. ; 33:33
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The editorial task included procurement, administration and processing of 10 articles from 19 authors as follows: (1) Therese Brolin - Conceptualizations of "results" in Swedish policy for development cooperation from the 1960s to the 2000s; (2) Waldemar Cudny, Marcel Horňák - The tourist function in a car factory Audi Forum Ingolstadt example; (3) Sanette L.A. Ferreira, Gesina W. Van Zyl - Catering for large numbers of tourists: the McDonaldization of casual dining in Kruger National Park; (4) Zbigniew Głąbiński - Analysing the tourism activity of seniors by applying the method of participant observation; (5) Kristina N. Lindström, Mia Larson - Community-based tourism in practice: evidence from three coastal communities in Bohuslän, Sweden; (6) Jana Masárová, Eva Ivanová - Road infrastructure in the regions of the Slovak Republic and Poland; (7) Muhammad Miandad, Syed Nawaz-ul-Huda, Farkhunda Burke, Muhammad Azam, Imran Khan - Escalation of tuberculosis notification: an analysis of associated social factors; (8) Iwona Pomianek, Mariola Chrzanowska - A spatial comparison of semi-urban and rural gminas in Poland in terms of their level of socio-economic development using Hellwig's method; (9) Marie Stenseke - The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and the challenge of integrating social sciences and humanities; (10) Agnieszka Szczepańska - Urbanization processes related to the development of residential functions in gminas adjacent to the city of Olsztyn.
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| 50. |
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Bulletin of Geography. Socio-Economic Series (Volume 40)
- 2018
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Ingår i: Bulletin of Geography. Socio-Economic Series (De Gruyter). - 1732-4254 .- 1732-4254. ; 40:40
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This 40th anniversary issue of BGSS highlights some of the tenets of the complexity that make sustainability a ‘wicked problem’ through a number of different perspectives, many of which have to date been pushed into the background amidst an otherwise exceptionally rich geographical literature on sustainability. The editorial task included procurement, administration and scientific processing of 12 articles from 25 authors as follows: (1) Mirek Dymitrow, Keith Halfacree – “Sustainability–differently”; (2) Slobodan Arsovski, Michał Kwiatkowski, Aleksandra Lewandowska, Dimitrinka Jordanova Peshevska, Emilija Sofeska, Mirek Dymitrow – “Can urban environmental problems be overcome? The case of Skopje—world’s most polluted city”; (3) Janis Birkeland – “Challenging policy barriers in sustainable urban design”; (4) Elizabeth Dessie – “Applying resilience thinking to ‘ordinary’ cities: A theoretical inquiry”; (5) Madeleine Eriksson, Aina Tollefsen – “The production of the rural landscape and its labour: The development of supply chain capitalism in the Swedish berry industry”; (6) Stina Hansson – “The role of trust in shaping urban planning in local communities: The case of Hammarkullen, Sweden”; (7) Shelley Kotze – “The place of community values within community-based conservation: The case of Driftsands Nature Reserve, Cape Town”; (8) Davide Marino, Luigi Mastronardi, Agostino Giannelli, Vincenzo Giaccio, Giampiero Mazzocchi – “Territorialisation dynamics for Italian farms adhering to Alternative Food Networks”; (9) E. Gunilla Almered Olsson – “Urban food systems as vehicles for sustainability transitions”; (10) George Mark Onyango – “Urban public transport in informal settlements: Experiences from Kisumu City, Kenya”; (11) Christian M. Rogerson – “Informality and migrant entrepreneurs in Cape Town’s inner city”; (12) Marcin Wójcik, Karolina Dmochowska-Dudek, Pamela Jeziorska-Biel, Paulina Tobiasz-Lis – “Understanding strategies for overcoming peripherality: A Polish experience of transition”. The articles have been reviewed by a cadre of 40 reviewers from 34 academic institutions across 14 countries.
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