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Based on informal discussions with a range of scholars across the African continent, it was felt that there was a need for a scholarly publisher located in Africa, focusing on African content, and targeting an African audience. It had also been expressed by a number of researchers, and was of wider potential interest – given the author’s institutional situation and context at the time, as well as management imperatives – that the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) could use its existing capacity and strengths in the area of African studies, specifically from a social science and development perspective, and its networks on the African continent, to form a possible institutional base for such a press, through the expansion of its publishing division. But there was no certainty as to whether this was in fact a viable business idea. Thus, this study carries out a feasibility study, to investigate and evaluate whether a scholarly press focusing on African material would be viable in the current South African, continental and international context. The study takes the form of a literature survey, questionnaire-based empirical survey, and business planning exercise. The key research question that is investigated is: Given the limitations of and challenges currently facing the South African (and wider African) scholarly publishing industry, could a scholarly publisher working according to the above vision be viably set up, and how could this be achieved? Broad support is found for the notion of a new scholarly publisher, and a business plan is developed to show how such a press could be set up, working within certain constraints and assumptions. / Dissertation (MIS)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Information Science / MIS / Unrestricted

The Swedish industrial research institutes are research organisations that exist somewhat in between academy and industry, fulfilling an intermediary role as well as providing a space for research relevant to industrial companies, and they have a history of being funded by both state and industry as a way to support technical research in Sweden. The present study examines the history one of these institutes – the Institute for Surface Chemistry – with respect to three dimensions of its knowledge production: the role that basic and applied research has played for the institute, its external connections and the heterogeneity of its knowledge production, and how it has evaluated the quality of its research. The time period considered is 1975-2005, a challenging time for the Swedish institute sector, and the analysis is based on an interpretation of annual reports, research programs and newsletters from the period, as well as on interviews with institute managers and researchers.This work contributes to a wider research field in two respects. First, it provides input to the ongoing debate about how a changing research system is linked to changes in knowledge production. Second, it increases our knowledge of the Swedish industrial research institute sector, something interesting in its own right but that also can provide input to the ongoing policy reorientation vis-à-vis these institutes. The main novelty of the work is that it engagessystematically and historically with changes in knowledge production within an industrial research institute, something not done in previous studies of the sector. To briefly summarise the results, applied research gradually becomes more important than basic research at the institute, but basic research still keeps playing a rather large role for some time, even as this roleis downplayed in the official publications. At the same time, the institute becomes more heterogeneous in its knowledge production, associates closer with its industrial partners, and loses some of its independent knowledge production in favour of a more classic intermediary role. During the study period, the institute mainly ascertains the quality of its work through the use of traditional academic standards, and it retains a strong publication culture throughout.Three main conclusions are drawn: that the institute generally has oriented itself more towards its industrial partners; that this is the result of adapting to a situation in which the traditional state funding and political support appear ever more insecure; and that in spite of this general dynamic of adaption, the institute, thanks to a unique knowledge base or strong and well-connected actors, has sometimes been able to defend its preferred modes of knowledge production instead of adapting,something which also has had a notable impact on its development.

The objective for my research has been to put forward and discuss some aspects of knowledge production in relation to the epistemological positions of feminist technoscience, which lay emphasis on the contextual and the social embeddedness of both research and technology. My main inquiry has been how the relation between the subject and the surrounding context can be perceived epistemologically and how this in turn can be connected to and found relevant to the supposed new mode of knowledge production termed Mode 2. The licentiate thesis is built on three essays which together form my main arguments around the epistemological questions of if and how it is possible to gain and attain knowledge, and how its value might be ascertained. In the three essays I have attempted to illustrate some aspects of and possible hindrances to understanding and knowledge, while addressing what a feminist technoscience epistemology could signify for knowledge production. My intention in these three essays has also been to emphasize the ideological foundation of epistemological understandings, its implications both on what is viewed and valued as knowledge, and on what purpose knowledge production and research should have for and in society. In relation to these discussions I have tried to underline how feminist technoscience, as a research field, should be open to ongoing discussions about its own methodological, epistemological and ideological stances and its effects on research and society.

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Intersectoral collaboration has been established as essential in the work on climate change adaptation at the municipal level, but the municipalities face several institutional constraints to working across sectors. Because climate change adaptation is situated in a multilevel governance system, the national level has a role to play in institutional change at the municipal level. This thesis focuses on knowledge as an influential tool and sets out to investigate the potential of the national level to support collaborative action at the municipal level that challenges current institutions characterised by working in separate sectors. This is done by analysing the work of the National Knowledge centre for Climate Change Adaptation as they play a central role in the knowledge production on climate change adaptation at the national level. The findings of this thesis contribute to a better understanding of the barriers and opportunities that faces a national authority when supporting the municipalities through knowledge. These are mainly connected to the efficiency of the multilevel governance system, where increased horizontal and vertical interaction could facilitate the knowledge production to better support institutional change. The findings indicate that the regional level have a key role to play in enabling interaction across the system. Furthermore, national authorities must find ways to support collaborative municipal action without encroaching on the municipal autonomy. The findings give indications on what form knowledge could take to achieve this.

Abstract This dissertation reports on the findings of a study that set out to examine how discourses of ableism, racism and colonialism shape Canadian immigration policies, and settlement practices. This research examined how these discourses contribute to constructing immigration applicants with disabilities as an inadmissible social group. With a focus directed to the application process as a key knowledge gap in the intersection of disability and immigration, I launched this study with the aim of answering the following main research question: “How do discourses of ableism, racism and colonialism construct immigration applicants with disabilities? Through a critical discourse analysis study of official Citizenship and Immigration documents as well as episodic interviews with 23 participants (immigrants with disabilities, family members, and service providers), findings demonstrate the importance of understanding immigration as a continuum from pre-application to settlement. I argue that the immigration process is shaped and defined by central discourses that construct immigration as an opportunity for a better life through which ableist, racist and colonial discourses are reflected and reinforced. Social workers and other helping professionals involved in settlement services for immigrants with disabilities play significant roles in how discourses of opportunity are actualized and materialized. The dissertation ends with implications for critical research, theory and social work practice. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Lay Abstract This study looked at the ways in which immigration and disability intersect and what this means for social work practice, policy and research. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of official immigration documents and interviews with immigrants with disabilities, family members and service providers, the study examined the pre-application and application stages of immigration, as well as settlement issues. The main finding of the study is that discourses of opportunity are central in shaping these stages, while reinforcing ableism, racism and colonialism. Implications for future research, policy and practice are laid out to push for a social work role that moves beyond applying oppressive policies and practices to being more in line with principles of social justice.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The changing South African policy context since 1994 (new science and innovation policies), and institutional changes at the National Research Foundation (NRF) have had an effect on different funding instruments and related modes of knowledge production. In this study we compare the modes of knowledge production utilized by researchers funded by the NRF and those funded by industry. We also compare the level of scientific productivity of these groups. This study makes two major contributions: first, we provided a reconstruction of the history of research funding in South Africa from 1918 (through the Research Grant Board – RGB), to date (through the NRF established in 1999 as a result of the merger of the Foundation for Research Development (FRD) and the Centre for Science Development (CSD). The second major contribution of this study concerns the relationship between funding sources and modes of knowledge production and dissemination. We found evidence that there is an increase in third stream funding for university research in South Africa. The study shows that respondents who received funding from both the Focus Areas and THRIP, concurrently, produced more average annual research outputs than those who received funding from either the Focus Areas or THRIP only. When we compared respondents who only received the Focus Areas or THRIP grant, we found that those who received the Focus Areas grant published more outputs annually than THRIP-funded researchers, despite the fact that those who received the THRIP grant had larger grant amounts, on average, than their Focus Areas-funded counterparts. We also found that industry/THRIP funding is utilised on problem-solving type of research, i.e. applied research, while public/NRF funding is utilised on basic/fundamental/curiosity-driven research. Overall, the findings show that there is no clear cut conclusion about the influence of funding on the mode of knowledge production. We could not prove that the two factors, that is, funding and mode of knowledge production, are related in a linear fashion. This is a much more complicated situation that requires more investigation. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die veranderende Suid-Afrikaanse beleidskonteks sedert 1994 (nuwe wetenskap- en innovasiebeleid), sowel as institusionele veranderinge aan die Nasionale Navorsingstigting (NNS), het 'n uitwerking gehad op verskillende befondsingsinstrumente en verwante vorme van kennisproduksie. In die lig hiervan vergelyk die huidige studie die vorme van kennisproduksie van navorsers wat deur die NNS befonds word met dié van navorsers wat deur die bedryf befonds word. Die twee groepe se onderskeie vlakke van wetenskaplike produktiwiteit word ook vergelyk. Die studie lewer twee belangrike bydraes. In die eerste plek bied dit 'n rekonstruksie van die geskiedenis van die finansiering van navorsing in Suid-Afrika, vanaf 1918 (deur die Navorsingstoekenningsraad), tot en met vandag (deur die NNS wat in 1999 tot stand gekom het met die samesmelting van die destydse Stigting vir Navorsingsontwikkeling – SNO – en die Sentrum vir Wetenskapsontwikkeling – SWO). Die tweede belangrike bydrae van hierdie studie is die ondersoek na die verband tussen befondsingsbronne en verskillende vorme van kennisproduksie en -disseminasie. Die resultate van die ondersoek dui op 'n toename in derdegeldstroom-befondsing wat universiteitsnavorsing in Suid-Afrika betref. Die studie toon verder dat respondente wat befondsing van beide die fokusarea- en THRIP-programme ontvang, se gemiddelde jaarlikse navorsingsuitsette beduidend hoër is as dié van respondente wat slegs binne een van die twee programme befonds word. ʼn Vergelyking van die navorsingsuitsette van respondente wat slegs fokusarea-befondsing ontvang en respondente wat slegs THRIP-befondsing ontvang, toon dat diegene met fokusarea-befondsing se jaarlikse publikasieuitsette gemiddeld hoër is, ondanks die feit dat die THRIP-toekennings groter bedrae behels. Daar is ook gevind dat befondsing deur die bedryf/THRIP gebruik word vir navorsing wat gerig is op probleemoplossing, d.w.s. toegepaste navorsing, terwyl publieke of NNS-befondsing aangewend word vir basiese/ fundamentele/nuuskierigheid-gedrewe navorsing. Die algehele beskouing is dat geen duidelike gevolgtrekking gemaak kan word met betrekking tot die invloed van befondsing op die vorme van kennisproduksie nie. Daar kan nie onomwonde gestel word dat die twee kernfaktore van ondersoek, naamlik befondsing en vorme van kennisproduksie, reglynig met mekaar verband hou nie. Die situasie is meer kompleks en vereis verdere navorsing.

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Between 1916 and 1928 Dr Louis Fourie, Medical Officer for the Protectorate of South West Africa and amateur anthropologist, amassed a collection of some three and a half thousand artefacts, three hundred photographs and diverse documents originating from or concerned with numerous Khoisan groups living in the Protectorate. He gathered this material in the context of a complex process of colonisation of the area, in which he himself was an important player, both in his official capacity and in an unofficial role as anthropological adviser to the Administration. During this period South African legislation and administration continued the process of deprivation and dehumanisation of the Khoisan that had begun during the German occupation of the country. Simultaneously, anthropologists were constructing an identity for the Khoisan which foregrounded their primitiveness. The tensions engendered in those whose work involved a combination of civil service and anthropology were difficult to reconcile, leading to a form of melancholia. The thesis examines the ways in which Fourie’s collection was a response to, and a part of the consolidation of, these parallel paradigms. Fourie moved to King William’s Town in South Africa in 1930, taking the collection with him, removing the objects still further from their original habitats, and minimising the possibility that the archive would one day rest in an institution in the country of its origin. The different parts of the collection moved between the University of the Witwatersrand and a number of museums, at certain times becoming an academic teaching tool for social anthropology and at others being used to provide evidence for a popular view of the Khoisan as the last practitioners of a dying cultural pattern with direct links to the Stone Age. The collection, with its emphasis on artefacts made in the “traditional” way, formed a part of the archive upon which anthropologists and others drew to refine this version of Khoisan identity in subsequent years. At the same time the collection itself was reshaped and re-characterised to fit the dynamics of those archetypes and models. The dissertation establishes the recursive manner in which the collection and colonial constructs of Khoisan identity modified and informed each other as they changed shape and emphasis. It does this through an analysis of the shape and structure of the collection itself. In order to understand better the processes which underlay the making of the Fourie Collection there is a focus on the collector himself and an examination of the long tradition of collecting which legitimised and underpinned his avocation. Fourie used the opportunities offered by his position as Medical Officer and the many contacts he made in the process of his work to gather artefacts, photographs and information. The collection became a colonial artefact in itself. The thesis questions the role played by Fourie’s work in the production of knowledge concerning the Bushmen (as he termed this group). Concomitant with that it explores the recursive nature of the ways in which this collection formed a part of the evidentiary basis for Khoisan identities over a period of decades in the twentieth century as it, in turn, was shaped by prevailing understandings of those identities. A combination of methodologies is used to read the finer points of the processes of the production of knowledge. First the collection is historicised in the biographies of the collector himself and of the collection, following them through the twentieth century as they interact with the worlds of South West African administrative politics, anthropological developments in South Africa and Britain, and the Khoisan of the Protectorate. It then moves to do an ethnography of the collection by dividing it into three components. This allows the use of three different methodologies and bodies of literature that theorise documentary archives, photographs, and collections of objects. A classically ethnographic move is to examine the assemblage in its own terms, expressed in the methods of collecting and ordering the material, to see what it tells us about how Fourie and the subsequent curators of the collections perceived the Khoisan. In order to do so it is necessary to outline the history of the discourses of anthropologists in the first third of the twentieth century, as well as museum practice and discourse in the mid to late twentieth century, questioning them as knowledge and reading them as cultural constructs. Finally, the thesis brings an archival lens to bear on the collection, and explores the implications of processing the collection as a historical archive as opposed to an ethnographic record of material culture. In order to do this I establish at the outset that the entire collection formed an archive. All its components hold knowledge and need to be read in relation to each other, so that it is important not to isolate, for example, the artefacts from the documents and the photographs because any interpretation of the collection would then be incomplete. Archive theories help problematise the assumption that museum ethnographic collections serve as simple records of a vanished or vanishing lifestyle. These methodologies provide the materials and insights which enable readings of the collection both along and across the grain, processes which draw attention to the cultures of collecting and categorising which lie at the base of many ethnographic collections found in museums today. In addition to being an expression of his melancholy, Fourie’s avocation was very much a part of the process of creating an identity for himself and his fellow colonists. A close reading of the documents reveals that he was constantly confronted with the disastrous effects of colonisation on the Khoisan, but did not do anything about the fundamental cause. On the contrary, he took part in the Administration’s policy-making processes. The thesis tentatively suggests that his avocation became an act of redemption. If he could not save the people (medically or politically), he would create a collection that would save them metonymically. Ironically those who encountered the collection after it left his hands used it to screen out what few hints there were of colonisation. Finally the study leads to the conclusion that the processes of making and institutionalising this archive formed an important part of the creation of the body of ethnography upon which academic and popular perceptions of Khoisan identity have been based over a period of many decades.