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Sound Knowledge: Reflexive practices of bypassing and trespassing on the evidence discourse

MSc in Anthropology, Lene Teglhus Kauffmann will defend her dissertation.

Info about event

Time

Thursday 27 November 2014,  at 13:00 - 16:00

Location

Room D174, Department of, Education (에볼루션카지노), Aarhus University, Campus Emdrup, Tuborgvej 164, 2400 K에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트benhavn NV

 
(The doors closes precisely)

Assessment committee:

  • Professor Hans Siggaard Jensen (chairman), Aarhus University, Department of Education
  • Professor Chris Shore, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland
  • Professor, Tine Tj에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트rnh에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트j-Thomsen, The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark

Main supervisor

  • Professor Sue Wright, Aarhus University, Department of Education

The defence will be conducted in English by associate professor Jette Kofoed, Aarhus University, Department of Education.

The dissertation is available for reading at the Department of Education, Tuborgvej 164, building D, room 329, administration.

After the dissertation Department of Education will hoste a reception.

Abstract
The thesis is about the conceptualisation of knowledge associated with evidence. The Danish society is experiencing a proliferating demand for evidence, which started as the basis of medicine and has spread into social work, education and most policy making arenas, including health promotion. The aim of the research on which the thesis is based was to investigate what is considered to 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트˜work as evidence에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ and how the evidence discourse influences social practices in the field of health promotion. From investigating knowledge practices in the field of health promotion, the thesis develops the concept of 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트˜sound knowledge에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ as knowledge based not on evidence but on reflexive practices.

The thesis is based on an anthropological analysis of health promotion as a 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트˜policy world에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™. In this perspective, agents are informants, academic articles, statistics, theoretical ideas, evaluations as well as policy papers. For studying this, a different approach than what anthropologists normally engage in was needed. Although participatory observation and interviews were conducted when possible, part of the fieldwork was reading texts as ethnographic material.

The main argument of the thesis is a case against evidence. It is argued that the evidence discourse is constituted mainly as an imagination about evidence as certain and trustworthy which makes it to be the not only the objective result of a rigorous and standardized research method, but almost the absolute truth. In continuation of this, 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트˜evidence에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ and 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트˜evidence-based에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ are hegemonic ways of knowing and therefore used as arguments of quality and certainty.

However, this preludes a reflexivity that is in fact central to both research and policymaking. Reflexivity is understood as a thoughtful consideration of connections and causes, truth and trust, factual and normative aspects, taken up by agents who contest and negotiate what is knowledge and evidence. Reflexive agents enact an ideology that entangle competition, longevity, economic viability with health promotion as an idealistic aim and they connects different ideas, concepts and methodologies to constitute what can be called 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트˜sound knowledge에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™. This means that, instead of decisions being evidence-based, it could be fruitful to talk about policies as based on sound knowledge. This would emphasise the reflexive practises and make explicit the connections and considerations behind policy making as well as research.