Spaces Of Global Knowledge

Spaces of Global Knowledge

Spaces of Global Knowledge

’Global’ knowledge was constructed, communicated and contested during the long nineteenth century in numerous ways and places. This book focuses on the life-geographies, material practices and varied contributions to knowledge, be they medical or botanical, cartographic or cultural, of actors whose lives crisscrossed an increasingly connected world. Integrating detailed archival research with broader thematic and conceptual reflection, the individual case studies use local specificity to shed light on global structures and processes, revealing the latter to be lived and experienced phenomena rather than abstract historiographical categories. This volume makes an original and compelling contribution to a growing body of scholarship on the global history of knowledge. Given its wide geographic, disciplinary and thematic range this book will appeal to a broad readership including historical geographers and specialists in history of science and medicine, imperial history, museum studies, and book history.

Mainstreams, Margins and the Spaces In-between

This book explores the complexities of investigating minorities, majorities, boundaries and borders, and the experiences of researchers who choose to work in these spaces. It engages with issues of ethics, disclosure and representation, and contends with and seeks to contribute to emerging debates around power and the positioning of researchers and participants. Chapters examine epistemologies that shape researchers’ beliefs about the forms of research that are valued in educational research and theory, and consider the importance of research that genuinely seeks to explore voice, culture, story, authenticity and identity. Resisting the backdrop of standardisation, performativity and accountability agendas pervading governments and organisations, the book attends to the stories of real people, to understand regional and rural landscapes, to examine culture and the human condition and to give voice to those at the fringes of society who remain largely neglected and unheard. Drawing largely on studies from Australia, the book provides an overview of the many types of research being engaged in, revealing the value of different kinds of research, and gaining insight into how meaning and findings are disseminated in research and educational sectors and back into the contexts where research takes place. Mainstreams, Margins and the Spaces In-between will be of key interest to early career researchers and academics internationally, as well as postgraduate students completing research methods courses in the field of education, and the wider social sciences.