(Re)Territorializing the Known: Fieldwork in Philosophy as Critical Policy Analysis

• In Event: Roundtable Session 55
  In Roundtable Session: Fieldworking in Philosophy as Methodology

Abstract

   AERA’s 2012 adoption of the theme Non Satis Sciere: To Know Is Not Enough affirms the pragmatic link between qualitative research and public policy. In spite of seemingly irresolvable ‘paradigm wars’, few of AERA’s members would contest the appropriateness of a complimentary relationship between scholarly inquiry and public policy. Nevertheless, as a genre policy initiatives can be understood as mobilizations of knowledge, so it is clear that policymakers agree with AERA: to know is not enough. It follows, then, that policy analysis conducted in the service of social justice cannot assume policy initiatives uphold democratic processes without first problematizing what is assumed to be known.

Author

• Tobey Ray Steeves, The University of British Columbia