Feminist theory, method, and praxis: Toward a critical consciousness for family and close relationship scholars

Feminism provides a worldview with innovative possibilities for scholarship and activism on behalf of families and intimate relationships. As a flexible framework capable of engaging with contentious theoretical ideas and the urgency of social change, feminism offers a simultaneous way to express an epistemology (knowledge), a methodology (the production of knowledge), an ontology (one’s subjective way of being in the world), and a praxis (the translation of knowledge into actions that produce beneficial social change). Feminist family science, in particular, advances critical, intersectional, and queer approaches to examine the uses and abuses of power and the multiple axes upon which individuals and families are privileged, marginalized, and oppressed in diverse social contexts. In this paper, I embrace feminism as a personal, professional (academic), and political project and use stories from my own life to illuminate broader social-historical structures, processes, and contexts associated with gender, race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, nationality, and other systems of social stratification. I provide a brief history and reflections on contemporary feminist theory and activism, particularly from the perspective of my disciplinary affiliation of feminist family science. I address feminism as an intersectional perspective through three themes: (a) theory: defining a critical feminist approach, (b) method: critical feminist autoethnographic research, and (c) praxis: transforming feminist theory into action. I conclude with takeaway messages for incorporating reflexivity and critical consciousness raising to provoke thought and action in the areas of personal, professional, and political change.

Is There Still a German IR Discourse? Investigations in the Semi-Periphery of an Academic Discipline

In non-English-speaking countries, international relations (IR) scholars often face considerable pressure to publish in international journals and address international debates. At the same time, they are expected to cater to national publics, politicians, and funding agencies. In this article, we investigate how German IR scholars navigate this terrain and whether a national IR discourse still exists in Germany. To answer this question, we analyze citation patterns and the formulation of the puzzle in twenty-five volumes of the Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, the German flagship journal of IR. We find that two-thirds of scholarly works cited in those articles are written in English. References to German-language literature cluster in articles written by authors without disciplinary affiliation in IR. The majority of research puzzles are also situated firmly in international discourses, while only a minority really target German debates. We conclude that not much of a distinctively German conversation over matters of IR is left, at least in academia. What is still there revolves around German foreign policy, theory issues, and, to some extent, European studies. On most other issues, authors link up directly to international debates even when addressing their German colleagues in German.

Frequency and distribution of the units of general scientific (academic) lexicon as the markers of disciplinary affiliation of a discourse

This article is dedicated to a corpus-based research of functionality of the units of general scientific (academic) lexicon in various types of disciplinary discourse, the purpose of which lies in verification of a hypothesis on a special function of the academic lexicon to indicate disciplinary affiliation of the scientific text. In the era of increasing mathematization and digitalization of scientific knowledge, corpus linguistics becomes a paramount instrument of empirical research aimed at acquisition of knowledge on the language through quantitative and qualitative analysis of compilations of texts, the scope and subject of which can be set in accordance with the specific objectives of the scholar. Special role in corpus-based research is assigned to the methods of statistical analysis for effective processing of the obtained quantitative data on linguistic realias, thereby considering linguistic research equivalent to the research of exact and natural sciences by degree of verification. The article describes the fragment of comprehensive research on functionality of the general scientific lexicon, which using the statistical method of correlation analysis on the example of more than 100 general scientific words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) established correlation between frequency and distribution of the units of general scientific lexicon and the type of disciplinary discourse. The scientific novelty lies in the holistic approach towards analyzing the characteristic features of distribution of the frequency of general scientific lexical units in 8 types of disciplinary discourse, as well as in in application of the methods of descriptive and mathematical statistics that demonstrate that academic lexicon same as terminological lexicon may serve as marker of disciplinary affiliation of the discourse.

Hedging as an Indicator of Disciplinary Variation in Pakistani Academic Discourse: A Corpus Based Study

Hedging is a pragmatic phenomenon which is practiced to signal interpersonal communication. In academic discourse, hedges are used to signal writers’ presence in a text. This article explores the use of hedges particularly with reference to epistemic and deontic modality markers—important and frequently used types of hedges-- in Pakistani research dissertations belonging to three major disciplines: Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities. The material is based on a special purpose corpus of Pakistani academic writing developed with 235 M.phil and PhD research theses. To find out the frequencies of modal verbs AntConc 3.5.6 was used. All the frequencies were listed and every 50th example was analysed using the theoretical distinction between epistemic and deontic modality outlined by Biber et al. (1999). Statistical analysis of the data reveals, that disciplinary affiliation has a considerable influence on the proportion of epistemic and deontic modality

The Significance of Teaching Academic Writing as a Discipline-Specific Skill

The purpose of the present study was to popularize the conscious initiation of novice scholars and postgraduate students into the writing conventions of their disciplines. In so doing, the study proposes the integration of writing courses into the disciplinary syllabus so that the students study writing developmentally throughout their stay in the faculty. A questionnaire, and an interview, were used to collect data from the study participants, who were lecturers and teaching assistants in different Sudanese higher education institutions. Data analysis revealed that the participants highly value the proposal to teach academic writing as a discipline-specific skill. It also showed significant differences in the participants' perceptions of explicit instruction of academic writing based on their disciplinary affiliation in favour of hard science specialists. However, the participants' research profiles did not show statistically different perceptions.

Professional Socialization of Postdoctoral Training among Academics in South Korea

This study aims to develop a theoretical perspective on postdoctoral experiences as professional socialization, and to empirically analyze whether postdoctoral experiences are associated with professional socialization such as deepened knowledge and skills, sense of belonging and academic identity. For this study, we used the data of the Academic Profession in the Knowledge Society (APIKS) survey. The results show that postdoctoral experiences are associated with research performance, their identity as a researcher, and their sense of belonging to their academic discipline; however, postdoctoral training is not associated with their sense of belonging to their affiliated institution. These findings imply that professional socialization during postdoctoral training is closely related to academic identity and their disciplinary affiliation as well as scholarly performance. This study proposes to develop and redesign doctoral education and postdoctoral training in the continuous process of academic and professional socialization.

Education Research and Educational Psychology in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom – an Analysis of Scholarly Journals

The paper investigates recent transnational and trans-disciplinary knowledge trajectories on the basis of scholarly journals by focusing on the contemporary relationships, commonalities and differences between education research and educational psychology in three European countries: Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. We investigate how education research and educational psychology are composed regarding authors, research topics and methodological standards. We also are interested in analysing how these disciplines are formed according to their mutual recognition and their specific communication patterns. The investigation is based on 70 more recent volumes of eight journals of education research and educational psychology, which are analysed according to social and disciplinary affiliation of authors and the methodological focus of articles. As a preliminary result of work in progress we identify different research patterns regarding nations and cultures on the one hand and regarding disciplines on the other.

Climate for women in climate science: Women scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an authoritative and influential source of reports on climate change. The lead authors of IPCC reports include scientists from around the world, but questions have been raised about the dominance of specific disciplines in the report and the disproportionate number of scholars from the Global North. In this paper, we analyze the as-yet-unexamined issue of gender and IPCC authorship, looking at changes in gender balance over time and analyzing women’s views about their experience and barriers to full participation, not only as women but also at the intersection of nationality, race, command of English, and discipline. Over time, we show that the proportion of female IPCC authors has seen a modest increase from less than 5% in 1990 to more than 20% in the most recent assessment reports. Based on responses from over 100 women IPCC authors, we find that many women report a positive experience in the way in which they are treated and in their ability to influence the report, although others report that some women were poorly represented and heard. We suggest that an intersectional lens is important: not all women experience the same obstacles: they face multiple and diverse barriers associated with social identifiers such as race, nationality, command of English, and disciplinary affiliation. The scientific community benefits from including all scientists, including women and those from the Global South. This paper documents barriers to participation and identifies opportunities to diversify climate science.