Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

In this project I focus on the study of production, use and translation of social science knowledge on its travels between science and society. I aim at understanding the differences between knowledge regimes in areas of natural and technical research on one side and social sciences on the other, and in the status and role of social science research in the “knowledge society”. I draw on science and technology studies (STS) theoretically and conceptually, mainly on approaches following from the actor-network theory. The studies inquire into the collective and distributed processes of knowledge production and use, and mechanisms of its stabilization and destabilization, and singularization and attribution. My research will be based on an extensive study of literature, secondary analyses of my previous research and an original qualitative research (study of documents, individual and group discussions, and study of media discourse). The core of the research will be two case studies of knowledge production and use 1. concerning the “Roma issue”; 2. in the thematic area of “sustainable development”.