Anthropological Investigation of Social Determinants of Knowledge

Katzenstein, Jessica, Phoenix AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Lawrence Bobo at Harvard University, and Drs. Tricia Redeker-Hepner and Heather Smith-Cannoy at Arizona State University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the social conditions of knowledge production across social initiatives at regional police departments and nonprofit organizations. In the past several decades, workplace programs have increased in popularity promising to produce more favorable institutional outcomes. However, some scholars have criticized these efforts as offering individual solutions for structural problems, and, we understand little of how those involved respond to the initiatives and how their responses challenge ongoing issues. The proposed research will address these questions via a comparative, multi-site ethnographic analysis of social initiatives across two distinct institutions. An ethnographic understanding of how systemic issues persist within these contexts has the potential to improve outcomes. The goal of this proposed study is to contribute to theory and public understanding of social determinants of knowledge within the workplace. The project aims to do so by collecting ethnographic data—including observations of workplace trainings, analyses of program documents, and semi-structured interviews with trainers, employees, and hiring and training managers—from multiple regional police departments and nonprofit organizations. This research will ask how various conceptualizations contribute to participant recruitment and how they compare across institutions; how challenges are managed; and how trainers and employees negotiate participation. It will build upon growing social scientific efforts to examine the conditions of collective knowledge production and will thereby offer fresh insight into the relation between social determinants of knowledge and structural outcomes. Furthermore, this project’s comparative framework will facilitate theorizing about how systemic issues vary across institutions, as well as how uniform policies may not translate across different types of organizations. Through these contributions, this study seeks to enrich public and scholarly conversations about how to best promote more favorable structural outcomes in the workplace. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.