Dismantling the Monster? Reflections on Audit Culture and Evidence-Based Research

Authors

  • Dorte Marie Søndergaard
  • Lis Højgaard

Abstract

This essay addresses the emergence of audit culture and evidence-base research and its entry into the Nordic countries of Europe, using Denmark as an example. A closer look is taken at the current trends as they have reached the Danish scene, and the essay engages a discussion about ways to counter these trends, launching alternative positionings to those known from the British, American and Australian reports. The discussion offers reflections on the possibility of replacing dualisms between basic and applied science/ science and society by conceptualisations of the multitude of actors involved in knowledge production and focuses on ways to engage this choir of voices productively in order to create liveable and viable relations between science and society.

Author Biographies

Dorte Marie Søndergaard

Dorte Marie Søndergaard, dr.philos., professor of Social Psychology at the Department of Learning, DPU, Aarhus University in Denmark. Her research focuses feminist studies, subjectification processes and power, empirically analysed within academic cultures, private organisations and schools.

 

Lis Højgaard

Lis Højgaard, Mag.art. in Cultural Sociology, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Her main areas of work lie within cultural analytical approaches to organization studies focusing on gender construction. At the moment she is working on a project exploring the mutual constitutive forces of gender and knowledge production in scientific work settings.

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Published

2010-12-08