Seeking the Principles of Power and Danger

Workshop that Alexander Page and I put together for undergraduate students - also here .

Title: Constellations of Scepticism: Contesting Climate Science with Hyper-Knowledge Codes Mathew Toll, PhD Candidate, LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building Abstract: Report after report assessing climate science details a growing mountain of evidence that climate change is indeed happening and that it is human caused. Considering this: how do climate sceptics maintain their scepticism? What can the LCT concept of constellations reveal about their belief systems and inform strategies of engagement with climate sceptics? This roundtable will employ constellations analysis to three central climate sceptic blogs and propose an extreme form of knowledge code that impedes knowledge-building. The climate sceptic blogosphere is a key venue for the development and distribution of climate misinformation. Recent political events have underscored the importance of understanding how climate denial is cultivated and legitimated online. Malcom Robert’s maiden speech to the Australian Senate, fo...

#LCTC2 on the final day The Second Legitimation Code Theory Conference finished yesterday - for those who weren't there, here is the social media buzz on Twitter and Instagram around the conference (& here ): [ View the story "Tweeting LCTC2" on Storify ]

Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, Church St Newtown, Sydney. (14th, June,2017) Alex Page and I are coordinating a Unit for Winter School, the Sociology of Deviance and Difference , and we wrote a brief note for the Unit of Study to convey the ethos and importance of such a topic.  Here it is: A Brief Note From Your Course Coordinators: We would both like to formally welcome you to the Winter School version of Sociology of Deviance and Difference for 2017!  In this intensive unit over the next two and half weeks we – Mathew Toll and Alex Page – will be working with you to unpack the nature of deviance and difference and ask questions like:   what is deviance? Is it socially constructed? And if so, how and why is it constructed in certain ways? Who gets to set the rules? Who gets to label someone a deviant? How is deviance and difference experienced? And, what are the relations of power at play that determine constructions of normalcy? Why this way and ...

University of Sydney's  Eszter Szenes  being way too nice. (I really wish I could have been more help). 

The Second International Legitimation Code Theory Conference  is happening at the University of Sydney, July 2017.  I have a paper in the conference:  Title:  Hyper-Knowledge Codes: Contesting Knowledge-Building on the Climate Sceptic Blogosphere . Knowledge codes are not guarantees of knowledge-building; in fact, some may hinder it. This paper explores a ‘hyper-knowledge codes’ through a cosmological analysis of climate sceptic blogs. Studies of the field of production that employ Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) have principally focused on disciplines where the basis of legitimation is a knower code. Maton (2014: 38) identifies the potential of social knower codes to fragment disciplines and undermine knowledge-building. While studies of knowledge code disciplines, e.g. physics, chemistry and biology, have focused on impediments students face to educational attainment and the realization of legitimate knowledge and not the field of production.  Yet, ...

Author/s: Mathew Toll Affiliation/s:  Postgraduate member, LCT centre for Knowledge-Building, University of Sydney. Title: Unpacking the Black Box:The Climate Sceptic Blogosphere and the Idealization of Knowledge . Abstract:  Discussion of the role of the blogosphere in propagating climate scepticism echoes the focus on misinformation implicit in the deficit model. This characterization of the climate sceptic blogosphere suggests an arena without rules or evaluative logics. Yet this is not borne out by a cosmological analysis of climate sceptic blogs. In this paper, preliminary research is presented on the legitimation codes that underpin how ideal knowers and legitimate knowledge are construed on the climate sceptic blogosphere. On the blogosphere there is a commitment to unpacking the black box of science and evaluating it from the position that can be characterized as a toxic knowledge code , a schema for the legitimation of knowledge that emphasises the proced...