Demands for research to generate impact, along with proliferating institutional regimes for evaluating impact, are a ubiquitous aspect of contemporary scientific practice. Based on participant observation at an agro-environmental research institute in southwest China, this article explores three iterations of a tool for planning and evaluating impactful science called ‘theory of change’ (TOC). Despite their ostensible common grounding in TOC, I show how an impact scientist’s framework, a donor’s monitoring and evaluation regime, and a communication consultant’s branding strategy each suggest very different normative structures for scientific practice. These structures entail: particular horizons towards which scientific research is to be practiced, precise points in time at which the future effects of research are to be anticipated, and specific assumptions about how scientists’ agency should play out across time. Taking the peculiar sensibilities of TOC as a comparative framework, I illuminate IFF scientists’ implicit imaginations of how contemporary science does and should generate effects in the world.
...More
Thesis
Qiu, Linchuan (Jack);
(2004)
(Dis)connecting the Pearl River Delta: The Transformation of a Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure, 1978--2002
(/isis/citation/CBB001560747/)
Article
Guangya, Zhu;
(Summer 1998)
Engineering in China (editorial)
(/isis/citation/CBB475647404/)
Book
Pietz, David Allen;
(2015)
The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China
(/isis/citation/CBB001553584/)
Book
Scott Rozelle;
(2020)
Invisible China : How the urban-rural divide threatens China's rise
(/isis/citation/CBB539796489/)
Article
Brian Salter;
Yinhua Zhou;
Saheli Datta;
Charlotte Salter;
(September 2016)
Bioinformatics and the Politics of Innovation in the Life Sciences: Science and the State in the United Kingdom, China, and India
(/isis/citation/CBB590127808/)
Book
Ts'ui-jung Liu;
James Beattie;
(2016)
Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia: Perspectives from Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB830019405/)
Book
Joshua Eisenman;
(2018)
Red China's Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune
(/isis/citation/CBB393548124/)
Article
Chen, Jack Yong-Jie;
(2008)
Notes from the Field: Migration and economic development in China
(/isis/citation/CBB797787569/)
Book
Liping Bu;
(2017)
Public Health and the Modernization of China, 1865-2015
(/isis/citation/CBB474304639/)
Book
Peter E. Hamilton;
(2021)
Made in Hong Kong : Transpacific networks and a new history of globalization
(/isis/citation/CBB901496636/)
Book
Bradley M. Gardner;
(2017)
China’s Great Migration: How the Poor Built a Prosperous Nation
(/isis/citation/CBB364882966/)
Article
Zhang, Han-jing;
(2006)
On Sun Yat-sen's thoughts about developing science and technology
(/isis/citation/CBB000701099/)
Article
Junhui Han;
Zhengfeng Li;
(June 2018)
How Metrics-Based Academic Evaluation Could Systematically Induce Academic Misconduct: A Case Study
(/isis/citation/CBB909005401/)
Book
Kunze, Rui;
Marc André Matten;
(2021)
Knowledge production in Mao-era China: learning from the masses
(/isis/citation/CBB437073889/)
Book
Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown;
(2017)
The Chinese and Indian Corporate Economies: A Comparative History of Their Search for Economic Renaissance and Globalization
(/isis/citation/CBB376875899/)
Article
Hallam Stevens;
(2018)
Starting up Biology in China: Performances of Life at BGI
(/isis/citation/CBB133037526/)
Article
Vámos, Péter;
(2018)
A Hungarian model for China? Sino-Hungarian relations in the era of economic reforms, 1979–89
(/isis/citation/CBB828056689/)
Article
Wescott, Clay G.;
(2008)
Realizing Professional Knowledge Exchange: The People's Republic of China and the Philippines
(/isis/citation/CBB368817899/)
Book
Peter B. Lavelle;
(2020)
The Profits of Nature: Colonial Development and the Quest for Resources in Nineteenth-Century China
(/isis/citation/CBB573864372/)
Book
Niv Horesh;
(2014)
Chinese Money in Global Context: Historic Junctures Between 600 BCE and 2012
(/isis/citation/CBB318338166/)
Be the first to comment!