Knowledge Alchemy: Models and Agency in Global Knowledge Governance

✍ Scribed by Tero Erkkilä; Meng-Hsuan Chou; Niilo Kauppi

• Publisher: Bristol University Press
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 207
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book introduces the concept of ‘knowledge alchemy’ to capture the generic process of transforming mundane practices and policies of governance into competitive ones following imagined global gold standards. Using examples from North America, Europe and Asia, it explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional policies and practices on economic performance, higher education, research and innovation. The book examines how governments around the world have embraced global models of world-class university, human capital and talent competition as essential in ensuring national competitiveness. Through its analysis, the book shows how this strongly future-oriented and anticipatory knowledge governance is steered by a surge of global classifications, rankings and indicators, resulting in numerous comparisons of various domains that today form more constraining global policy scripts.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Cover
Series page
Knowledge Alchemy: Models and Agency in Global Knowledge Governance
Copyright information
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables
List of Abbreviations
Preface
1 Introduction
Introduction
Conjuncture of ranking and digitalization
Policy diffusion and convergence
Knowledge alchemy and conventional power
Policy scripts, rankings and conventions of knowledge production
Time, narratives and conventions
Conclusions
Part I Indicators, Data and Models of Global Knowledge Governance
2 Global Rankings of Good Governance and Higher Education
Introduction
Field development of global ranking
Rankings of good governance
Global university rankings
World-class university, conventions and shifting strategies of higher education
University Paris-Saclay: a Cambridge à la française or a university of the future?
Conclusions
3 Human Capital and the Rise of the Global Talent Competition
Introduction
Time and place of innovation
City rankings: cities as innovation hubs
Global talent competition and converging metrics of competitiveness, innovation and education
Global talent competition: human capital, mobility and innovation
Human capital, artificial intelligence and talent competition
Producers of global knowledge governance: the case of Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires and the Global Talent Competitiveness Index
The Global Talent Competitiveness Index
The Global Talent Competitiveness Index’s advisory board
Conclusions
Part II Scripts, Imaginaries and Policy
4 Global Imaginaries of Knowledge Governance
Introduction
Global rankings and imaginaries of competitiveness, human capital and artificial intelligence
‘The revolution’: knowledge governance, digitization and automation
The race for talent: open society and urbanity
Regulation and role of government
Imaginaries and limits of policy scripts
From reaction to anticipation: the OECD’s anticipatory innovation governance
Anticipatory governance and the politics of future
Conclusions
5 From the Medieval Scholar to the Global Flows of Academics: Exploring the Emergence, Evolution and Impact of the ‘Talent’ Imaginary
Introduction
Academic mobility in medieval Europe
Academic mobility in the age of modern empires
From the Great Wars to the global competition for talent
Conceptualizing academic mobility as a lived experience
Attracting and retaining foreign academic talents in practice: Singapore
The making of Singapore as an attractive academic destination
Moving away from Singapore: increased living expenses, no work–life balance
What does the case of Singapore tell us about the ‘global’ flows of academics?
Conclusions
6 Strategies and Policies for the Global Talent Competition
Introduction
The Europe of Knowledge
European technological sovereignty and global competition: artificial intelligence regulation, governance and data
China’s knowledge governance via the Belt and Road Initiative
Constructing the hub: city strategies
Conclusions
7 Conclusion
Models and agency in global knowledge governance
Strategies and policies of knowledge alchemy
Disruptions and digital train tracks
References
Index